By the time Agence Europe readers have this bulletin in their hands or on their screens, the result will be in: the people of the United Kingdom will, in good faith, have said “yes” or “no” to their country's remaining in the European Union. No matter how it turns out, some will be delighted while others will be deeply disappointed to see their wish thwarted. What is clear, however, is that we must all very quickly realise that a new chapter in the story of European construction has just opened. It is of no import whether there be twenty eight or twenty seven members: that is not what matters.
If the European citizens of the UK have decided to break away from the EU, we can but accept their democratic will and bid them an amicable “Safe journey”. If, however, the choice, by no matter how wide or narrow a margin, is to remain, let us immediately invite those who tipped the balance in favour of reason to come together with all European citizens who, beyond what national political leaders and parties can say, have come to the conclusion that the British referendum is nothing more than the (transitory) high point of a questioning of democracy in Europe, Europe being no more than the focus of all the resentment and discontent felt within the member states.
Not long ago, Jean-Claude Juncker made the point in an interview with French daily Le Monde: “We shouldn't court populists. They ask the right questions but give the wrong answers”. And yet, what are our national political leaders doing more and more if not courting populists who are even managing to set the tone in political debates? What was it that Prime Minister David Cameron did if not - naively - look to use this referendum to pull the rug from under the feet of the populists active in this own party, themselves under pressure from the openly xenophobic followers of Nigel Farage. In fact, in the UK - and especially in England - as in most other countries of the EU, national political life is now dancing to the tune of a discourse of hatred and fear of “the Other”, whether they be Muslim or even European. As Spanish journalist José Ignacio Torreblanca, head of the Opinions section of the Spanish daily El Pais, observed: “Beneath their democratic exteriors and despite their remarkable skills in political marketing, these forces are nothing less than the renaissance of the historic nationalisms that have wreaked havoc on Europe”. No matter the result delivered in the referendum, it would be good, this morning, to remember this.
There was a time when Emmanuel Mounier, guiding spirit of the French personalist movement, lambasted not democracy but “the pitifully misguided condition in which it finds itself because of the deficiencies and betrayals of the modern world”. Echoing this, Swiss thinker Denis de Rougemont delivered the devastating: “The nation-state - that's the enemy. And it doesn't matter much to us whether it is right-wing pseudo-fascist or left-wing pseudo democratic”. Are these comments harking back to a bygone age? No, because, it would appear, the democratic parties of the countries of Europe are, by their behaviour and what they leave unsaid, creating the resentment that provides fertile ground for extremism of all sorts. Observing a rise in identity-based nationalisms from as early as 1994, sociologist José Forné warned of the danger: “For certain sections of the population, nationalist groups, just like sects, provide a world where they find comfort in shared misery. Bring together an organisation and a rootless soul and that is enough to explain the intensity of the bonds (and of the alienation) that can be seen”.
Pushing this thought further, one has to wonder if the same mechanism is not at work in the heads of those Muslims, born in Europe, who take the path of radicalisation before pitilessly striking the land where they grew up. In other words, the not insignificant minorities, diverse but united in the same hatred of what could and should have been the European dream, are allowing themselves to be tempted by destructive and already murderous utopias. Are our national democracies responsible? Not entirely, of course, though one has to wonder sometimes if politicians' willingness to present the EU to each of the various strands of national public opinion as a battlefield from which they return victorious or defeated by a nefarious coalition has done anything to curb our tendency to feel ourselves to be either the victors or the vanquished. To Spanish philosopher Fernando Savater, Emil Cioran argued in 1977: “Our only driver for action is our fascination with the impossible. This means that a society that cannot create a vision and be driven by it faces stasis and collapse”. Today it is the extremists who have the wind in their sails, breathing life into their vision, one that can only hasten stasis and the destruction of our European rudderless society in all its diversity. Has the time not come for citizens to fight back and raise the standard of the vision of Schuman and Monnet, summarised in the few short paragraphs of the Schuman Declaration?
Michel Theys