While the two main candidates in the French presidential election were trading the slogans that do so much to raise the level of electoral debate and mark distinctions the public is not always able to discern, the president of the republic and his prime minister were occupied with more serious things. Together, they were permanently settling a number of major issues - issues they will consult their citizens about only when they are already settled. There is no point in reading the candidates’ policy statements on retirement age, pension funds, liberalisation of public services, wages or flexible working. All these have been decided, not by the National Assembly or the government, but by the European Union heads of state and government meeting in Barcelona on 15-16 March. The real joint programme of Jacques Chirac and Lionel Jospin for the next few years can be found in the document “Presidency Conclusions, Barcelona European Council”, which ought to be included in the documents sent to every voter in a democracy.

They might also include an article by the European commissioner Michel Barnier, “The big secret of the presidential election”, in which he explains why the right to vote has become meaningless. “ The big secret is first and foremost that most of the decisions the candidates will promise to take if the people vote for them are no longer their responsibility. If we want an honest debate, we must tell the truth: in many areas our elected representatives will in future have to defer to Brussels and Strasbourg”. Barniers reasoning is correct, but it does not go far enough.

Brussels means the commission and Strasbourg the European parliament. The commission has the monopoly on proposing European Community legislation (directives, decisions and regulations), but apart from competition matters it has no decision-making power. That belongs to the council of ministers (the council of the EU), where the member states’ ministers of finance, agriculture, etc. meet to take decisions in their fields. The powers of the European parliament vary, but may extend to joint decision making with the council. But the council alone determines the general direction that the commission, council and parliament are obliged to follow.

The conclusion of its summits take the form of instructions: the European council “commits the council and parliament to adopt as soon as possible”, it “invites the commission”, it “has decided”, etc. Far from taking the initiative in decision-making, Brussels and Strasbourg can in the end only work within a political framework set unanimously by the government leaders of the 15 member states. In France that means the two heads of the executive. That is an important secret that Barnier fails to tell us about.

It is ideal to be able to blame Brussels with its manipulating technocrats and independent powers when politically difficult decisions have to be taken. Those taken in Barcelona and not in Brussels (the public will not make the distinction) fall into this category. Hence the media hype about some decisions, which were merely stays of execution, and the silence about others that have far reaching consequences.

The obvious big issue at the European summit was to what extent and by when the energy market should be liberalised. The French electricity and gas monopolies EDF and GDF were in the firing line. The Spanish presidency and the commission wanted full liberalisation (freedom of choice of supplier in Europe) for all users, business and household, in 2003 for electricity and 2004 for gas. What they got was full liberalisation of gas and electricity in 2004 for businesses, 60% of the total market. A decision is to be taken on households before next spring; a difference of one year.

In a moving gesture of intergovernmental solidarity, the other 14 have given Chirac and Jospin a breathing space in which to go through the French elections on a ticket of defence of public services. “What commentators have called a compromise is in fact merely an expression of sympathy from their European colleagues for two electoral candidates. They will expect the favour returned” (Dennis Sieffert, “Barcelona in et off”, Politis, 21 March 2002). As a small consolation prize to save the face of the French, the commission was asked to prepare a draft directive on services of general interest by the end of the year; it must comply with article 86 of the treaty, which refers to a number of other articles affirming the primacy of competition. This seems to be squaring the circle. A real victory for France would have made energy liberalisation conditional on such a directive being approved, but we are told that would have damaged the EU’s credibility with the markets, the only voters who really count.

In their desire to press ahead with liberalisation, the heads of government have never considered the problems of security of energy supply, long-term investment and territorial coverage. Liberalisation is now irrevocably determined for 2004 and any decisions on these questions have been deferred until next year. The members of the European council have not asked themselves whether there is any justification for liberalising the energy market (or water or transport), although there are examples they could have considered. To do so would have exposed what really motivated most of them: militant liberal ideology and submission to large private interests (which are not mutually exclusive).

Energy market liberalisation is absolutely not in the public interest. As host of the Barcelona summit, the Spanish head of government, Jose Maria Aznar, was careful not to refer to his own country’s situation; in Spain the national market is divided between five private companies, and power cuts are now an everyday occurrence., even though customers’ contracts have a clause guaranteeing uninterrupted supply. And “society must prepare for the worst”, the director of one of the electricity companies has said (Thierry Maliniak, La Tribune, 21 February 2002).

