Those of us brought up to believe that Jean-Claude Piris controlled everything of any importance that happened in Brussels have a new conspiracy theory to explain the extraordinary goings-on at the European Council of 8-9 December. 

Could it be that the man who headed the legal service of the Council of Ministers for more than two decades, managed – even a year after his retirement – to manipulate events at the summit so that they would give maximum marketing effect to his new book? Was it Piris who engineered the British veto and the launch of negotiations on an inter-governmental treaty? And all to ensure that Cambridge University Press had a bestseller on its ink-smudged hands?

The conspiracy theory might seem implausible, but then so are many of the explanations for what happened on the night of 8 December. And it is indisputable that Piris’s readership will grow by the day, as diplomats, lawyers, journalists and perhaps even a few democratically elected politicians grapple with the negotiations on an inter-governmental treaty. Rarely has a book been so well-timed.

Nevertheless, attentive readers of these modest 150 pages might experience a small pang of disappointment. If they expect Piris’s book to be a guidebook to help them with their inter-governmental treaty, then they will find that his directions amount to “don’t start from here”. The possibilities that he outlines for “a two-speed EU”, as the sub-title puts it (though he generally prefers to talk of an “avant-garde”), do not encompass what December’s European Council appears to have set in train. It is altogether more difficult and, at the same time, more interesting.

What route for the avant-garde?

The author devotes considerable attention to the existing possibilities for “enhanced co-operation” that do not encompass all 27 member states of the EU. But he is far from convinced that those possibilities are, in themselves, enough to satisfy the needs of the EU and its member states. He wishes to explore the feasibility (primarily what is legally possible) for an avant-garde to advance, outside the current EU treaties while remaining in compliance with them.

The reviewer of such a short, lucid book should, however, avoid the tempt-ation to précis its contents: it deserves to be read in its entirety, particularly since it gets better as it goes on.

Some may disagree with Piris’s view that “an EU composed of 27 heterogeneous member states has proven that it is not able to function efficiently within its present legal framework and that it is not able to answer the needs, interests and wishes of all its member states at the same time”.

Fact File

The future of Europe: towards a two-speed EU?

By Jean-Claude Piris (150 pages)

Cambridge University Press. €21

Others will part company with him over his expressed hope that “a two-speed Europe might also help to try and regain the support of European citizens by presenting them with a bold and coherent political project”.

His diagnosis is bound to go down badly with most parts of the European Parliament, and not just because he believes it has failed to give democratic legitimacy to the EU. He also believes that MEPs have overstepped their powers and have contributed to weakening the European Commission. Piris clearly strongly disapproves of giving every member state the right to have one European commissioner. And his comments on those institutions, while not essential to the main thrust of his argument, are striking because he shows how everything connects – a weaker Commission, held captive by the member states, is unlikely to make use of the existing potential for enhanced co-operation between groups of member states.

Piris’s avowed belief is that the avant-garde that he is advocating should be followed at a later date by the other member states, which are not being consigned in perpetuity to some permanent

second-class status. But when it comes to exploring how the avant-garde might be organised institutionally – perhaps with a separate assembly and a separate (small) team of commissioners – he posits some ideas that might be hard to reconcile with the EU. The right of legal initiative would not be exclusive to the administrative authority (the equivalent of the Commission), but shared with the member states and the assembly.

Piris does not address the question of how readily the rest of the EU, as they catch up with the avant-garde, would embrace legislation that was put together by a different set of institutions. He is more interested in what is legally possible than what is politically probable.

But even if not all readers will be persuaded by the merits of Piris’s prescription, they will learn much along the way, gaining legal and historical perspective on different forms of co-operation between member states outside, inside and alongside the EU’s own treaties. Piris may not be the arch-manipulator of the conspiracy theories, but he is a great teacher. As the best professors do, he challenges and provokes and gets us arguing.

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