– "Hear ye, hear ye, good and brave people, sleep peacefully: everything is going just fine in this wonderful Europe of ours!"
This is what would be ringing out in the villages and towns of the European Union if we still had public criers. One of their very distant successors, Donald Tusk, does not come out with anything else, but he now adds one small precision to this message.
– "Everything is going just fine in our wonderful inter-governmental Europe!"
This is the fundamental message launched by the president of the European Council at the end of last week’s summit (EUROPE 11888): everything is going just fine and the heads of state and government in the countries of the Union are mobilising to say that tomorrow, if there is nothing to eat, let Europe’s citizens continue to eat cake.
The second permanent president of the European Council considers that the heads of state and government have the "legitimacy" to assert themselves as the indispensable and salutary 'patrons' of the European Union. One question immediately comes to the fore: are they not already this and have they not been so for too long? Was it not the most powerful of them who met under the inelegantly entitled "Merkozy" banner and 'dictated' the path to follow and the solutions to adopt, faced with the fall-out from the economic and financial crisis that arose in 2008 on the other side of the Atlantic? With hand on heart, who would dare claim that the medical treatment imposed on Greece and other ailing 'spendthrift' countries was largely only decided upon and endorsed in the treasuries of the north? Is it, therefore, true that the German Chancellor had, according to one diplomatic source, quipped, “It is time for us to take things in hand”? Will these competitiveness enthusiasts actually recall when they themselves let go, and doubtlessly "unbeknownst to themselves"?
It is difficult not to see, together with Pierre Defraigne, how it is the 'big leaders' who are constructing an incomplete and wobbly sanctuary out of the European Union, which is increasingly driving growing numbers of Europe’s citizens to the gallows. According to this former senior European Commission official, who is now the president of the Madariaga Centre – College of Europe, the Union is now a manufacturer of inequality “which divides the economies of the states but, above all, insidiously divides our societies” and allows for “the ratio between the salary of a CEO and the average worker, which was between 1-20 in the aftermath of World War II in the US to grow to between 300-500 times greater” today in our part of the continent. It is also this that allows for Amazon to pay “a quarter of the taxes of a local SME in Luxembourg” and this is without even mentioning Google in Ireland…
As an economist, free to speak his mind, Pierre Defraigne, considers that, "the cumulative effect of wage competitiveness policies, fiscal discipline, tax competition and intra-European social dumping, all four areas of EU responsibility, heightens inequality in Europe" and obviously has the effect of propagating "a shockwave of inequality that is both deadly to democracy and European unity" (La Libre Belgique, 18 October). Is it in these kinds of situations that the heads of state and government see where their highly committed responsibility lies and want to take things in hand by way of the Leaders’ agenda concocted by Donald Tusk? It would be very much welcomed if it were but…
This is not important, the second will hastily retort to you – it would be good to write the “number two” permanent president of the European Council, as the 'major leaders' of the member states are the only ones to possess maximum legitimacy, with all of them having been “democratically elected in their countries”.
This is all just twaddle and trickery! The immense majority of heads of state and government have absolutely no political legitimacy at a European level! All of them have been elected on the basis of electoral programmes that have reserved, at most, a congruent portion to the issue of Europe and its future. And at the beginning of the negotiations Ms Merkel will have to carry out to form a new government, she knows better than anyone that she will undoubtedly have to make concessions – for better but undoubtedly for worse – to obtain the recipe that she and her party imagined would work best for Europe. This is also the case for the Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, who, as a resolute French-speaking pro-European, will have to work within a national majority coalition with a Flemish nationalist party that is at the opposite end of the spectrum of the support citizens from the two language communities traditionally give to the European project.
In reality, the European legitimacy of the 'major leaders' from the member states is now defined by two profoundly antagonistic camps. On the one side, you have President Macron who, judging by the evidence, was brought to power as the European standard bearer – and it must be for this reason that Mr Mélenchon shamefully decided to abstain in the second round… – faced with the dark nationalist forces embodied by Marine Le Pen. No one has any doubt that today Emmanuel Macron does have real European legitimacy.
At the opposite end, but also benefiting from a European legitimacy that is just as obvious, are all those who got to power by proclaiming their aversion to European construction and who promised, at best, to place it under the bushel of sacred and intangible national sovereignty. Viktor Orbán, Beata Szydło, Jarosław Kaczyński and Andrej Babis, with the 30% support the latter has just received in the Czech Republic, in addition to the temptation of extremism to which the young Austrian Conservative Sebastian Kurz appears to be succumbing, can also lay claim to a European legitimacy, given that the people in their respective countries have put them in charge of putting some order into this Europe they find so displeasing, particularly because it appears to be too open to refugees and migrants. Must this 'European' legitimacy that they have invested themselves with be left to them, however, when it comes to redrawing the future of Europe? By actually raising the question, we find the answer to it and are able to dismiss the intellectual humbug that would like the Union to be a contrary force at odds with the world.
Mr Tusk has in fact made himself the spokesperson of an out-dated vision of European construction whereby the member states would remain, although weakened, the alpha and omega on the world stage of European and international relations. These times are now well gone because the states do not have the means to respond to the needs and aspirations of their citizens. As very appropriately pointed out by Vice President Frans Timmermans (La Libre Belgique, 14/15 October), “If, in a world that is globalising so quickly, national sovereignty does not give enough power to states to take action to the benefit of its citizens, it needs to be reorganised at another level. Only a united Europe can influence the direction of globalisation”.
This is indeed the challenge over the next few months.
The custodians of negative European legitimacy are telling Mr Tusk that his role as the master of ceremonies on behalf of the national princes that have led Europe is now at an end. It is now to European trailblazers such as Emmanuel Macron and Jean-Claude Junker that European citizens should urgently be listening. It will then be those that make up civil society and that constitute the rudimentary foundations of a European people who will be obliged to subsequently and democratically take the place that has been abusively usurped by the 28 national princes...
Michel Theys