The Siren Song of a Two-Speed Europe

When the European Union's Brussels summit collapsed last weekend, Jacques Chirac, the French president, reached immediately for his Plan B: the idea of a "two-speed" Europe led by a pioneer group with Germany and France at its heart.

This idea is also popular in two of the Union's other founding members, Belgium and Luxembourg. In these countries, as in France, there is nostalgia for the paradise lost of the 1950s and 1960s, when the original six members constituted the European project. Many federalists also feel frustrated at the rise of intergovernmental deals in recent years. Another powerful motivation is fear of enlargement: if the expansion to 25 members causes paralysis, the true believers in integration can escape to their club within a club. Or so the theory goes.

But the formation of a hard core would be dangerous for Europe and counter-productive for its members, particularly Germany. It would be dangerous because the current conception is essentially divisive: the aim is not so much to show the way for other member states as to leave the laggards behind. Yet the original idea behind "core Europe", as formulated in 1994 by Karl Lamers and Wolfgang Schäuble, the German Christian Democrats, was that the core would draw other countries in. A few years later Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister, took the idea up, talking of an "avant garde" that would take European integration forward. This conception harks back to the days when the Franco-German partnership was the Union's "motor". Bilateral deals between Paris and Berlin initiated projects to deepen integration between all the EU's members, a strategy that led to the single currency and the Schengen area of passport-free travel.

But now the Berlin-Paris axis has become defensive and self-interested, rather than progressive and constructive. Over the past year, France has used it to slow down reform of EU agricultural policy, while Germany has tried to block efforts to streamline Europe's takeover regulations. The alliance's credibility as a unifying force was finally shattered when the two countries jointly defied punishment last month for breaching the stability and growth pact underpinning the eurozone. Neither Berlin nor Paris can claim still to be working for the benefit of Europe.

This is an unwelcome development as far as the accession states in eastern Europe are concerned. They want to join the EU to escape for ever the power politics that have proven so disastrous for them in previous centuries. They want a seat at the table, so that they are equal to every other European country. But, now that their goal is at last in sight, Paris and Berlin are threatening to create an inner sanctum that will keep the easterners for ever on the outer fringes. The east Europeans will try to join any club that is going, for fear of being left out. But that does not mean the club will work as an integrating force.

It will be cold comfort for those left out to know that the core is likely to achieve little. It is currently empty of policy content, because France and Germany agree on so little at present in concrete terms. Defence co-operation cannot work without the UK, while Berlin and Paris are far apart on critical areas such as migration and asylum. They lack the grand project that an avant garde needs. But if the hard core idea is used as a threat every time things do not go Germany's and France's way, it will wreck negotiations on future integration projects.

For Germany, the perils are greater than for France. Over the past year, Berlin has squandered much of the political capital it has built up in eastern Europe over the past decade. Germany's pursuit of reconciliation and closer ties with its eastern neighbours has become subservient to the alliance with France. In the fight over voting weights that brought down the EU's proposed new constitution, Germany's relations with Poland - so good in the 1990s - reached a new low. Many Poles see Germany as using its greater size to force its will upon them, just as it has done in the past. This is an overreaction but it is understandable after the insults of the past year from Paris and Berlin over the war in Iraq.

Many German officials privately admit to misgivings about the idea of core Europe, especially if it is one dominated by France. As Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, said at the Brussels summit, the idea is a second-best solution, not Germany's first choice. But he sees it as a logical move if the draft constitution fails and enlargement paralyses the Union.

There are alternatives, however. The Union can keep going through shifting coalitions that team up to pursue particular initiatives. There is nothing wrong with bilateral alliances and co- operation between small groups of countries that want to pursue one project or another. Such "enhanced co-operation" will be increasingly common in the Union of 25 but these coalitions have to be based on policies, not particular countries. What is dangerous is the idea of a permanent, exclusive hard core.

It will be even more dangerous if the largest member states use the threat of such a core to bring awkward partners into line. That tactic failed miserably at Brussels, when Poland stuck to its position. If they continue to pursue it, Paris and Berlin will become known as bullies, not pioneers.