Prof. Dr. Paul Taylor
Director of International Relations Department, London School of Economics.

I feel slightly embarrassed because I think that the important points have been made by the previous two speakers. That is the first reason why I am embarrassed. The second reason is that in this context my particular area of expertise is very much on the side of the EU. I am less experienced with the detailed history, the development of the Cyprus problem. So, please excuse my embarrassment at the outset.

I will try to say something about another image of the future of Cyprus. I think everyone can find clear traces already in the EU and also to raise the question of whether there have been developments in the history of Western Europe, particularly in the EU, which have significantly changed the context of the Cyprus problem. Are there now circumstances in which traditional assumptions about the way in which the Cyprus problem could be solved, could be questioned?
Prof. Dodd talked about the confederal approach to Cyprus. I think I am with him in saying that there is an enormous difference between talking about a constitutional arrangement and discussing the details of how we get to that constitutional arrangement, but I think that the model that he presents, with a slight variation, is perhaps in some ways more attainable given changes in the needed context of the EU. But, there is one important further twist in the themes that he presented, that is that I would suggest that it is worth considering the possibility of even going further towards the loosening of the idea of federation.
The word so far used has been confederation, a word that I have sometimes used in talking about the EU. I would like to raise the question of whether there could not be a further element of decentralisation. I am very much putting this forward as something to be considered. I frankly do not know the answer of how far this is practical for Cyprus and the model that I think fits is that consociation. That is an unattractive word but what it means is basically a pair of state-like entities that are very strongly linked together and have common policies over a wide range of areas and indeed have common forms of representation in outside forums. I am stressing the idea of a special arrangement between "state-like entities", and also I am pointing at the possibility of a common personality to relations with outsiders.

Now, the EU in my view is already that kind of entity so I will spend a few moments looking at the idea of consociation in the context of the EU, which encapsulates the EU's constitution in the early years of the second millennium. Is this really useful in understanding the situation in Cyprus? You may know that consociation as a principle has been talked about very extensively where there are profoundly divided societies. I borrowed it to apply to the situation in the EU, though the range of divisions there is less. One of its features is that the executive is seen as a cartel of elites: decisions at the top are essentially made on the basis of unanimity by the leaders of distinct national sectors, in the EU the leaders of states.

Unanimity you might think is very odd a way of describing the voting procedures of the EU in the first year of the second millennium because as everyone knows there are arrangements for qualified majority voting in various instances. But the primary principle of voting in the EU is that of consensus and there are all sorts of arguments and qualifications that can be entered about the situations in which particular states can be outvoted. It would be highly dangerous for a situation to arise in which states were regularly outvoted about things that they judged to be important. The states that hold the Presidency, mainly because of experience and socialisation, try very hard to control agendas so that states are not outvoted and certainly not outvoted regularly about matters which they think of as important. So in a cartel of elites there is a very important principle, in effect of consensus, which can be translated into a somewhat stronger word "unanimity". This is a way of keeping together in a common system of government a set of different sectors, different national entities, different states of unequal size. It is recognised that one of the things that needs to be avoided, and hitherto has been avoided, is the situation in which one state could, because of perhaps a larger populationm, impose upon other states.

Hitherto there has always been a very delicate compromise between the allocation of voting power in proportion to population and the essential reservations of states, their right to impose a veto. Politics in such a situation is a difficult game, and the reason for that is that politicians in the cartel of elites are always playing simultaneously two different games. On the one hand, they are attempting to maximise returns for their particular sector, their particular polity, which in this case is a nation state, to get a bigger slice of the pie, but on the other hand they are trying to protect their own political status in their own particular countries. They are playing an electoral game, a game of election politics with regard to the people of their own state, as well as playing a part in the game, the hard political game, of working towards consensus among the cartel of elites, which can produce the largest slice of the pie which they can get for their particular countries.
This also goes along with another characteristic of the EU. It is an essential characteristic of the EU that there is ambiguity about whether the common institutions are representative of the different states, of governments in those different states or populations, or whether they, in some peculiar way, transcend the different states and speak for Europe. Now, in a good many of the institutions of the EU that ambiguity is very useful. The doctrine is that the Commission is the supranational institution, that it works for Europe. But, the practice is that the Commission has a very strong representative element, both formally and informally. Anyone who looks at the Commission knows the interest states have in getting their people into key positions within it. The fact is that in practice the populations of the states are proportionately represented in the European institutions. The fact is that the Commission is both supranational and representative. In practice, it also represents the interests of both the collectivity and the states.

You can produce the same argument, I think, for the other institutions, and the Council of Ministers. The Presidency is an opportunity for particular states to develop and project their own view of the development of the Community. But having the Presidency is also an occasion, when state governments feel they need to work for the collectivity. There is more to be said about that but I am trying to develop the idea that here we have a particular kind of government and it is important not to be deceived by the appearance of that government in the EU The idea of consociation, and a special system of states which are very closely bound up together in common systems, is an interesting one and possibly relevant to the future of Cyprus. It should also be stressed that in the consociation, the member states have crucial reservations on their participation. These are primarily legal and constitutional. Cyprus is, sad to say, a profoundly divided island. The existence of reservations, of conditions upon the possible union, are I think very important.

