Professor Federico Fabbrini:

I thank the committee for inviting me. It is a pleasure to be able to address the committee, and I am delighted to be sharing the platform with Dr. Day and Professor Barrett to provide an insight into the future of Europe, an important topic on which I have been working since I was awarded the Charlemagne Prize for research in the city of Aachen in November last year. My remarks will be based on "Possible Avenues for Further Political Integration in Europe", a report I was asked to write by the European Parliament constitutional affairs committee and which was published in June. I commend it to the House for consideration.

I will speak around three points: first, that Covid-19 increases the urge for reforming the EU, second, that the Conference on the Future of Europe constitutes a major opportunity for reforming the EU and third, the challenges ahead and the importance of keeping open all avenues to further political integration in the EU.

The pandemic has increased the need for EU reform in two ways. Initially, we witnessed the EU's weaknesses. In the early phases of Covid-19 the EU and its member states were weak and disorganised in putting together a response to the health crisis.

That pointed out some of the shortcomings of the current EU system of governance. Subsequently the EU managed to take important steps, particularly following the Commission proposal for a recovery plan. However, these steps also increased the need for reform because the recovery plan creates an urge for increasing the effectiveness of the EU but also the legitimacy of the EU if we are to go in the direction of substantially increasing the powers of EU institutions in taxing and spending. In this context, the Conference on the Future of Europe represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to push the project of European integration forward and to renew the EU.

As the committee will be well aware, the idea of establishing a conference on the future of Europe goes back to a proposal by the French President, Emmanuel Macron, in March 2019. Since then, all EU institutions have supported the initiative. The Parliament and the Commission in particular have strongly endorsed the plan for the conference and the Council for the European Union has also supported the initiative. We are waiting for the three institutions to come together and outline their visions for the conference mandate in a joint declaration but it is already possible to emphasise that the conference represents an out-of-the-box initiative with lots of potential. It is akin to several illustrious precedents, namely the Convention on the Future of Europe exactly 20 years ago, as well as further back in the history of the EU, to the Conference of Messina, for example. Both of those events were crucial in relaunching integration at moments of crisis and serve as possible templates for the conference itself.

Nevertheless, we must be mindful of the obstacles ahead. If the conference wants to be ambitious and to achieve its objectives, it will face challenges. A phrase which is often taboo in conversations on Europe is "treaty change". If the conference wants to really tackle the institutional and substantive shortcomings of the current EU system of governance it will have to deal with treaty change, yet everyone here will be well aware of the difficulties that avenue would raise because of the problem of unanimity. Amendments to the treaties of the European Union require unanimous consent by the Governments of member states and then they have to be ratified unanimously by all member countries. Yet, this problem has also been recently addressed, particularly in the context of the euro crisis, by an increasing tendency of member states to use treaties outside the framework of the EU to push integration further. This practice of separate intergovernmental agreements, which has emerged in the context of the EMU, represents a potential pathway forward. I am thinking of agreements such as the European fiscal compact, the European Stability Mechanism and the intergovernmental agreement on the single resolution, which have used for the first time in the history of European integration a rule that the treaties themselves would enter into force not after unanimous approval by the signatory states but on the basis of super-qualified majority ratification rules. That potentially also opens up a pathway for the Conference on the Future of Europe. That is what I was specifically asked by the European Parliament to consider in my report. I suggested that the conference could consider drafting a new treaty, which I call a political compact, with new rules on its entry into force which would overcome the problem of unanimity.

As I am speaking to the Oireachtas, let me make one point very clear. Ireland has had a complicated tradition of ratifying new treaties in the past but today, clearly, I do not think Ireland will be the country that could face problems. The support for the EU following Brexit has never been so high in the nation, so the question or the challenge of unanimity votes in the ratification of new treaty amendments, in my view, mostly comes from other member states of the EU, particularly countries which, as the committee knows, are backsliding in respect of the rule of law and democracy. That poses a major threat to the future of Europe because the EU could really be blocked by nations who are sliding towards illiberalism, and I do not think we can afford that.

The idea of a political compact as a possible outcome of the conference on the future of Europe is essentially a way to renew the Union after Brexit and Covid-19. It is important, as we discuss the underlying importance of renewing and relaunching integration, that we also think of what might be possible avenues to achieve that in the long term.

I will stop my remarks there. I very much look forward to the conversation with committee members.