The person who gives Kettle assurance for his contention that the dream is over is Stephen Wall, former UK Permanent Representative and Head of the Cabinet Office European Secretariat. Wall undoubtedly knows a lot about European integration, but I have consistently had problems with his approach, for he gives the impression that the role of citizens in the whole thing are nothing but an annoyance – it’s about the EU being in the UK’s national and, for him, administrative interest. Functionalism. How that in any way is a European ‘dream’ is beyond me.

Wall says that institutions do not last forever – well, it partially depends if people keep on calling their existence into question or not. Does anyone contend that the notion that the House of Commons might collapse as an institution? No. The UN has done little to develop as an institution in the last 30 years, but its existence is not in doubt. So too for the European Union – it was at a low point in the 1970s but survived. It’s at a low point now too, but it will survive. Almost anyone who has ever worked with or in another international, intergovernmental organisation (G8, G20, NATO, UN etc.) would contend that, even now, the EU is rather functional in comparison.

Kettle then moves on to talk blithely about Schengen, talking of “surges of migration triggered by the Arab spring” when the scale of the challenges these pose to Schengen is nothing in comparison to the strains from the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, and ignored the fact that the Danish gripes are more to do with a populist party than they are to do with the EU itself.

Kettle then talks of solutions – “a bold regenerative leap” – the sort of straw man that can be built up only to be knocked down again. The EU has only managed to (partially) accomplish such things at times of historic importance (after the fall of the Berlin Wall for example), and so he proposes the alternative – to move towards the break-up of the EU instead. Either full integration or nothing. What a Europe with a broken EU would look like he does not say. Whether other international organisations are any better also doesn’t get a mention. And importantly the deeper reasons for the malaise – starting from national politics and the changing nature of our representative democracy – are not even examined.

EU Flag - CC / Flickr

As quoted in this piece at EUObserver:

A former British EU ambassador, Stephen Wall, also poured cold water on the scheme, saying that the appointment is about balancing national and political interests in Europe, rather than individual merit.

“Given that they have to placate the right, the left, the north, the south, the large and small nations, you could have a brilliant presentation but, if the politics didn’t fit, what would be the point?” he said in an article in the New York Times on Tuesday.

This is in response to a Polish proposal that candidates for EU top jobs should make presentations to EU leaders.

Let me reply to Stephen’s point. The President of the European Council has no democratic legitimacy at all (appointment is by heads of state and government, no role for the European Parliament), and the High Representative for Foreign Policy is not much better (s/he is part of the Commission team, so needs EP approval at least). But where else, in whatever appointment for a top position does merit not even come into it?

If Wall were still the UK’s permanent representative it might have been right to defend his position behind closed doors. Now, as Vice Chair of Business for New Europe, he has a public relations role and he’s just essentially saying we shouldn’t actually give a shit about whether the person is any good, let’s stick with a diplomats’ stitch up – that’s not acceptable from him. If you’re an advocate for a positive role for the UK in the EU, and for an EU that delivers good policy, you should want a good President of the European Council or High Rep, however unlikely in reality we all know that is going to be.

In short Wall is no person to make any sort of case to citizens about the EU.