'Debating Europe': what debate?

There is a fundamental dimension to the debate about joining the European Union that has been sorely lacking in candidate countries, and equally in Malta. It can be encapsulated in the following: Here we are, debating (most of the time) whether we should join the European Economic Community, when the issue in 2003 really is whether we should join the European Union.

I am prepared to bet my bottom dollar that this statement will flummox many, if not most, readers. Have we not been debating the latter? No, we have not.

If this is news to some, then it is time that we reported this bit of news. The European Union is not the EEC. Economics was the focus of the three Communities set up in the Fifties. It is a crucial part of what the European institutions do now. Economic integration remains the primary route to peace and prosperity in a wider Europe. But it is increasingly not the whole story.

In 1994, the member states signalled, with the treaty of Maastricht, that the European project is essentially about bringing ever closer together the peoples of Europe, the citizens and all others living in the member states.

This means bringing them together as people: not just as producers and consumers, not just as providers of services and receivers of services, not just as employees and workers, not just as providers of capital and users of capital, but as co-sharers and co-deciders of a common destiny, as co-livers of a shared historical tradition and culture, as life-witnesses of a common heritage of political, social and moral values.

Are all Europeans the same? Of course not. We have our own identities and traditions, but in a real sense this means that we each have our own Europeanness, to be valued as such by other Europeans. European culture is not 'enriched by', but actually made up of this diversity, a diversity which, however, is centred around common values.

Are Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and many others, less European than we who live in geographical Europe? I would say not. If distance separates us from these then that is sad, and may one day be overcome. But Europeans who are more proximate have seen no cause to separate themselves, and every cause to come closer in every way.

They are diverse, but European, and they are in close proximity. It makes sense for Europeans in proximity to build on their Europeanness and their proximity, to live and work and create together.

It is the values which bind. And the EU as a framework for this connection between Europeans is itself increasingly about values, and not so apparently single-mindedly about economic value.

Increasingly, economism (as it has been called by a recent eminent speaker in Malta, Larry Siedentop, the famous author of Democracy in Europe) is subordinated to the values of social justice and solidarity. It is the process of socialisation and democratisation of the substance and processes of policy-making in the European institutions - the European Council, the Council, the Parliament and the Commission, with the full participation of the European Court of Justice, which has also mirrored within this framework the vocation of the European Court of Human Rights - which has moved us from economism to a Union of values.

These values, always Euro-pean, always steadfastly held to by the member states, have over time found themselves embedded within the framework of the Union, even if they have not been fully and formally articulated therein because the Treaties were not meant to be, and were therefore not formulated as, a Constitution.

This process having nevertheless occurred, it now makes sense to many to talk of a Constitution, or at least a more overtly constitution-like set of treaties. Such a framework, while falling far short of creating a super-state, will yet set out the values and principles, including the all-important federal principles, which will ensure that the values of solidarity, respect for diversity and national identities and needs, and social justice remain and grow at the core of the Union. This is the idea.

There is another crucial dimension to be grasped. If Europe cherishes its values, it must live them and be able to act on them. The role of Europe in the world is best played out through the Union.

The Council of Europe has played a vital role in Europe, but it does not represent the economic and political strength of Europe in the greater world. The Union does. And the Union must therefore also project the true and full Europe, and not a partial and misleading sense of Europe, for this can do untold harm.

The West is often, if not always seen, as an economic and materialistic behemoth. Much of what is proposed for the future of the EU, a future currently being addressed by the Convention on the Future of Europe, as it is called, has to do with the role of the Union in the world.

The call for a constitutional declaration of the Union's values, for a clear statement of the rights and duties of its institutions and those of the states, and even more tellingly the rights and duties of its citizens and others living in the Union, is as much externally directed as it is internally directed. It will tell non-Europeans about Europe as much as it will remind Europeans about Europe. This also is the idea.

This is not the place to elaborate on the values of Europe and how they should be explicitly reflected in the Treaties. In a sense if we do not know already what they are, then we are hardly European, for we either share them and are European, or we do not and we are not. It is shared values which defines Europeanness more than anything else.

So let us take time off doing our accounts, while certainly not forgetting them, to take a look at the current discussions in the Convention on the Future of Europe, to access the special Website (www. europa.eu.int/futurum), to attend every conference, seminar and workshop organised by whoever, and to study all drafts of any proposed Constitution for Europe, or United Europe, EU or whatever else the future framework might be called.

It is on such matters that we need to reflect deeply in my view. More important than short-term economic gain or loss (although unnecessary and disproportionate loss must be totally minimised or avoided, and with good will on both sides should be in any reasonable negotiations) are, in my view, the questions of the role of the Union in Europe and the world, and Malta's place in that vision.

In particular, what role for Malta in our region as a European and Mediterranean people with a place (now on offer) at the Union table? Does contemplating such matters inspire us? And if so, to what? And if not, why not?