Europe at a turning point – Minister for European Affairs Frans Timmermans on European integration

A large crowd of students, mostly foreign, and local residents quickly filled the old chapel which now serves as aula at the Maastricht University’s Faculty of Economics on the evening of March 3, 2009. They had come to listen to the current Dutch Minister for European Affairs, Frans Timmermans, share his views on “The Netherlands and European integration”.

The title of the lecture proved to be somewhat misleading for what came later, since, on account of the international composition of the audience, Mr Timmermans mainly talked about the challenges facing European integration in this time of crisis, rather than on the role of the Netherlands in the European integration process.

The Maastricht born minister can certainly boast an international background: he was partly educated in Italy and France, served at the Dutch Embassy in Moscow in the early 1990’s, and later also worked for the EU and the OCSE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe). He also speaks fluent English, French, German, Italian and has a good knowledge of Russian and Spanish.

UM President Jo Ritzen introduced Mr Timmermans as “a diplomat, a philosopher and a politician”. To this, we might as well add “EU-supporter”: his curriculum vitae indicates that he sat on the executive committee of the European Movement, a civil organisation promoting a federal Europe, and his policy statement on the Ministry’s website reads: “Europe and the Netherlands belong together”.

The latter was the ideological message of the lecture, but Timmermans addressed the less rosy aspects of European integration as well.

Indeed, instead of serving the large audience with rhetorics and praise for the achievements of the European Union, Timmermans immediately took the bull by the horns. “If you want to have a debate about Europe today, you have to start with the crisis.” This was a signal that we would be hearing some critical insights, which sounded like good news for the evening.

Where would we be if we did not have the Euro?
In Timmermans’ analysis, we are currently facing four big crises on a global scale: financial, climatic, energetic and geopolitical. Timmermans described each problem one by one, and then tried to offer some solutions.

The financial crisis was his main point of focus. Quoting the Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman, Timmermans said that these days even traditional eurosceptics seem to have rallied the European project. That same day Rachman had written: “’I have to confess I am no longer Eurosceptic.’ For if this crisis shows us anything, it is that Europe needs to foster and protect and cherish its four freedoms: the freedom of transportation, travel, capital and movement of services.” A eurosceptic on his side undeniably struck a point in his favour.

Timmermans acknowledged however that the building of European integration is not all a bed of roses and that even in merrier times, excitement has not always been huge around it: “Why is it so difficult to feel some enthusiasm for a project that has yielded so many good effects in the last 50 years? People look at Europe the same way they look at their dentist: you need to go there, it’s good for you, but oh boy you hate doing it!”

Timmermans underlined that the danger to the project’s survival has often come from within, and that this threat is as strong as ever now. “Many of us,” he pointed out, “fail to see Europe’s strengths: this failure leads to answers dictated by fear, which open the road to protectionism and even nationalism.”

He saw threats in the centrifugal forces which pull banks out of foreign markets back to their national territories, increasingly limiting trade to narrowly inscribed boundaries.

He recognised that the tools to address such challenges are national but he is convinced that the only efficient answer will be a European one.

Yet, although the situation he described was far from idyllic, Timmermans remained firmly optimistic for the future: “I believe this is an opportunity for Europe because I do believe that, in spite of all the doom and gloom in public opinion and the way we talk about ourselves, we are, as a society, in the strongest position in the world. We have the best system, better than the US, certainly better than Asia”.

Cooperation on all fronts
Timmermans also pondered on other threats such as climate change or our dependence on declining reserves of fossil fuels, and other critical issues such as the food and water crises.

Here too, he believes that the answers in Europe to these challenges must be collective, and first and foremost European.

They have to come out of what he called a combined action from the legislative and executive powers of the EU: “On the one hand you need to take legislative action, with the Commission proposing, and the Council and the Parliament deciding, on the other hand these are executive decisions”.

But having said that, the solution also needs be global. When asked by a member of the audience about his opinion on the future of transatlantic relations, Timmermans explained that in all of these matters he did not see “the possibility of disconnecting America’s future from Europe’s future”.

He also envisaged a stronger role for international institutions, whose mandates he believes need to be reviewed: “The international structures we work with are still based on the Cold War situation and sometimes even on the colonial situation, which is long gone. The new big players in the world’s economy are under-represented on the international level”.

Global interdependence, for Timmermans, “is not a bad thing, but a good thing”.

On the subject of European cooperation, he touched upon another hot topic, that of immigration. His recipe for a successful policy lied once more in our stepping out of our own national boundaries. Europe would have to be “able to develop a policy which helps the spillover of what we have achieved to our neighbourhood”.

He strongly pleaded for a “more equitable distribution of wealth”, which he described as necessary in order to prevent thousands of people from ending up on Italian or Spanish shores in search for that wealth. “The tendency is to look after your own, which I understand. But here again, no fence will be high enough to keep these people out if they do not have options to develop their lives in their homecountries”, he said.

“Are you Dutch or are you European?”
Timmermans realises that EU citizens have often questioned the idea of further European economic and political integration. “The reasons for Europeans to unite have always been threats,” he explained. “The first driving force for European integration was preventing another bloodshed after the second world war: that is why we put the two ingredients for the war machine, coal and steel, under an international oversight”.

With time, other threats emerged, such as the communist fear and the Japanese economic competition. What happened recently however is that prosperity and relative security have replaced these negative driving forces, so that, as Timmermans put it, “the lack of threats gave us the luxurious position of being eurosceptical”. In times of crisis the forces pulling Europeans together should be stronger than those tearing them apart. Consequently, theoretically euroscepticism should be lower now.

On the flip side, even those who do not question the European project on economic terms do not necessarily identify with it either. In fact, being European is seen as something conflicting with being Dutch, French or German. Timmermans argued that this comes out of a definition of identity as loyalty to something, and loyalty in this logic is exclusive. In his view things are a lot more nuanced. To explain the absurdity of the question: ‘Are you Dutch or are you European?’ he borrowed a quip from Italian writer Carlo Magris: “It’s like asking me: are you a son or are you a father? I’m both!”

Timmermans realises that as long as we do not have a European demos we cannot push European integration any further. Despite the difficulties and the crises facing us however, Timmermans remains optimistic on Europe’s chances to overcome them: “The outcome of these challenges all depends on how we organise ourselves, politicians and society, in order to enter what is going to be, in my deepest conviction, our most constructive period.”

Timmermans made a thorough analysis, touching upon many and complex topics. He came across not only as a good, but also as an honest and direct speaker. As a European Studies student, I share his support for the European project, insofar as a common answer to difficulties is the only way to get us out of these troubled times.

Having said that, I believe that unity of action is not always the best solution: it may need to be applied to common threats but in certain cases a national response might still be more appropriate.

Another point is that I don’t think that Timmermans’ huge dose of optimism was always justified. It is understandable that the politician in him needs to give us hope, yet perspectives do not look all that good.

Everyday experience still shows us that the path towards a European Union made of Europeans and not of Dutch, Germans and Spanish will be long. Politicians like Timmermans, who seem to be moved by a vision rather than by their own interest, will hopefully lead the way. Meanwhile, we still need the European Union, at least for the sake of our economies. So, we might as well continue going to the dentist.

By Sofia Tussis

Sofia Tussis is an Italian student at Maastricht University, specialising in European Studies. She loves the town, its people and its bicycles, its weather a little less.

Link:
Europa hoort bij Nederland: Minister Frans Timmerman’s website (in Dutch)