What are those reservations, what are those conditions? Firstly, it is based upon the constitutions of the separate states. What gives the Community legitimacy is that its arrangements have been legitimised through the governmental procedures of the separate states. I know that there are those who say that the EU has a constitution in itself, but this rests upon the separate constitutions of the states. It is those that give the European arrangement its legitimacy. Various things follow from that. For instance, the member states of the EU, of this consociation, retain the right to withdraw. They can leave. In the history of the EU there have been a number of occasions when that has been a possibility. The British government, for instance, in the mid 1970's had a referendum: "Shall we stay in the EU or leave it?." The fact is, and it is a fact because of the nature of international law and of the fact that it is based upon a treaty - the Treaty of Rome - states can leave the EU, this particular consociation.

It is also arguable, though the way in which this is done in different states varies, that states can nullify particular acts of the European Union. This is again contentious. Though there are some international lawyers who would think it is reasonable, others would disagree. In Britain, the House of Lords has indeed ruled that the House of Commons could not overrule European law. But it argued, in effect, that "we have to do this because you, the House of Commons, told us to do it and until you give us explicit, clear instructions not to do it, that is what we have to do". The House of Lords, which is the British Supreme Court, was acting according to the instructions of the House of Commons issued in the admission legislation, the European Communities Act 1972. In Britain, it is a special situation because of the fact that constitutional amendment processes are the same as the process for making ordinary law. A lot of things follow from that: no Parliament can bind its successor. In other countries, it is more complicated because constitutional amendment is a special process and if the French National Assembly decided to nullify EU legislation it would be acting illegally in terms of its own constitution, and would have to change its constitution to allow nullification. To do this, they would need to follow a special process. But in all cases there is the possibility of individual state reservation, there is a degree of conditionality if you like, about the acceptance of law from the centre.

Other points that follow take the forms of reservations or conditions. A big one has to do with what all this means for sovereignty. In the development of the EU the idea of sovereignty has been very considerably changed. It has altered from an older more fundamentalist form and I think it is important to realise that sovereignty is not a hard unchanging doctrine. It has always varied according to the circumstances; it has always evolved. In the EU, it is now possible to imagine a situation in which states did hardly anything independently, where almost every aspect of the national government was done through the arrangements of the larger regional entity. This is true for the big states but even more true for small states such as Luxembourg.

The question arises of what sovereignty means in this situation. I would say that it means something like the right to define an interest, the right to participate in the institutions of the region and of course in the institutions of international society in general, and the right in extremis to reject those decisions, the right to withdraw. Sovereignty has become a form of participation. It is striking that almost all of the minority groups, the Scots, the Welsh, are pro-European because they see the European Union framework as a context in which they can, I suppose, acquire autonomy and even independence without risk. The existence of the EU has actually made it possible to accept devolution, and even autonomy or independence, far more easily than was previously the case. Forty years ago, independence for Scotland would have been unthinkable. It is still contentious and difficult but it is less unthinkable than it was forty years ago. The issue has been desensitised and I am saying that the issue of national sovereignty has been desensitised in Western Europe, partly because the existence of a larger common framework makes reconciliation of different and common interests easier, and partly because of the possibility of using the reservation.

I have said a few words about some of the reservations and conditions that exist in this very special arrangement between states. If you have state-like entities that are linked in a very tight set of institutions, the relationship between the entities and those institutions has to be something that is conditional. It follows that the thing could fall apart. You might ask the question: "Why do it not do so?" There is a very simple answer to that: it is because the risks, the costs of destroying it exceed the benefit of keeping it. The judgement on the whole is that it is better to stay together and I would suggest that is really the judgement that applies in Belgium: that the costs of falling apart are greater than the benefits of keeping it together.

Nevertheless, it is important to stress the achievements of the EU. There are some significant areas of common activity but here again I think there is a model that could in some circumstances desensitise, make less painful some of the older troubles in Cyprus. The EU has emerged as a result of a great deal of experience, and it has been a slow process. There is here an important lesson about the Cyprus problem: that it is important to get a sense of possibilities but also it is important to have a sense of political realities, and in particular to have endurance, because this will take a long time. This is not something you can suddenly set up.
The EU of course has gradually moved towards a situation in which there are really two levels of politics, and this goes back to what I was saying about consociation. There is a level of politics which has to do with the collectivity, the common arrangements, the inter-state arrangements, centring of course around the Brussels institutions. There is also the politics which takes place at the state level. Now, until some point in the mid 1970's, the perception of Europeans was that if the European institutions were stronger, the states would grow weaker. That is no longer the case. The perception since the mid 1970's has been that there can be a positive relationship between those two. It can be a symbiotic relationship. And this, I think, is a very important point from the point of view of Cyprus. A situation can be envisaged in which there are common arrangements, conducive to collective development, but which also reflect and respect the need of the two separate communities, the state-like entities which embody the two communities. Those two things need not be incompatible: something like it is a part of the present plan for Northern Ireland. I am saying that there is a symbiotic relationship between the nation state and the collectivity in Europe, and am raising the question of whether that is something that could apply in the island of Cyprus also. It is a symbiotic relationship that is possible here. But it is one which would have three elements: the two separate communities in state-like entities, and a collective level of common arrangements managed by a cartel of elites.