Surely, you know Sacha Distel’s song about the Rio firefighters: “What did we do with the hoses?, the nozzles and the big ladder, what did we do with the hoses?, don’t panic we need them!” And while everyone is busy searching to prevent the coffee factory fire from spreading to the whole neighborhood, we end up finding “the hoses, the nozzles, and the big ladder but we are out of a vehicle and are looking for the crank!”
It’s exotic, funny, and comical.
Exactly the opposite of what European voters are experiencing, who find themselves in the same situation as the Rio firefighters in the song, caught up in the frenzy but powerless.
Thirty-four lists (!) will be on the starting line for the May 26 elections. One might be delighted by this wide choice and see it as a vibrant democracy. But this scattering, on the contrary, denotes harmful confusion, with the participation of lists as serious as the “Pirate Party” and others that don’t even have the means to print enough ballots to be present in every polling station… Not easy under these conditions to mobilize the electorate who, between us, already doesn’t know the names of the outgoing European deputies, invisible in media radars.
The “why bother voting for people we don’t know and who, no doubt, we won’t see again soon” added to the “but what good is Europe anyway” largely explains the traditionally significant abstention in this election.
To this, we must add that the deputies sent to Strasbourg will blend into political coalition groups whose scope and coherence are hard to grasp. Whether “conservative,” “nationalist,” “ecologist,” “socialist,” or others, the elected officials with such labels are not necessarily on the same wavelength on important issues.
Not to mention our British friends, who will (perhaps) elect people who will (surely not) sit…
And yet, Europe is the right scale for the current world’s social, economic, and environmental problems.
How could we hope to weigh in alone against China and the USA? Should we reopen the customs post in Menton to go shopping in Ventimiglia? Stand in line to show ID or passport to a customs officer who will open the car trunk? Also prevent the free movement of goods by reinstating customs duties that will first penalize the companies and consumers of the Old Continent?
This is obviously not the kind of Europe withdrawn into itself that makes one dream. Let’s hope the firefighters will quickly find the big ladder to climb towards brighter skies…
Jean-Michel Chevalier, Les Petites Affiches
