The year 2014 marks an important milestone for the European Union (EU) as the European Parliament and its Commission will be renewed for five years following elections whose results will be scrutinized and analyzed with the utmost attention.
This succession of events, which will put Europe in the spotlight for several months, constitutes an opportunity to be seized to give it new momentum. Built on restored peace and freedom, the European Union must be reinvented by placing citizens at the heart of a redefined political project.
Meeting them, advancing towards a more open, more united, and stronger Europe on the international stage, are the objectives to pursue, providing an opportunity to confer a new strength.
In this perspective, the CESE (Economic, Social, and Environmental Council) contributes with its insights on the ways and means to give the EU a dynamic that is both mobilizing and ambitious. The proposals and recommendations of its advisory project entitled “The European Union at the Crossroads” are articulated around three strong axes:
– Strengthening the political dimension of the EU and the democratic legitimacy of its institutions;
– The economic challenge in a context of globalization and fierce competition on international markets;
– The social challenge, notably in light of disparities in social systems.
In this context, the European Union is not lacking assets. The uniqueness and modernity of the European construction represent a novel mode of organizing interdependencies between states. The EU is also a major global economic power, contributing 19% to global wealth production, with its 500 million consumers and holding the world’s second reserve currency.
However, it must be acknowledged that the crisis, globalization, and changes in political and economic power dynamics on the international stage have shaken citizens’ confidence in the EU’s ability to address its challenges. Moreover, it has deepened their doubts about its very future.
The EU must be reinvented by placing citizens at the heart of a redefined political project. Meeting them, advancing towards a more open, more united, and stronger Europe on the international stage, are the objectives to pursue.
ASSERTING A POLITICAL WILL
Europe has been progressively built by alternating deepening and enlargement. But the time for clarification has come, and there is an urgent need to endow Europe with a better-defined political project.
Carrying a political project around a major priority, sustainable development, and founded on:
– Valuing its model based on humanistic values and the goal of intelligent, inclusive, and sustainable growth;
– Defending, on the international stage, the principles of respect for human rights, rule of law, democracy, and solidarity, with a strong stance on major political and strategic issues of the 21st century, and a European defense policy;
– Deepening and encouraging closer cooperation by: a necessary pause in enlargements to foster a real sense of belonging to a politically and geographically defined entity; stronger incentives for willing states to advance further in integration on concrete and tangible subjects for citizens;
– Reinforcing the democratic control of the eurozone by: creating a “Eurozone Assembly” composed of European deputies from the eurozone as well as members of the finance committees of national parliaments of eurozone countries or those set to join; greater involvement of national parliaments.
Bringing Europe closer to citizens by:
– Fully recognizing the role of civil society organizations and granting European status to foundations and associations;
– Developing mobility schemes within formal or non-formal education through increased exchanges and strengthening of the European voluntary service, or even creating a “European civic service”;
– Improving understanding of the EU’s functioning via a proactive communication policy led by political leaders themselves, and not by administrations or spokespersons, guided by an imperative to explain how the EU works and a requirement to address citizens’ everyday concerns;
– Elevating European elections as the highlight for discussions on the future of the EU through political programs centered on European issues;
– Promoting the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) as an instrument for civil society participation, introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon.
SETTING COURSE FOR REVIVAL OF ACTIVITY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
The European Union faces a dual challenge to be pursued simultaneously: consolidating the foundations of the EMU to equip it with the means to face potential new crises; beyond the eurozone, and in parallel, crafting a genuine growth strategy for the entire EU.
Consolidating eurozone integration by:
– Engaging public authorities to involve social partners and civil society actors in the agenda, definition, and evaluation of economic and fiscal reforms to be implemented;
– Adapting reform objectives to the specificities and constraints of each state;
– Examining the opportunity to create a budgetary capacity within the EMU as a first step towards a Budgetary Union.
Investing in mobilizing strategies by:
– Completing the internal market to optimize its functioning;
– Launching a long-term investment policy serving: an assertive industrial strategy, development of high-tech industries, support for research and development, valorization of the social economy, and energy transition;
– Mobilizing all possible sources of public and private funding and co-financing for this purpose.
PROMOTING THE SOCIAL DIMENSION OF THE EU
It is crucial to restore the full meaning of solidarity so that it isn’t a simple slogan but contributes to re-legitimizing the European project among public opinions who feel, in a difficult economic situation, a disintegration of the European model based on economic growth and improved living and working conditions.
Strengthening the place of European social dialogue by:
– Recognizing the negotiation of sectoral collective agreements as a structuring component of social dialogue;
– Truly taking into account the consultations conducted with social partners, particularly within the framework of the annual tripartite social summit and the macroeconomic dialogue.
Fighting against unfair competition and acting for employment by:
– Exploring paths for fiscal and social convergence possibly in the form of a “fiscal and social snake” within the eurozone inspired by the former European monetary snake;
– Including, in the EU’s social agenda, the question of establishing a minimum wage eventually in each member state;
– Enhancing, under the framework of the latest directive, control measures on worker detachments through closer cooperation between inspection bodies of different member states, possibly leading to the creation of a European labor inspectorate.
And finally, implementing the recently adopted dashboard of indicators serving a more qualitative approach to the convergence objectives of employment policies and social policies.
