The pleasure of self-flagellation. What if the hour of self-flagellation had passed for Europe? It was of course necessary to re-examine our consciences and this process has not yet finished. The EU could not always be proud of what it has achieved and it must not ignore the signals being sent by public opinion in the form of lack of interest in elections, lacklustre results in the opinion polls and street protests. But we can ask ourselves whether politicians and commentators sometimes exaggerate their criticisms and give the new generations the impression that European unity was a project devoid of any political aims or ideas, forgetting that despite its shortcomings, it is the most positive and generous project that the world has seen in the last fifty years.
People will say: All this is history but what has already been achieved cannot be an objective for young people who are only interested in the present and the future, particularly the future. Well, precisely in terms of the present and the future, Europe is in the process of unveiling a model of globalisation that is moving in the direction of meeting the new challenges that are facing humanity, a model which broadly answers the justified demands of well-intentioned anti-establishment protestors in terms of protecting the environment and nature, supporting poor countries, new ideas in agriculture, and so on. I am not trying to say that Europe has already found what it is seeking, and even less that it has already achieved what it set out to pursue, but it is making a great effort to do so and has started to set out new objectives and new working methods.
If Europe had had the ability to make the real direction it was moving in better understood (which often contrasts with the United States), then most of the people criticising and questioning the European project today would understand that they should support and guide it (rather than challenge it) in order to deepen and speed up its activities.
The enormous misunderstanding. Instead of this, a colossal misunderstanding has been created between Europe on the one hand and some of the EU's population. We are all responsible for this state of affairs:
Politicians who have lost touch with public opinion in their own country and have revelled in talking down the European project, often quite ineptly, seeing Europe as being responsible for all possible ills that may afflict any given category of citizens and ignoring the inestimable positive contributions of Europe rising above hatred and bitterness in the direction of peace, freedom and prosperity. The results of the Irish referendum come as no surprise when one considers the statements of some Irish politicians;
The media often present a distorted image of European affairs, by giving undue importance to certain shortcomings or distortions (which do exist but to a much lesser extent than similar shortcomings at national level in most Member States), to the extent that they totally distort the real picture and give public opinion the impression that most of the EU's activity concerns the "business world";
Various movements that claim to belong to "civil society" but which often indiscriminately mix together EU and US opinions, whether through lack of understanding or in bad faith, without taking any account of the EU's attempts to move towards a "mastering" of globalisation, or indeed of the differences with the United States when it comes to the environment of course, but also the role of agriculture and relations with third countries. Challenging the European Community in toto and distorting its programmes and the direction it is taking when it is the only power on earth capable of imposing a humanist vision of globalisation (supported by various people in the world, including in the United States where there is a long ecological tradition), means prioritising personal success and the misplaced vanity of one day in the headlines rather than sustainable results, preferring demagogy to the acquis of democracy and freedom;
Part of academia, which itself also sometimes seems to take a malicious pleasure in riding the horse of populist demagogy, using its prestige to present the reader with a mishmash of commonplaces, anti-EU banalities and ineptitude. It is quite painful to behold how some writers still portraying a false image of Europe which it claims passes regulation on such matters as the size of peas in a pod, whereas Europe is in fact constructing - in the face of innumerable problems - the backbone of a common foreign and defence policy, outlining the principles of a globalisation under control, and revising the very idea of economic growth.
Tomorrow I will attempt to list the positions and initiatives of the EU to back up the statements I have made in this editorial. (F.R.)
European Parliament Plenary Session