While Europe burns, Brussels scribbles

Europe may be in a bit of an existential funk these days with Brexit and an EU-hostile new president in the White House, but the talk of the town in Brussels is a “White Paper” being prepared, out of view, for the EU’s 60th anniversary celebrations in Rome.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and his cabinet chief Martin Selmayr are busy laying down options on how the bloc should evolve over the next 10 years. Hordes of officials, all the way up to other commissioners, are desperate for a sneak peak to see if they got a line in and for any insight as to what solutions it might propose.

Such is the intrigue that Italy’s La Repubblica reported Juncker was ready to resign over resistance from national capitals to the paper. The newspaper even named his successor (Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen).

“I won’t resign,” Juncker said when POLITICO ran into him Tuesday evening.

He told commissioners he will shepherd the White Paper throughout the year, plans to come back to it during his annual “State of the Union” speech in September and see it over the finishing line in December at another EU summit, according to participants in the weekly College of Commissioners meeting Wednesday.

At the meeting, Juncker did a tour de table, asking his team to use their imagination to contribute to the collective effort. The notes for the meeting, seen by POLITICO, say Juncker asked if one of the EU’s founding fathers were beamed from the World War II prison island of Ventotene (where Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi wrote their manifesto “For a Free and United Europe”) to the present day, “which three achievements and strengths of the European Union would he see as the biggest and most unexpected?”

“Looking ahead, how do you see the European project evolving over the next 10 years? What are the drivers behind this change?” was another question put to commissioners by Juncker, according to participants in the meeting.

While the White Paper is being touted as a collective exercise to help reshape the Continent, one EU diplomat suggested it is really just “a think tank exercise on different levels of integration,” which lacks ambition and avoids proposing any meaningful changes to the EU’s underlying treaties.

For Juncker, the key is to get the balance right: Be too ambitious and he’ll be accused of pie-in-the-sky thinking and dismissed; lack ambition and be accused of, well, lacking ambition. So Juncker and Selmayr are playing it safe by giving leaders a number of options, waiting and seeing what happens.

“The White Paper will serve to steer the debate among the 27 heads of state or government,” said Juncker’s note for the college meeting, describing it as a “starting point for a wider public debate on the future of our Continent.” The Rome summit on March 25 will be “not the end of a process, but rather the start of a broad reflection” leading to conclusions at an EU leaders’ summit in December, it read.

And another …

In case the White Paper — some describe it as a much larger “White Book” — doesn’t provide enough inspiration, there is a parallel, if much shorter, document being drawn up on what path the EU27 will take after Brexit, to be presented as a “declaration” at the Rome summit. At least as much intrigue surrounds the declaration, whose stated aim — according to European Council President Donald Tusk — is to “offer an ambitious vision on how to preserve unity and achieve political consolidation.”

Juncker will have a hand in the declaration, but it’s mostly the work of Tusk and Rome summit host Paolo Gentiloni, the Italian prime minister, who are frantically exchanging drafts of what’s supposed to be a one- or two-page document. Tusk’s cabinet chief Piotr Serafin is in charge of gathering input from national capitals in time for a summit of all 28 current EU leaders on March 9.

Tension over both documents stems from conflicting views on whether they should be an “inter-governmental vision” of EU member countries, according to Hungarian diplomats who have been lobbying for this approach, or blueprints for a fully fledged federal state, as proposed by MEP and former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, in his presentation to the European Parliament earlier this month.

Then there’s Angela Merkel’s vision: The German chancellor hosted Juncker at a dinner in Berlin on Wednesday and wants to relaunch the idea of a multi-speed Europe, where countries eager for faster, deeper integration and an “ever closer union” can push ahead without waiting for unanimous support. She has the backing of core EU states such as France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Tusk is aiming high and wants to have the Rome declaration signed by all 27 leaders who will attend (Britain’s Theresa May is tactfully staying away). However, diplomats say it’s more likely that only Juncker, Tusk, Gentiloni, European Parliament President Antonio Tajani and Joseph Muscat, the prime minister of Malta — which currently holds the rotating presidency — will put their names to it, while national leaders merely give their consent.

“Different ambitions about the speed of integration may coexist. The idea is to reaffirm our unity and our pride for what we have achieved, despite some shortcomings,” Marco Piantini, Gentiloni’s adviser on EU affairs, told POLITICO.

He emphasized the need for the Commission, Council and Parliament to work together on these visions for the future of Europe, describing them as “our strongest shield in times of global changes.”