Peace in the Basque country: malaise in Strasbourg
A missed opportunity: that was the feeling of a large majority of MEPs after the vote of 26 October on a Resolution about the peace process in the Basque country. Instead of being invited to give a unanimous vote, backed by all the political forces in Europe, opposing violence and supporting peace, as often happened in the European Parliament in the past (on Ireland, the Balkans, the Middle-East etc.), Spain’s partners were called on to pass judgment for or against the method applied by the Zapatero Government to restore peace in its country. Not surprisingly, Parliament divided neatly in half, the motion drawn up by the PSOE gaining a tiny relative majority (321 votes against 311).
Our Basque friends who came to Strasbourg to attend the debate were happy, even proud, to see the Basque problem raised in Parliament. But how could they be satisfied with the result of the operation? On such a subject and at such a time, nothing would have been easier than to achieve unanimity in Strasbourg.
The European Council had shown the way in a statement issued last March, which we could have taken up as it stood. The participation of the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats in the same German Government is assisting the dialogue between left and right in the European Parliament, as also is the spectacular shift towards the centre which their young leader, David Cameron, has imposed on the British Conservatives. Needless to say, the French representatives in all parts of the House were banking on the same outcome, while the Irish were ready to place their experience at the disposal of this new cause.
Finally, to cap it all, two days before the vote, Batasuna took provocation to new heights in declaring that it would never condemn ETA violence and that ETA would never lay down its arms until Basque independence had been achieved. Alas! Unanimity was not the aim sought. To such an extent that the vote divided the German left and right, the British as much as the French and the Irish, and that, for example, all the Christian Democrat parties of Europe voted against the proposed resolution.
Hence the malaise, heightened by the harrowing testimonies of the associations of victims’ families, including some of our personal friends, who had come to support sometimes one proposition, sometimes another. The MEPs had the feeling that the authors of the initiative were seeking not to isolate ETA and the champions of violence, but to gain a tactical victory over the democratic opposition in Spain on the eve of a very important regional election in Catalonia. I am sure the malaise would have been the same if the Partido Popular had been in power in Madrid and the PSOE in the opposition. And our partners would have been equally embarrassed if the majority (on the right or left) in power in Paris had requested support for the launching of negotiations in New Caledonia or Corsica against the main opposition party (on the left or right).
In any case that was the opinion taken in Madrid by the newspaper El Pais, whose sympathies normally lie with the socialists. But I leave the elected representatives and commentators south of the Pyrenees to assess the outcome in relation to Spanish domestic politics. What lessons should the European Parliament draw from it, for its own part, as far as peace in the Basque country is concerned?
To begin with, the European institutions in general and Parliament in particular can assist the democratic forces of a Member State in resolving an internal political problem. But they cannot either settle the differences between those forces or, even less, substitute themselves for them.
This is even more true in areas, of whatever importance, which do not fall within the powers of the Community. Besides, the Resolution adopted on 26 October does not invoke any article of the European Treaties – and for a reason: no provision in force gives the Union authority to intervene in the internal affairs of a Member State, particularly those which involve its territorial organisation: Article 5 of the draft Constitution even explicitly rules it out. At this stage, therefore, there is no legal justification for the Union to intervene.
On the other hand, if the peace process really gets underway, as we hope it will, it is likely that support measures by the European Union will be politically useful and legally necessary. For example, in the end, to remove ETA from the list of terrorist organisations. But, if that happens, the majority needed in Strasbourg will be 367 votes, greatly exceeding the number the traditional allies of the PSOE can muster.
A comparison with the Irish peace process is illuminating. In the Irish case, the conflict centred on – at first as adversaries – two Member States of the Union, and there were two terrorist organisations pitted against one another on either side of the border. In 1998 the European institutions became involved at the request, not of one party, but of both governments and the opposition parties in Britain and Ireland, who were in agreement on a common text. And Parliament was invited to support not just the opening of negotiations, but the implementation of a first major political agreement (the Good Friday Agreements), which included Community financial support for cross-border investment projects. This context made it possible to obtain a virtually unanimous vote of the European Parliament.
This is what we should be aiming for next time. And we should keep in our minds this last lesson from history in such matters: in the fight against terrorism, it is better that the dialogue should start among the democrats themselves, and that they show a united front rather than stand divided before the men of violence.
Alain Lamassoure, 31 October 2006.