Meeting of the European Heads of State and Government at Brussels

Today, the heads of state and government of the EU member states gathered for a two-day meeting in Brussels. Goal of the meeting is to set up a road map for the successful implementation of a European constitutional treaty. For further information, click here [invitation to the meeting, in English].

After having suffered a major setback two years ago, partisans of the constitutional movement in Europe are still having a hard time achieving a consensus among European statesmen. [For a previous post on this, click here.] Several heads of states have expressed their inclination towards weakening the impact of a possible constitutional treaty. In the run-up to the present meeting, most notably the demands made by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski have put a successful outcome of the meeting into question. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the British government seeks exceptions from major parts of the proposed treaty (e.g. British courts should not be bound by the EU Charter of Human Rights). This request probably does not come as a big surprise, had the British often sought to get special treatment (e.g. Britain does not have the Euro as currency). Of more concern should be the latest statements by Polish Prime Minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. According to the FAZ, in a radio broadcast, Kaczynski had based his request for a different allocation of voting rights on the military and civilian losses in Poland during the Second World War. In particular, according to Kaczynski, Poland should get more votes whereas German votes should be limited. For further information, click here [FAZ article, in German].

Statements like the ones made by Kaczynski are unfortunate as they foil the basic ideas that led to the creation of the European Union: peace and reconstruction. How shall there be peace when focus is still on former animosities? How shall there be reconstruction when focus is still on past events?