The example of California, which ardent Atlanticists Aznar, Silvio Berlusconi and Tony Blair should be taking as a model, is a disaster. Even Silicon Valley must contend with lengthy power cuts, prices have risen 500-1000%, tax-payers have had to find $20bn ( maybe $43bn more) to pay for emergency state contracts to make good the failings of the private sector. The public utilities commissioner, Carl Wood, does not mince words: “It’s obvious no one should follow the example of liberalisation in California. It has proved disastrous on every front. The present situation is chaotic. California isn’t the only example of liberalisation. It’s just the most spectacular. The same thing has been done in the United Kingdom and Australia with identical results”. There, as elsewhere (railways, postal services), the EU is now trying to catch up with the United States.

That is not the only thing French voters will learn from reading the “Barcelona Presidency Conclusions”. They can skip the sections on retirement age in the candidates’ manifestos since the decision has now been officially taken by the EU - and therefore by France. “A progressive increase of five years in the effective average age at which people stop working in the EU should be sought by 2010. Progress in this will be analysed annually before every spring European council”. Elections will not stand in the way of such progress.

Another useful piece of information is that there will soon be European, and therefore French, pension funds. Whether such funds are introduced sooner or later to replace pay-as-you-go systems or to cut them to a minimum is no longer an electoral issue in France. They are already on their way, regardless of the lessons to be learned from the US. All relevant pages of electoral programmes can be skipped. If this decision does not appear in the conclusions, it is because it was settled before the European council, at the council of economic affairs and finance ministers on 5 March. France was represented by Laurent Fabius alone, who was able to sign a document calling on the council and parliament to approve a series of draft directives this year, including one on occupational pension funds.
People and trade unions seeking increased wages and guaranteed working conditions must know the role the Barcelona European council has given employers’ organisations and trade unions in these priority field of action. Article 29 of the presidency conclusions asks them to present a contribution on “wage moderation” and “flexible organisation of work”, among other things, in December. Nicole Notat, secretary general of the French trade union CFDT, who complained recently of the two main candidates’ lack of enthusiasm for social dialogue, will be overjoyed by this initiative they have just jointly approved. The Financial Times was clear about it. While disappointed by the further delay on energy liberalisation, it left Barcelona with serious grounds for satisfaction. “The most encouraging outcome is that the EU is still pointing in the right direction. For all the demands of trade unions, there is no sign of a return to the agenda of social regulation and tax harmonisation” ( “Barcelona Bore”, the Financial Times, 18 March 2002).

More than any other European summit, Barcelona has demonstrated the profoundly anti-democratic nature of decision-making in the EU. Barricaded in a quarter of the Catalan capital under military protection, the heads of government took decisions that ran completely counter to the aspirations being expressed massively on the street. After the trade union march on 14 March, where 100,000 demonstrators demanded a social Europe, social movements mobilised 300,000 people two days later to say no to a Europe of capital and proclaim that another Europe is possible. Such silence is worrying when governments say so much about civil society.

But in the run-up to an election, the outcome of Barcelona is shocking for those who rightly believe that politics must listen to the man in the street and yet must be conducted by those appointed by universal suffrage. It is the ordinary lot of any European council, as of any Union council, to take decisions for which governments have no particular mandate from their parliaments, even less their voters, and which would be rejected if there were proper consultations. That would be the case for raising the retirement age as Chirac and Jospin have decided. It is their misfortune that the election campaign, in which that is one of the issues, should coincide with the Spanish EU presidency that cannot conceal its ultraliberalism. But their misfortune has important lessons for those who are the least well informed about what really motivates the EU.

Those who read Le Figaro Magazine will find revealed there a secret as useful as any supplied by Barnier, which governments are careful not to disclose: how the liberalisation machine that is the EU actually works. “Intra-European competition will bring such pressure to bear that our governments will have to abandon a number of aberrations that feed major outflows of capital: the solidarity tax on wealth, the tax on business profits and the higher rates of income tax. From price liberalisation to the tax system to the more flexible organisation of work, it is to our European commitment and to that alone that we owe all the reforms that we would not have been able to bring about by ourselves” (Yves Messarovitch, “L’Europe et l’impot”, Le Figaro Magazine, 26 February 2002). We all know the meaning of the word reform, which heads the liberal and social-liberal vocabulary.

The least we should expect from those who aspire to office is that they explain to those whose votes they seek how they will deal with what is no longer just a democratic deficit but a real denial of popular sovereignty, a structural fault in the present building of Europe.