SPECIA E TOR
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JOHN BULL MEETS JOHN VENN
Multi-speed, multi-track, multi-lay- ered': those were the adjectives which John Major used to describe his personal vision of Europe in June of this year, right in the thick of the European election campaign. The Prime Minister was not, of course, the first person to envisage a Europe of many flavours and inclinations: the idea has been mooted around the continent from time to time over the years, sometimes praised, sometimes disparaged as 'Europe a la carte'; there are even those who believe that the energetic Franco-German push to create a single European currency was, from the beginning, an attempt to separate the serious Europeans from the rest, a method of creating, de facto, a multi-lay- ered Europe without actually saying so.
Because he has himself encouraged a multi-speed Europe, it seems odd for the Prime Minister to oppose the general idea. Yet opposed he is, at least, when the idea is mooted in Bonn — in the form of a short Christian Democratic policy paper envi- sioning a 'hard-core' Europe moving quick- ly towards integration — as well as in Paris, in the form of an interview with the French Prime Minister, who said that, 'For long years to come, Europe will consist of a cen- tral homogenous core, made up essentially of France and Germany.'
True, there are reasons for concern. Nor- mally, in European affairs the devil is in the details: nobody objects to peace and friend- ship in Europe, but some might object to a Franco-German army; nobody objects to higher living standards, but some dislike it when the exact method of attaining those standards is dictated from Brussels. In this case, however, the devil is not in the details but in the metaphor: we do not yet know what kind of multi-layered Europe the French and Germans are talking about, and we do not know what shape it will ultimate- ly take.
It might be, for example, that we are talk- ing here about a 'fast lane' and a 'slow lane' Europe, in which everyone is heading towards the same goal, but at different paces. This would imply that France and Germany will create, say, a monetary union and a common defence policy, and Britain will join in a few years later, either because the British so wish, or because they are legally coerced by the Maastricht Treaty. That sort of Europe is, unquestionably, the Europe of Britain's worst dreams.
Another possibility is a Europe of con- centric circles, in which a 'hard core' of states set policies, to which the 'outer core' would not have to conform; this is an improvement on the fast lane/slow lane vision, although it still implies that policy is set by one group, and then merely followed by those in the outer ring.
The third possibility is a Europe of inter- locking circles— Venn diagrams, to adopt the language of GCSE mathematics — in which the European Community sets itself a variety of tasks, not merely monetary. Those states which wish to participate in European defence can do so, those which prefer to join a monetary union are wel- come, those who prefer to remain in a free trade zone and nothing else are welcome to remain there. That kind of Europe could not have pretensions to superstatehood, as it would not have a political identity sepa- rate from that of the nation-states which it comprised.
A Europe of Venn diagrams — a Europe in which Britain plays the role of country member, attending the club but not so fre- quently as others — is also appealing because, in fact, it reflects reality. We already have a Europe in which the WEU doesn't quite overlap with the EC, whose membership doesn't quite match that of the Council of Europe. The creation of a Euro- pean legal framework which reflects reality and not Brussels fantasy should be the ulti- mate goal of any British government, or any other European government which wants the EC to work in practice, and not just on paper.
The task for the British Government now is not to criticise this initiative, merely on the grounds that it comes from Bonn and Paris and uses language which makes Britain sound like a second-rate power, but to take it up, to encourage it, to begin mak- ing the multi-layered EC into our kind of multi-layered EC, and not their kind. It may irritate Foreign Office mandarins to know that they have failed in their historic attempt to break up the Franco-German axis, and it may pain them to realise that if and when a common currency is created, they will not have the pleasure of sitting at the top table with those who are creating it; but surely the point of a foreign policy is not the enrichment of the lives of those who carry it out. British foreign policy must be good for Britain, and the creation of a United States of Europe manifestly is not. We cannot prevent France, Germany and the Benelux countries from creating a com- mon currency if they so desire. We can, how- ever, resolutely keep out of it ourselves, rel- ishing the investment and trade which will come our way when the attempt to put a monetary straitjacket on different economies goes the way of the ERM. A multi-layered Europe is to be welcomed in principle: it is up to the British Government to gain the maximum advantage from it.
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