These elections are unique. In almost seven decades of today’s European Union, everything seems different. We barely remember a stage in which the accumulated achievements were in danger of extinction due to the emergence of extremist forces, as now. The temple based on four columns, the “European quadripartite”—Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, Liberals and Greens—could crack if the ultras took off and the conservatives threw themselves into their arms.
Nor in a single legislature was there so much innovation in federal integration. The pandemic, its economic paralysis, the subsequent recession and the invasion of Ukraine, with its consequences of the energy crisis and inflation, have illuminated a second refoundation of Europe.
Recent advances compete with the glorious decade of Jacques Delors: 1) the creation of a health policy from scratch; 2) the largest economic recovery plan (Next Generation), which doubles the common budget for years; 3) its mutualized financing through Eurobonds; 4) the monetary expansion of a previously restrictive European Central Bank; 5) the defense policy, against Russia, paying jointly and arming the Ukrainian resistance; 6) the green, digital and social agendas… Everything is going at dizzying speed, and 9-J places us before the vertigo of a setback due to a greater burden of Eurohostiles, climate deniers, xenophobes, political chauvinists: all alone and with little in common.
Beneath this surface of successes and gales, which the campaign had to clarify, we Europeans found ourselves sitting on a sleeping volcano, of challenges and dilemmas, of crossroads and unfinished tasks. Sometimes muted, not conducive to debate.
Thus, the investment urgency after the pandemic paralysis has not only reconsidered the amount of the budget and created a common European debt – in the wake of Alexander Hamilton in the United States of 1790 -, for decades considered blasphemous and which should now at least double. It has also turned European governance upside down: leaders and senior officials obeyed the paradigm of spending control, putting the brakes on. The new era creates the opposite: accelerate investment, awaken productive spending. And it will still need to be multiplied because of the war, the energy change, and the industrial/technological challenge. The men in black from Brussels have had to burn their ties; the administrations of the Member States, commit themselves, not to reducing deficits, but to executing the multimillion-dollar investments financed by the Union. Night and day. To suddenly go back would be suicidal.
The contrast between economic policy austerity of the Great Recession of 2008-2012 with that of the great relaunch of 2020-2024 is infinite. The consequences of that one were entrenched, although partially compensated by the benefits of this one. The meteoric recovery of employment and social services, or the more modest recovery of the purchasing power of wage earners and popular classes, is tangible, but still incomplete. The threat is that those released from this new deal and the well-to-do, concerned about the uncertain future of their children, point out the abrupt fallacies of those who propose chainsaws. The already tangible results of which highlight the collapse of social services, essential precisely for the vulnerable seduced by populist fictions. Some victims vote for their executioners.
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This European club was created as a great peace operation, between the mortal enemies of the second great war. With the minor, but severe, precedent of the Balkans, the outbreak of Russian weapons against Ukraine rethinks or modulates the founding spirit of 1957. Unanimity in defense with forceps Borrell brand —sometimes thanks to the extraordinary resource of “constructive abstention”, that distraction in the bathroom while others decide— has given birth to 13 unprecedented sanctions packages, previously unthinkable military aid, a path of symbiosis between national industries. And of course, the redesign of energy policy towards renewables and diversification. Everything extraordinary.
But does rearmament motivate citizens? To what extent are they willing to achieve the indispensable strategic autonomy? Is it advisable to agree on a sectoral spending ceiling, in Maastricht mode, that combines pacifist ideals, human rights or liberal values with the self-defense that make them viable in a more aggressive world? Will you endorse the effort to dispense with, or minimize, umbrella protection funded by the american friend?
With this subsoil overheated, the 27 have also tuned in to welcome Ukraine and others, but without yet agreeing that this will require eliminating unanimity—perhaps demanding that the veto be from at least three countries and not just one—to overcome the slowness. current decision-maker… and future paralysis. And they must find a balance between self-affirmation and open economy, between naivety and interest. Without confusing protection with protectionism. It would be impossible to defend a world based on rules from a continent that leans toward savage closure in the face of the immigrant workers we need, in the face of the new rights of our minorities, in the face of millions of young people with forbidden access to the horizon. We Europeans were never alone.
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