Brussels blog

The style supremos at the Financial Times frown upon the word “unprecedented”, but let’s be reckless and use it anyway. 

Just when the European Union is at pains to emphasise its unity in the face of the financial crisis and the economic recession, it is ironic that some member-states are taking the unprecedented step of invoking an EU rule that allows them to pursue a policy together even if other countries disagree.

Even more ironically, the policy in question concerns European divorce laws.

The 27-nation bloc has been struggling for more than three years to make it easier for couples of different EU nationalities to get divorced. Sweden has resisted a European Commission plan that would in certain instances result in the application of divorce laws from the country where a couple most recently lived.

That plan, say the Swedes, could mean the enforcement of Islamic law in Sweden, with its newly arrived Iranian, Iraqi and Pakistani communities. Proud of its tolerant social outlook and sturdy defence of women’s rights, Sweden wants no part of it.

In July, eight countries – Austria,  Greece, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Romania, Slovenia and Spain – gave notice that they would bypass Sweden’s objections and proceed with the common divorce rules. They had tacit support from France, Germany and others.

The method they chose was that of “enhanced co-operation” – a mechanism first established in the EU’s 1997 Amsterdam treaty, but so far never used,  for fear of setting in motion processes that could eventually break up the Union.

It seems not entirely coincidental that the action in July came only a month after Ireland’s rejection of the Lisbon treaty in a referendum that set all sorts of alarm bells ringing about the EU’s supposed paralysis. Better “enhanced co-operation” than an inability to do anything at all, went the implicit argument.

Only time will tell whether this will prove a dangerous step into the unknown or a perfectly harmless initiative. But (will the stylists allow this formulation?) it is an important precedent, no doubt about it.