Five weeks before the European election, the French desire for Europe is shrinking dramatically.
The potential participation rate for these elections has dropped from 61% in 1979 to 35% thirty-five years later.
All is not well for anyone. Even for those who have a deep and long-standing attachment to European integration.
All is not well because the technocrats in Brussels threaten the achievements of the States by proposing recession and its suite of austerities as a solution to public debts, deficits, and soaring unemployment!
All is not well, because politicians are at odds with each other for reasons no one knows anymore, nor even on what grounds, and people no longer understand what this Europe is for, which brings us peace in times of war and crisis in times of peace!
All is not well because our leaders are turning the European Union into a recycling plant.
All is not well, yet we must save “soldier Europe”!
And for that, we need to fervently defend certain convictions and clearly define new challenges for Europe.
The question is whether Europe will continue to exist or not!
Firstly, it’s about turning Europe into a project, but a project that is desired, popular, and shared, not endured. This can only be done by profoundly revising the procedures that lead to the formulation of agreements between States, and thus to the construction of Europe itself, as well as the governance methods accompanying them.
Starting from defining the needs and questioning the current European “alpha and omega” of focusing solely on the accounting criteria of public deficits and sovereign debts. Ensuring that Europe is for the citizens and not solely for economic actors.
Therefore, rethinking the organization of the eurozone’s budgetary policy and committing to concrete and measurable growth, employment, competitiveness, and social cohesion objectives.
Secondly, it’s about addressing the major challenges of our time: the food challenge, the industrial and technological gap, and the ecological and energy transition.
These challenges are none other than the ones our history and the evolution of our societies face. We need to orchestrate them at the European level, as this is the only relevant territorial space to address them and define the precise objectives that correspond to them.
Provided there is true coordination of our policies, not a regulatory jungle where no one knows who imposes what on whom. A genuine common strategy should be established, with its monetary, fiscal, social, and salary policies.
An European budget should enable their implementation and ensure the convergence of European countries towards harmonization, not imbalances and deregulation.
Finally, it is about making Europe a model of a democratic, republican, secular, open, and free but protected society, within a regulated market economy.
To sustainably reverse the current trend based on laissez-faire and unbridled competition between our own States and, of course, internationally.
To oppose any new measures of liberalization and deregulation, and state that the market is a tool, not an end in itself.
That we have values to defend and promote here in Europe and around the world.
That Europe must become a central actor in world history again, no longer just a spectator.
For us, “France is our country, Europe is our border, the world is our vision”.
