If citizens back away…We need to understand the demands involved in an election campaign. One senior Socialist about whose excessive criticism of the European Commission I had made a few comments, told me rather circuitously that “we have to give the voters valid reasons why they should vote for my party rather than for Mr Barroso's”. This is understandable but it does result in a partly unsatisfactory situation because the Commission becomes the main target of all the different attacks. It is not the personal position of the president that is worrying: it is up to him to respond to the criticism but it is the institution itself that pays the price for this criticism. For the great mass of voters who are not familiar with the arcane nature of the European institutional structures, the Commission looks like an amorphous and nebulous monster called “Brussels” (Brussels has decided, Brussels is preparing etc) added to which is the popular perception of over-paid and absentee MEPs in thrall to the different pressure groups. If this deluge of polemic succeeds in reinforcing these prejudices, it is bad for everyone and Europe's citizens will back away.
I particularly have in mind the reform of the financial world. My impression is that the EU has played and continues to play an essential and positive role in this reform by introducing the rules and discipline whose absence provoked the disasters we now all know about. In this context, the Commission acts as an active and efficient cog. Obviously, not on its own, but rather, in its interaction with the political and technical resources available: with approval and support from the European Council nothing would be effective; the Economy/Finance Council and Eurogroup are indispensable; and the European Parliament is an increasingly efficient player as a co-legislator (which is in large part down to its economic and financial committee), even though there are understandable divisions between the different political tendencies. To this we can add the European Central Bank (ECB) and other valid bodies such as the “Larosière group” and a number of others. It is the EU as a whole that functions and negative depictions of it for purely electoral reasons, appear to me to be unfair and counter-productive and only give succour to the Eurosceptics and extremists on either side.
EU's punching power in reform process. I am not going to draw up a catalogue of initiatives and projects; our publication reports on these aspects regularly, as well as on the reactions and divergences. The EU is currently devising a radical European reform on finance and is influencing what is done internationally.
Michel Rocard has just declared (in the Confrontation Europe review No.86): “Europe seems to me to be the only zone that can produce a sufficiently wide-ranging reform. It has the size and the means to become a major player, on the condition that it strengthens the integrated steering of its economy. Through this it will find identity and legitimacy, as well as the support of its citizens”. This obviously does not mean that all the different political currents agree on everything. Philippe Herzog's reply to Mr Rocard contained the fundamental question of whether the projects in discussion “aim to transform capitalism or rectify it by adjusting it to ensure its perpetuity, as sought by the Anglo-Saxons”. In his opinion no political movement exists that “has the ability to seriously take on the task of changing the model”.
Voters' response. Mr Herzog ought to get the correct answer, in my opinion, from the next election results: next month's European elections and the general elections afterwards in Germany and elsewhere, and a little later in the United Kingdom. In the meantime, the reforms that have been prepared, negotiated and already partly approved in the EU represent a radical overhaul of regulation or rather, of the absence of regulation, which made possible the inadmissible abuses committed. In this perspective, the crisis, if we manage to overcome it and tackle the unacceptable social repercussions, can one day be considered as something positive. The analyses, discussions and even the divergences we are currently witnessing indicate that despite everything, there is a very broad and solid basis of consensus in the EU. Jean-Claude Juncker summed up the salient points: “The financial crisis is particularly due to the fact that the principles of the social market economy have not been respected. The mentality of wanting to earn money without working, that leaves money to hatch over night, has proved to be an enormous disaster. The trend for no-rules, deregulation and unbridled flexibility to become the rule of thumb of a system based on confidence in the markets alone, has experienced an enormous failure”.
The work currently in progress proves that Mr Junker's analysis is widely shared in the different Community milieu. There are, nonetheless, numerous divergences about the operational measures and these are sometimes very deep-seated. This will be the subject of this column tomorrow. (F.R./transl.rh)