Trajectories and turning points

4.

Procedures for selecting and

sequences that are internally coherent and marked off from each other by formal and substantial changes that occur at identifiable moments in time.

Sociological studies are often inductive and quantitative, designed to find the exact locations of turning points and describe the changes they generate (Abbott, 2001, p. 245). I use the notion more loosely as a tool for structuring the analysis, and I presuppose rather than induce the turning points. The main purpose of my analysis is to explain how meaning is made in the debate, not to establish an exact account of the course of events. Therefore, I believe the usage of the concepts as a means of structuration that precedes the analysis rather than as an analytical outcome to be justified. I assume that the conditions of the debate change at moments of institutionalised European decision-making and poise European Council declarations concerning the European reform process as turning points of the debate. Accordingly, the discussions that go on between Council meetings constitute the trajectories.

The debate on the future of Europe can be understood as a constant element in the process of European integration. But, as explained earlier, I have chosen to use the term to designate a course of events that was begun in May 2000 and will end when the EU’s new

constitutional treaty has been ratified in all member states. Moreover, I have chosen to focus on the first stages of this debate, ending the careful textual analysis in December 2001 when the European Convention was established. I understand the debate as it unfolded from May 2000 to December 2001 as consisting of two trajectories and two turning points. I locate the turning points in the two Council meetings that were held in Nice in December 2000 and in Laeken in December 2001. At the first of these meetings the debate on the future of the EU was officially recognised and decisions concerning the issues to be discussed and the procedures of discussion were laid down in the

“Declaration on the Future of the Union” that was appended to the Treaty of Nice. At the second meeting the debate was institutionalised through the creation of the Convention, and the Laeken Declaration set down the mandate and composition of this body. The two declarations that resulted from the Nice and the Laeken summits form the textual marks of the turning points and are

analysed as such.

The two trajectories have time-spans from May 2000 to December 2000 and from December 2000 to December 2001. Each of these trajectories consists of an enormous number of utterances, and for practical purposes I have chosen to focus on what I consider to be three decisive moments in each of the two trajectories. A moment, as I understand it, is a specific articulation that is part of a trajectory; the moment contributes to the dynamic of the trajectory without altering its

course. The moment is like the turning point in that it moves the process of the debate along, and it differs from the turning point in that it does not in itself change the process.

Figure 4: Turning points, trajectories and moments of the debate

The moments I have selected are occasioned by the interventions of political leaders into the debate.¹ The first moment of the first trajectory arises with the German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer’s speech at the Humboldt University in Berlin on the 12^th of May 2000.² The second moment consists of a speech by José María Aznar who was then Spanish President of Government; this speech was delivered at the French Institute of Foreign Relations in Paris on the 26^th of September 2000. The British Prime Minister Tony Blair provides the third moment with his speech at the Polish Stock Exchange in Warsaw on the 6^th of October 2000. In the second trajectory the first chosen moment is occasioned by a speech held at the Maison de Radio France in Paris on the 28^th of May 2001 by Lionel Jospin, who was then Prime Minister of France. The second moment arises on the following day, the 29^th of May 2001, with Commission President Romano Prodi’s speech at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris. The third moment is a speech delivered by Denmark’s Foreign Minister at the time, Mogens Lykketoft, on the 23^rd of August 2001 at the

1 Policy speeches and statements of visions by leading politicians are central in spurring the European debate on. During the studied period there were many other significant interventions than the six I have singled out, and as will be seen in the analysis these other speeches cannot be completely disregarded as they form part of the debate’s communicative network. However, as I argue below, there are good reasons for focusing on the six chosen utterances.

2 There are strong indications that this speech marked a turning point in its own right, but since I do not include any preceding material I cannot confirm this claim, and instead I study the speech as part of the trajectory it may have occasioned.

Trajectory 1 Turning point 1

Fischer Aznar Blair Nice Declaration

(Berlin, 12/05/00) (Paris, 26/09/00) (Warsaw, 06/10/00) (07-09/12/00) Moment 1 Moment 2 Moment 3

Trajectory 2 Turning point 2

Jospin Prodi Lykketoft Laeken Declaration (Paris, 28/05/01) (Paris, 29/05/01) (Copenhagen, 23/08/01) (14-15/12/01) Moment 4 Moment 5 Moment 6

Danish Council for Foreign Relations in Copenhagen.³ Figure 4 provides an overview of the temporal stages that are studied and the eight texts’ placement within them.