For the European Union and its people the month of August has been gloomy, overcast with melancholy even in those places where the sun has refused to give in to calls for austerity, where cicadas – by nature “Mediterranean” – have continued steadfastly to make themselves heard. On the Greek islands, VAT rose from 16% to 24% even though transport makes goods more expensive there; even though, too, the state is failing there more than elsewhere, many islands not having a hospital worthy of the name or suffering severe shortages of doctors. Despite all that, the cicadas have continued to sing, no doubt a little less cheerfully, their smile being even being slightly more bitter than usual in greeting tourists from the “north”. Were these northerners aware of the ambient malaise? Probably not because dignity wears a mask. No, because, anyway, the fortunate ones from the “north” had other worries to escape from: the terrorist attacks in Paris, Brussels and Nice, what will happen after the Brexit vote and the economic uncertainties of faltering growth were unlikely to cause them to worry about the fate of others, who at least are able to enjoy the sunshine and the Mediterranean all year round. Is there any need for any more depressing bits of news gleaned over the last few weeks? Why not? Let’s take an impertinent view so that, maybe, pertinence will return in these first post-summer break days.
Shameful “revolving doors”. This has been a very dark summer for José Manuel Barroso who recently lost his wife. The deep sympathies of all those who have, in one way or another, worked with him or charted his career over the ten years when he was President of the European Commission will go to him and his children. However, beyond the personal, his terrible summer results in large part, too, from his decision in July to give way to the overtures of American investment bank Goldman Sachs. As its non-executive chairman, his role will be to give the bank, which helped Greece massage its accounts so that it could join the euro, the inside track on the best way to keep the “passport” that will give it access post-Brexit Europe. Popular wisdom suggests that poachers make the best gamekeepers; maybe Jean-Claude Juncker’s predecessor is hoping to prove that the opposite is also true. Either way, one could be forgiven for seeing in this appointment a (to say the least) grotesque conflict of interests which earned this former Trotskyist the scathing denunciation in an editorial in Le Monde: “José Manuel Barroso, the anti-European”, embodying, as he now does, “the worst possible image for Europe: that of an incestuous relationship between political power and private finance”. With his actions, he has given a little more grist to the mill of those who see a repeat of the 1930s, the years of corruption everywhere awaiting the “saviour”. But let there be no mistake, Barosso is only a link – perhaps even the weakest link – in a whole system. The system that has us led to this travesty is the unilateral decision by heads of state and government no longer to choose anyone who is not, or who has not been, a member of their inner sanctum to be the president of the Commission. They have given us Santer, Prodi and Barroso, all of whom, formerly one of them, once appointed, have become their conscripts. The likes of Halstein and Delors will never again be selected: even though these were the two greatest Commission presidents, they would now, in the eyes of the members of the European Council, have the irredeemable flaws of never having belonged to this coterie and, consequently, of retaining their freedom of thought. In this context, what is to be made of the attacks on President Jean-Claude Juncker? Could it not also – perhaps even, above all – be because he owes his position not to the European Council alone? Is the long and the short of it not that the choice made by citizens in the last European elections is in the sights of some? There can be little doubt – something to keep an eye on …
“Three person pilgrimage”. That is how the Belgian daily Le Soir entitled an article on the visit by Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande at the invitation of Matteo Renzi to the island of Ventotene, where Altiero Spinelli is buried, having spent six years in confinement there after ten years' imprisonment by the Italian fascist regime. Is this a happy omen for three leaders to consider the future of Europe after Brexit? It could be, because the island inspired Spinelli and his fellow prisoner Ernesto Rossi to write the manifesto “For a Free and United Europe”, one of the texts that formed the basis of the European project. Are, however, these three leaders prepared to espouse, to the letter, a text which lays great blame at the door of nation-states and argues for a European federation not based on the old system of sovereign states? Doubtful. Which leads one to think that the “pilgrimage” was only a further fleeting, inconsequential nod on the part of the “national” (the correct approach) in the direction of the “federalist” (the wrong one). They would do well to bear in mind, however, this warning from Italian federalist movements: if they fail to match up to the symbol that is Ventotene, “they will make themselves accessories to a new surge in populism and Euroscepticism”, that will probably prove to be fatal to the European ideal. Michel Theys