Each of these subjects is perceived differently by each member country, and one member’s priorities are nothing more than tiny details for another. However, because of the necessity of reaching a compromise among players with very different requirements and agendas and need to create “unity from diversity,” European citizens witness some complicated bargaining. It is hard to determine how interested the ordinary people in EU countries are in all of these deals, but it is true that most of them will affect their lives, their incomes and their expenditures -- their future, to put it succinctly.The Czech Republic’s refusal to pay compensation to the Sudetenland Germans expelled after World War II has recently become a major issue because of the problem of the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty; these people’s suffering and material losses are ignored for the sake of ratification. The exemption requested by the Czech Republic, which eventually signed the Lisbon Treaty on Nov. 3, has been accepted by other European countries, maybe because they have carried out similar practices in the past as well. Because of this decision, some Europeans are probably happy, while others are quite sad. Perhaps this approach can be very instructive when it comes to certain issues related to Turkey. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, incorporated into the Lisbon Treaty, enshrines the fundamental rights of European citizens, yet an opt-out clause for it was judged acceptable.
Another subject which pleases some Europeans while displeasing others is the environment, which is crucial for the 500 million people’s health, but the protection of which necessitates huge expenditures. As the environment is everyone’s problem, one may say that everyone should contribute to its protection equally. However, Malta and Germany cannot logically have the same level of responsibility regarding pollution, for example. Besides, the countries’ economic situations are not the same. One should also always keep in mind that “equality” does not mean “equity” in all conditions. Yet when some countries say “the great polluters must be the greatest contributors” or “the rich ones must pay more than others,” they have some difficulties in explaining their insistence for getting exemptions on certain other subjects.
We can provide many examples from EU summits to show how countries who perceive themselves as determining the rules of the game use the EU platform to dictate their will on others. Fortunately, these same platforms allow other actors, those who resist everything, those who have only joined the family recently and not yet been accepted as relatives and those who are just “small,” to do the same when necessary. Every member state that knows that the EU’s future is also its citizens’ future joins the discussion with the aim of reaching a compromise based on low costs and high gains.
Along with all these, issues that will affect the lives of EU citizens in unknown ways are also being debated, such as the name of the future “Mr. Europe.” For most Europeans, this is just celebrity magazine material. For a Portuguese fisherman, an Estonian worker or a Polish plumber, a far away personality who will have this title will not mean a great deal. If you ask them “who should be Europe’s president?” they will probably give the name of their prime minister or the leader of the political party they support. Too much bargaining, after all…
