Strasbourg, 25/06/2014 (Agence Europe) - “Fighting the rise in populism, fair enough, but this must be done by fighting the causes”, said former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard, a guest speaker on the sidelines of the plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which is meeting this week in Strasbourg.
This is a massive challenge, on which he made five comments. The first has to do with the European elections themselves, on which his great abiding observation is the abstention rate, which has admittedly stabilised but is still very high. As to the rise in populism itself, he analyses this far more in light of the national socio-economic contexts than through the prism of “hatred of Europe”. This is true of France, which is “doing badly”, he said, and it is also true of the United Kingdom, where “job insecurity is the greatest in the whole of Europe”, with Denmark experiencing a very similar situation. Against this backdrop, Europe is “virtually the ideal scapegoat” for the populists, whilst the cause of European integration has not been defended by the traditional parties, particularly in the UK. Without national staging posts, Europe's cause is even more sidelined as it has not provided “ways of fighting unemployment, precariousness and the lack of growth”, Rocard stressed in his third remark. It appears to be powerless and the democratic deficit it features could start to be plugged by electing a Commission president on the basis of the results of the European elections. On this point, he did not beat about the bush: “no transaction is possible on the symbols”, although he did wonder aloud which lawyer could have thought up the nebulous wording in the Treaty of Lisbon, which states that account should be taken of the said results. Vague words open to interpretation, which have given free rein to the current campaign being waged by British Prime Minister David Cameron. Staying with the United Kingdom, Rocard stressed that the country “saved Europe's honour” during the Second World War. “Our debt to it is gigantic”, he said, and “it has not been paid back”, but its history is different from that of the other people's of Europe, a continent which has experienced more than a millennium of war, has destroyed itself and has had the enough of it. “In all these centuries, our British cousins have never been conquered or invaded”, he said. “They are legitimately proud of this and cannot understand us. My admiration for them is enormous, but they should not make it impossible to resolve the curse of Europe by continuing to block integration and wanting to stick to the question of 'good trade'”, said Rocard.
Another point which struck Rocard was Europe's obstinate refusal to talk about anywhere other than Europe, even though the world is changing, growth has halted brutally in countries such as China and Brazil and defence budgets are seeing “vertiginous increases, particularly in the Asian East”. “Africa is exploding and Europe is dragging its heels over supporting France in Mali and the Central African Republic”, he said. “As for Ukraine, we were too quick to apply our mental categories to the country on the grounds that the people look like us, without taking the trouble to remember that the Russian Empire was born in Kiev. We forgot that there was no European response when the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, with NATO making clear its distrust of Moscow by allowing former members of the USSR to join. Today, we are reaping what we sowed with that historical slap in the face. Russia urgently needs to move closer to us as a Christian country and I have never heard of that in my 15 years as a member of the European Parliament. By dint of becoming accustomed to the economic crisis, we have failed to realise that once again, geopolitics is weighing very heavily on the relationships between the populations. Europe must take note of this, even if our British cousins would rather not: it is a question of survival”. He went on to say that the “explosion of the Muslim world into Shi'ite-Sunni axes, Turkey, which we stupidly rejected and which is now looking for allies in the East… All of these things could become more important to us than the management of the ECB”.
As for the economic crisis, which he dealt with in his fifth and final point, this has caused growth to halt, set mass unemployment in stone and developed an insecurity which now affects 30% of the population of the developed countries. Of this crisis, “we have only had a fraction of the sovereign debt”, repaid with taxpayers' money, “even though the share of immorality of financial crimes remains to be considered, with financial crime having become the global form of misconduct”. In this context, Europe's luck lies in having had two “miraculous” presidents for its Central Bank. Jean-Claude Trichet and Mario Draghi have extended the competences of the institution. However, nothing has been settled and the challenge will be to avoid heaping more austerity and under-employment on top of a battle which is currently purely economic. Rocard concluded his “sad reflections of a European militant, disabused but still fighting”, with a sign of hope: “The Nobel Peace Prize jury, which has been shortsighted for too long, has rewarded a couple of voices speaking out against the economy of recession, telling us how to live with a deficit”. (VL)