Daniel Cohn-Bendit once said, referring to the philosophy of complexity so dear to Edgar Morin: “Utopia is the dream we must have and reality the permanent challenge”. In Bratislava, no one felt there was a need for dreaming to lift the European Union out of the mess in which it currently finds itself. With the British deserter not in attendance, Merkel, Hollande and their consorts sharply contradicted Donald Tusk who, in his letter of invitation to the summit, wrote: “Following Brexit, business as usual is not an option”. They continued as usual in that body that brings together the EU’s highest political leaders, borne high on their shields as if it were a meeting of Gaulish chiefs but where Europe as a common good, European citizens and their best interests are nowhere to be found. And worse, their absence is dramatic because it is nothing less than the European ideal that is being slain – and, it is claimed, in their name.
In reality, there is no disappointment because it was inevitable that Bratislava would, at best, deliver some spurious agreement respecting a new relationship. Everything had to be done to make sure that there would be no domestic dispute so soon after the Brexit vote. Everything that was done was for that purpose, the lawyers-technocrats on duty working above all to assuage the bitterness from the east over the fair sharing of asylum seekers advocated by Jean-Claude Juncker a year earlier. Since then a lot of water has flowed under the bridges over the Danube and the Vistula, carrying with it a number of repugnant ideas dating from a time one believed long gone. The first task of the “on-call firefighters” seems, then, to have been to dampen down the most dangerous areas, sweeping the rest under the carpet that is a “roadmap”, which, until there is proof to the contrary, merely provides a fig-leaf to hide their deep divisions. What else could have been expected of a Union which, as the president of the European Parliament Martin Schulz aptly pointed out a few hours before the meeting in Bratislava, “is as strong as its member states allow it to be”? What more could be hoped for when, in the words of researcher Loïc Nicolas (Le Soir, 8 September), “the cloth from which formerly were cut builders of worlds, visionaries, statesmen is no longer in fashion”?
All is not, perhaps, totally lost. Tribute must be paid to Matteo Renzi who, in Bratislava, dared to lift the mask of hypocrisy that he, like the others, had worn. The President of the Italian Council refused to compromise himself in the supposedly symbolic press conference with Chancellor and President Hollande, openly avowing, as Solenn Paulic and Mathieu Bion accurately reported in EUROPE, that he did “not share their conclusions on the economy and migration” (see EUROPE 11626). According to Donald Tusk, the 27 leaders undertook in Bratislava to “right the errors of the past”. Very good. Does that mean that, thanks to them, no more refugees or migrants will die in the Mediterranean somewhere between the Libyan coast and Sicily? Does that mean that, as Matteo Renzi had urged them on the highly symbolic visit to the island of Ventotene, Europe is really about to “return to a Europe of values rather than of finance”? No, these are fundamental issues that have been swept under the carpet and that show that Bratislava’s de Gaulle-esque “I have understood you!” is not credible. Indeed, it is no more credible for the Europhobes than for those Europeans who long for another kind of Europe, a real Europe.
In truth, the best commentary on the Bratislava meeting (and on many previous European Council meetings) was written close to seventy years ago. It is from the pen of Swiss writer and thinker Denis de Rougemont, one of the champions of personalist federalism, who, speaking in 1949 about the Council of Ministers of the nascent Council of Europe, observed: “ … since ministerial powers are purely national, would not adding them together or juxtaposing them create a greater danger than the absence of power, a sort of automatic brake, a veritable anti-power, that would have to be overturned to establish a real union?” That is, in fact, the only real question to ask ourselves today, when it is the highest political personages of the countries of the EU who rule the roost at the expense of the institutions and bodies – the Commission, the European Parliament, and others – supposed to reflect the common good. In a recent opinion piece in Le Monde (15 September), Jacques Delors observes that it is the “young generation” which “better than any will revitalise Europe”. Now that is looking reality square in the face. For those engaged in “political struggle”, perhaps it might be worth revisiting, as a matter of urgency, the idea floated in this column (Beacons of 15 July 2016, EUROPE 11594) that a Convention of young people under the age of thirty five be set up so that they can say what their vision is of Europe, the Europe in which they want to live, work and love. It will clearly not be the threadbare, sickly Europe the foundations of which, it is said, have been laid in Bratislava. Michel Theys