Much
of the debate over the EU Reform Treaty in the UK has focussed
on whether it is the same as the old Constitutional Treaty,
on which the public was promised a referendum. The government’s
line is that there’s a significant difference.
Those who pushed (unsuccessfully) for a referendum point out
that 96 per cent of the text is the same. Even Valerie Giscard
d’Estaing, who chaired the convention responsible for
the original document, must now regret his comment that the
differences between the two were “more cosmetic than
real”.
When it comes to the voluntary sector, though, that’s
undeniably the case. Many of the provisions that won over
UK charities back in 2005 (before it was killed off by voters
in the Netherlands and France) have indeed made it into the
Lisbon Treaty.
So while the debate continues among the public and politicians,
the third sector has lined up to welcome the treaty. The NSPCC
says the text is “a significant step forward for efforts
to protect children”; the umbrella group for international
development charities Bond says it will bring a greater focus
on poverty and more coherence to the EU’s policy.
Other high spots for charities include articles 2 and 3, which
place non-discrimination “at the heart of the Union’s
goals”, as NCVO puts it, and provisions that recognise
climate change and commit the EU to sustainable development.
As David Miliband has put it, “[W]hether it’s
overseas aid charities or children’s charities or environmental
groups, they see this Treaty as a step forward for Europe
and a step forward for Britain.”
Something for everyone
For many, though, the most exciting parts of the treaty
concern “participatory democracy”. This, claim
supporters, will enable a far wider range of charities to
play a role in the EU policy making process.
Tamara Flanagan, director of European funding at CSV, argues
that it addresses a long-standing weakness among the EU
institutions such as the European Commission, which have
grown better at listening to the concerns of governments,
trade unions and businesses than to those of civil society.
“We’ve seen the investment in public and social
dialogue, but what about the civil dialogue?” she
asks. “Where’s the citizens’ voice in
all this? That’s what this addresses. It gives citizens
and communities a voice in Europe for the first time.”
It does so mainly through article 8 (see below). This commits
the institutions to dialogue with civil society and the
Commission to “broad consultation”.
It makes clear that representative associations will play
a big part in connecting people with the EU institutions.
Furthermore, it offers the opportunity to propose an initiative
to the Commission directly if the applicant can gather one
million signatures in support – far from an impossible
target for the big campaign groups.
The proposals, says Anne David, president of CEDAG (the
European Council for Non-Profit Organisations), will lead
to “a more democratic and social European union”.
Of course, there are already ways for charities to get their
voices heard in the EU. The European Economic and Social
Committee, an EU advisory body that consults with organised
civil society, for instance, has been in place for over
50 years. However, it’s never had a huge amount of
power.
The Commission also already runs consultations, but as Tony
Venables, chief executive of ECAS (the European Citizen
Action Service that helps NGOs and individuals get their
voices heard in the EU) explains, it could be more consistent.
“It’s better in some areas than others,”
he remarks. There’s also little in the way of feedback.
Recent years have seen a number of initiatives by Brussels
to try to improve this, with efforts to engage citizens
and open up possibilities for charities. As Ollie Henman,
EU and international manager at NCVO, explains, the failure
of the original constitutional treaty led to some soul-searching
on the part of the EU and the launch of a number of schemes,
particularly Plan D (for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate),
which included a number of consultations and events to encourage
engagement.
The problem, says Henman, is that there has been little
coherence in the response. “It’s been largely
ad hoc,” he says. “There’s been nothing
systematic that cuts across the whole of the EU institutions.”
The Treaty could reinforce what good practice there is and
spread it across the EU institutions.
For all its efforts, says Catherine Fieschi, director of
‘third way’ think tank Demos, it remains hard
for most charities to make their voices heard at a European
level. “It’s not through ill will,” she
explains. “I just think they don’t really understand
the constraints charities are under.”
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Ever closer union?
How much the Treaty would really change this is open to
question, though. As Henman admits, the commitments are
fairly vague. “It’s more a statement of intent,”
he comments.
This is the reason that NCVO, CSV, CEDAG and others, while
supporting ratification of the treaty, are calling for the
EU to go further and develop an “EU Compact”
to ensure the intent is put into practice. What this might
look like, though, is anyone’s guess.
Henman says it’s still early days and no firm decisions
have been taken. However, for his organisation, a UK-style
written agreement has some merit. After all, he points out,
it’s already inspired a number of others to adopt
a similar approach, such as France, Denmark, Poland, Hungary,
Estonia and Latvia. “Many countries do look to the
UK,” he says.
Not everyone is convinced, though. Filippo Addarii, director
of Euclid, the European network of third sector leaders
that is part of the campaign with the NCVO, says it must
be something altogether tougher. “A European Compact
can’t be a gentlemen’s agreement like in the
UK,” he insists. “That would end up just being
a piece of paper.” Instead it must lay down procedures.
“This is a bureaucracy,” he says. “It’s
not about principles.”
Either way, the chances of seeing an EU-level agreement,
whatever we call it, are likely to depend on two things.
The first is how serious the EU is about engaging with citizens
and the organisations they support. Venables, for one, reckons
the evidence is ambiguous. “When the referendums in
the Netherlands and France were lost, the EU reacted in
two ways,” he explains. The first was to recognise
that lessons should be learnt, which led to the experiments
with participatory democracy. “Then they made the
decision to push the treaty through without producing a
consolidated readable version, with little public debate
and with no referenda,” he says. “I’d
say the signals are fairly contradictory.”
However, before that, charities face a more immediate hurdle:
they need to win the argument in their own countries. “We
have to work nationally, not just in Brussels,” says
Addarii. Without support throughout the EU, he argues, there
will be little hope of progress. “Even if you have
countries like France and the UK, where their relationship
between the government and third sector is pretty good,
on board, what will the outcome be if others like Italy
and Portugal, where it’s awful, don’t support
this?” he asks. “It will just get thrown out.”
For all the talk of increased powers at the EU level, the
factors determining the success of an EU Compact, at least,
still remain much closer to home.
The articles on participatory democracy
Article 8 in the Lisbon Treaty largely replicates the principles
of participatory democracy found in Article I-47 of the
constitution, although the sub-headings, including the term
“participatory democracy” have been removed.
The relevant parts, says the NCVO, are:
Article 8a, 3: “Every citizen shall have
the right to participate in the democratic life of the Union.
Decisions shall be taken as openly and as closely as possible
to the citizen.”
Article 8b, 1: “The institutions shall, by
appropriate means, give citizens and representative associations
the opportunity to make known and publicly exchange their
views in all areas of Union action.”
Article 8b, 2: “The institutions [of the
EU] shall maintain an open, transparent and regular dialogue
with representative associations and civil society.”
Article 8b, 3: “The Commission shall carry
out broad consultations with parties concerned in order
to ensure that the Union’s actions are coherent and
transparent.”
Article 8b also includes the “citizens initiative”
where one million European citizens can propose a new EU
law. The Commission is only obliged to consider this, but
ECAS’s Venables maintains it would be difficult for
the Commission to ignore such a request.
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