The European Finality Debate and its National Dimensions
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This collection of essays proceeds from an overview of the main issues in the current future-of-Europe debate to an examination of the differing agenda brought to it by the principal actors involved: the Commission and the ‘Big Six’ member-states of an enlarged European Union (EU) — Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland. It explores the influential role of national domestic experience as well as perceptions of power-political interests both inside the Union and in Russia and the United States (US). The book has two potential audiences: a European one fully familiar with the contours of the debate, and an American one whose interest in the subject may at most be incipient. Simon Serfaty has assembled a collection of articles which usefully addresses both and which, barring some omissions and one problematic choice of vocabulary, is a well-conceived and successful piece of scholarship. In the 18 months since these essays were finalized, the urgency of fostering informed transatlantic dialogue on the direction of Europe’s development has increased. As part of the dialogue of extremes Serfaty describes in his introductory article, in which noisy voices accuse those across the ocean of imperialism or incurable anti-Semitism, one may include recent arguments over the existence of an ‘old’ Europe and a ‘new’. Understandably, Serfaty’s desire is to see the centres talking to one another, and in particular to counter apathy in the US relative to the course of European integration: ‘even now, taking Europe seriously does not come easily to those in the United States who remain baffled by the process, unaware of the enormity of what Europeans have achieved thus far, and seemingly indifferent to the complexity of their agenda’ (p. 15). The contributions to this volume, led by Serfaty’s analysis of US–EU relations, Desmond Dinan’s overview of the tasks facing the next Intergovernmental Conference and Fraser Cameron’s outline of the priorities of the Commission, open up the main issues in a way that should engage even those whose knowledge is rudimentary. But the book will also bring fresh insights to those closer to the debate. Discussion on this side of the Atlantic has arguably become excessively focused on issues of institutional and constitutional design — how many CommisJournal of International Relations and Development, 2004, 7, (448–451) r 2004 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1408-6980/04 $30.00
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sioners there should be, whether the rotating presidency should be maintained and so on. The deliberation process tends to be described in the image of an idealized account of America’s founding: a sense of weakness and drift — in the post-Nice Union as in the postrevolutionary Confederation — leading to a great debate being ‘started’, a convention meeting to make some formal sense, followed by state leaders stepping forward to agree an eternal constitution. The comparison encourages teleological thinking, the debate takes on an abstract quality, and the failure by the heads of
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