News Analysis: 25 years on, Maastricht Treaty's goals remain incomplete

Twenty five years after Europe signed the landmark treaty in the Dutch town of Maastricht, experts agree that the ambitious goals of the Treaty remain incomplete though it did play a historic role in bolstering integration and inducing political collaboration necessary to respond to recent crises.

The Maastricht Treaty set a framework within which European integration and Franco-German reconciliation could be safeguarded in a world beyond the Cold War, said Mathieu Segers, professor of Contemporary European History and European Integration at Maastricht University.

"It was a historic step of integration in reaction to the critical junctures of the time. 'Maastricht' enabled Europe to reunite in the 1990s and bolstered European integration to survive the entrance in the world of growing disorder that accompanies the beginning of the 21ste century," he added.

Segers was a teenager living in Maastricht the day when European leaders, spearheaded by Helmut Kohl, Chancellor of Germany at the time, hailed the results of the Maastricht summit as a great leap forward in an irreversible process of integration and played down concessions granted to Britain.

It was Dec. 9, 1991, two months before the Treaty was signed in the same Dutch town.

"The Treaty marked the beginning of an acceleration of political collaboration, offering the necessary institutional settings for it and it has, indeed, induced a great deal of political cooperation during the past twenty five years," said Ben Crum, professor in political theory at Amsterdam's Vrij Universiteit (VU).

According to Crum, Europe could not have responded to the additional pressure beset by crises ranging from the financial crisis to migration and to Brexit lately if political cooperation had not been enhanced by the Maastricht Treaty.

"Strikingly enough the Treaty's goals remain today incomplete," Crum told Xinhua.

For him, a key reason can be traced on how the EU developed afterwards.

"The Maastricht Treaty was devised as a project of the '12' European countries, forming the European Community (EC) at the time. It was not a treaty formed for '28' states, which was the case following the enlargement," said the expert.

The EC "12" members signed the Maastricht Treaty in February 1992, creating an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) by ordaining a single currency and a central bank, consolidating the Single Market, and by laying the foundations for a Common Foreign and Security Policy as well as for structured cooperation in the field of Justice and Home Affairs.

Another reason of its goals being incomplete, according to Segers, is that "Maastricht produced an EMU that is incomplete and vulnerable in important aspects".

The EMU-project launched in the Treaty was a rather particular content, and a step taken too early, he said. It is widely argued among economic elites that a monetary union is only possible as a "crowning" of a political union and with a limited group of competitive economies from North-Western Europe as a core group.

"Much tension has evolved around EMU especially over the past six years since the beginning of the financial crisis," said Crum, blaming the flaws of the plan to political priorities which prevailed over economic fundamentals.

"The Maastricht criteria were not applied strictly as political objectives prevailed," he said.

In addition the EMU fathers did not foresee future problems. "Ambitions were set too high. EMU should have been a more cautious project," he said.

The Maastricht Treaty set convergence criteria as conditions for joining the single currency, which covered public debt, budget deficits, inflation and exchange rate stability.

But there was no means to ensure that a number of eurozone members, the southern states in particular, adopted structural economic reforms to prevent their economies from diverging, said Crum.

"Convergence was not due to come easily, but you cannot blame it on the Treaty," he added.

"Maastricht laid a road map for the creation of the eurozone, decisions on which countries would join came later. The problem with the EMU is that we expanded it too quickly too soon for political reasons," said the expert.

Segers agreed that the political dimension necessary to realize a robust budgetary and fiscal union had been significantly neglected in the years before the euro crisis.

And it wasn't just the EMU that created tensions and was incomplete.

"The political dimension in the sense of a common foreign and defense policy has been severely undeveloped, leading to serious problems of security for today's EU,' the expert on European integration said.

"There is a lot of scepticism on what Europe can achieve as a single foreign policy actor," agreed Crum, adding "Europe is struggling when it comes to Syria or Ukraine."

However, he also recognized that without the Maastricht Treaty it would have been much worse.

"There has been considerable convergence on foreign policy in the last twenty five years and better coordination of foreign policy decisions," he added.

An example cited by him is the enlargement process of 2004, when ten new members, mostly Eastern European countries, joined the EU.

"The Maastricht Treaty played a crucial role on the shaping of the political conditions to allow for the enlargement process," he said.

Scepticism also looms over what the EU could achieve in the field of justice and home affairs, the so-called third pillar the treaty set to create.

"The refugee crisis has highlighted how difficult it has been to reach agreements in this domain," said Crum. But he stressed that "the Treaty has set the framework in which European member states coordinate their policies."

For Segers, "the Treaty needs revision to remain an anchor of integration" but a new treaty requires an amount of common European political courage, which is not present at the moment particularly in view of the elections due to take place next year in a number of EU countries, including Germany, France and the Netherlands.

"This is worrying, because Europe needs to change to survive," said Segers.

As far as Brexit is concerned, Segers believed that "Maastricht" can be seen as the "vestibule" of Brexit as it outmaneuvred the EMU-opposing UK and placed the country outside the core of eurozone countries.

Britain has had a permanent opt-out of the common currency spelled out in a special protocol of the Maastricht Treaty, agreed by the European leaders following 30 hours of intense negotiations during the December 1991 summit.

"Maastricht recognised and formally acknowledged the British exceptional situation, but there are many contributing factors to a Brexit," said Crum. Endit