My friend Marc Young in Berlin berated me at the time of the Swedish EMU referendum for contributing to the event being, in his words, “the high water mark” for the European project. Swedes rejecting EMU would deal a blow to the momentum of the EU that would result in the collapse of the cooperative spirit that had been pushing the project forward.

Two events subsequent to the referendum make it look increasingly that Marc was right about the “high water mark,” though it is hardly due to the efforts of the SwedesThe Swedes, in the meantime, are increasingly grateful [Swedish] they did not commit to the euro on Sept 14.. These are:

1. The Stability and Growth Pact, a silly rule-based attempt to shoehorn European economies into responsible spending, failed spectacularly, but it should never have been implemented. The need for a (hopefully sane) replacement system reveals another weakness in the euro project: individual states can undermine confidence in a common currency by spending recklessly — it is not just the European Central Bank’s interest rate that directly affects the economic health of euroland. But when is spending reckless and when is it a necessary kick in the ass of a national economy? National governments will disagree. And how can you argue that euroland economies are synchronized if some are trying to spend their way out of a recession while others have budget surpluses?

At the risk of repeating myself: The euro makes sense for a core of countries whose economies are tied to that of Germany. For the rest of Europeans, the euro is a bad idea, because they are not part of the euro’s optimal currency area. There is nothing ideological to this line of thinking. The current mess is directly attributable to an economic project having been hijacked for political ends.

2. The EU summit this weekend failed, and I am pleased. National leaders will now have to admit they cannot push ahead while merely treating the symptoms of the ills besieging the EU project. To me, there are two fundamental problems with the EU currently, and they interact in a vicious circle:

Where’s the subsidiarity?

The haggling over national voting rights is a symptom of the failure of national governments to cede power to their intended replacements — representative bodies like the EU parliament and regional authorities. Remember the principle of subsidiarity? It was all the rage when I was a fledgling European back in the 80s, but in the past 15 years that powerful idea has been turned into a vague guiding principle the Commission and Council of Ministers need only pay lip service to. The Shroeders, Chiracs and Aznars of Europe are proving incapable of signing themselves into relative irrelevance. It’s trite but true: bureaucracies are institutionally incapable of divesting themselves of power. By now, the Council of Ministers should no longer be a prize worth haggling over. Real power should reside in the European Parliament when it concerns continent-wide matters, and at a regional level when it is a local matter.

Where’s the accountability?

The European Parliament was created as a vessel for representing the will of Europeans, and it is waiting patiently, but instead power remains concentrated in the EU’s less accountable organs. National governments are genuinely reluctant (or pretend to be) to sign away their powers to EU umbrella organizations if these are less democratic than the current setup.

Of course, these same national governments constitute the Council of Ministers, the body that should long ago have ceded its powers to the more democratic EU bodiesShenanigans like creating new commissioners as countries are added to the EU roster is precisely the wrong direction to proceed in. There is no relation whatsoever between the optimal number of departments for conducting European affairs and the number of countries in the EU..

A lack of accountability in the EU diminishes popular support for a movement towards truly Europe-wide government, which in turn diminishes pressure on national governments to prepare accountable replacements for governing. It’s a catch-22.

I hope this voting rights roadblock that scuttled this weekend’s EU summit is insurmountable. Only then will national governments have to look for a solution that actually progresses the cause of the EU as intended by the likes of Jean Monnet“There were two main ideas that dominated Monnet’s vision on how Europe should be built. On the one hand, Europe should be built on concrete achievements rather than on visions and ideas. On the other hand, an enduring European community should be based on common, stable institutions and not just on inter-governmental cooperation.”.

I was also extremely pleased with the failure to agree on the rest of the text for the European Constitution. Every version I’ve seen of that proposed document is hostage to narrow interests and exclusionary thinking. It fails completely to inspire. Even I can do better, so here is my preamble — as it should be, it is vague on he details but crystal clear on the fundamentals:

We the peoples, having fought against one another for millenia on the grounds of race, religion, language and ideology, have learned our lesson. No longer shall our differences outweigh our common humanity. Henceforth, our societies will be open and liberal, respectful of the UN charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in addition embracing the best practices in democracy, market economics, social equity, unfettered trade amongst ourselves and with others, the free movement of labor, and ecology.

Our aim is to build societies that allow all individual lives to be lived to their fullest potential without squandering the resources of future generations. To this end, and recognizing that governing bodies gain legitimacy from below, not above, we are pursuing a system of cooperative governance according to the principle of subsidiarity. Sovereignty on individual matters will reside as locally as practicable.

We believe that this way lies peace and prosperity, and hence we urge all other societies to join us in adopting these guiding principles.

We put that, or something like it, to a Europe-wide vote, and if the answer is no I’ll gladly move to South Africa.