It is a real pleasure to speak here for the second time especially as it is ten years since I left European politics. I myself was never a European parliamentarian but my brother was between 1981 and 1984.
In my speech I will try to summarise the current complex situation for the Union and the world in a few key words without falling into simplism, ‘le mal de siècle’, the evil of the century.
Those words are: unity, democracy, autonomy, long term, more Europe.
Unity
Unity in itself is valuable but it must be unity to achieve something, to get results for our citizens, to create a more prosperous, more sustainable and a happier society, to get a better equipped Europe so that it can better protect its interests and values in the world.
Unity is institutionally inevitable in many cases because of the unanimity rule. But politically, there is no real division if only a tiny minority disagrees.
Sociologically, we live in societies that are fragmented because individualisation has become a feature of our civilisation. Apparently every person has his or her own truth (Pirandello).
Besides individualisation, there is a growing sense of insecurity and fear that has many causes in today’s societies and economies especially since the eruption of the permanent and multiple crisis in 2008. Moreover, there is now also the awareness of living in a dangerous world due to wars on our borders and climate disasters. There are even fears that current wars could turn into nuclear wars and that climate disasters could strike anywhere and unexpectedly as a kind of fate. It is the return of tragedy in history. This anxiety is also visible in the deficits in mental well-being (burnout, depression, suicide, addictions), especially among youngsters.
I have no immediate solution to this but we need to look lucidly at the world we live in. Civilisations change slower than the stock exchange or electoral results!
The state of our societies is reflected in our democracies. The multi-plicity and volatility of individual opinions and emotions, often negative emotions, translate into volatile election results and into a fragmented political landscape with many political parties. It makes governing difficult at all levels of power.
The EU is the sum of 27 divided democracies and societies. But the EU institutions are less blocked and more capable of making decisions than is often said. In the European Parliament, the president of the European Commission and the Commission itself were elected recently with a clear majority. Only the result counts. Left and right are more fragmented but within radical parties there are important differences on policies. Not all of them are anti-Western or pro-Putin. On the contrary. In spite of this political fragmentation, the European Council has mostly found consensus in recent years. Unanimity is needed for major decisions in the EU. It is an uphill task but this consensus has also been found every six months so far f.i. for sanctions against Russia.
Compared to the Union, the US is even more heavily divided politically and has actually become an almost blocked society. Trump could convince less than half of voters for the third time in a row. Brexit split the UK into two camps hostile to each other.
It is often said that the EU has become irrelevant globally. Are other global actors so relevant? What is the US’ influence on Israel and in the Near East in general? To ask the question is to answer it. How many wars has the US already lost since Vietnam? Afghanistan is the last in line. I will show later that Russia has lost control of 200 million people since 1989. On the other hand, EU member states have no need to control the world and its seas as they did during colonialism. Today nobody is ruling the world.
The next five years are bound to be tense for the EU and its member states because the two largest countries have become politically less stable internally. This makes cooperation between France and Germany difficult. The EU has always benefited from the Franco-German engine, especially on socio-economic issues or in foreign policy. The European Commission cannot fully take over that role because it can only make proposals but the big decisions lie with the European Council of the 27 heads of state and government. And those decisions will be needed to continue supporting Ukraine, to set up a European industrial policy, to cope with unfair and fair competition from the US and China, to fight fierce climate change. The US regime change increases the pressure on the EU. Individual EU countries can never win those battles alone. We need much more European cooperation and integration, not less. Personally, I am convinced that the new President of the European Council will play an important role in the coming years to bring unity and effectiveness to decision-making.
The EU is part of the West. We have seen a revival of the West and the G7 in the last four years and a strong NATO that even welcomed two new members. After November 5th of this year, the EU will have to take even more its fate into its own hands and become even more ‘strategically autonomous’ and sovereign.
Democracy
The next few years will not just be about the economy or about money, however important, but about values. One of those key public values is democracy. For this, by the way, other personal values are indispensable such as respect for every human person and his or her dignity, such as openness, dialogue and moderation (one of the key virtues since Cicero, together with courage, fairness and prudence). Without this moral base there will be no lasting support for fundamental freedoms, rule of law and an independent judiciary. Today, the trust, the ‘faith’ of a part of citizens (20%, according to opinion polls), this belief in democracy has declined sharply in Western Europe going as far as preferring authoritarianism.
However, the same sceptics of democracy cannot imagine that they will have to keep quiet on social media in an authoritarian regime and that they will only be left with obedience, the contrary of today’s society where people in the EU and the US are used to enormous freedoms. This addiction to freedom and debate, reassures me about the future of democracy in the longer run but we shouldn’t take risks.
Democracy can remain formally but cyber wars and manipulation through monopolisation of digital power in the hands of a few individuals or of state actors, erode the system. Our democracies must be defended against external and internal enemies. We very much count on the European Parliament for this. However, democracies must also pursue policies on security, purchasing power for all, irregular migration and climate change. Results will eventually convince people of the added value of democracies. The Europe of results.
Domestic policy determines foreign policy. The extremists have an dangerous external agenda. Security is not an isolated issue from other policies. Without internal political stability and moderation, there is no external stability in the long run.
Autonomy
For too long, many in the EU have had a blind faith in the primacy of economics. There was a good reason for this: trading with each other within the Union made us dependent from each other and countered the tendency to go to war. The naivety was to think that what was good for the EU was also good for the world. We are no longer living in a harmonious world without tragedies. For other global actors there is the primacy of politics and of the glory of nation-state, the opposite of what we are trying to do in the EU since 75 years.
A second reason for the end of our naivety is that some countries do not play by the rules. They subsidise exports and investments or will impose tariffs to make imported goods and services more expensive than the their own, not to protect against unfair competition but to attack.
We continue to believe in open markets as long as they do not jeopardise our security and if everyone abides by international agreements. We protect without falling into protectionism. Our strategic sectors and activities should not fall into hands of non like-minded countries. We Europeans are behind on e.g. electric cars and AI. We have to catch up. Our climate policy towards renewable energy will make us much less dependent on imported fossil fuels. We have already largely and very quickly freed ourselves from Russian gas. We need to become more competitive on global markets not only through lower energy costs but through innovation and by forming powerful, large European companies. Scale matters globally. We need to create a true European Capital Markets Union to provide also start-ups with sufficient funds in a timely manner. Mario Draghi confirmed what we already largely knew but gave it a sense of urgency. We need to give the European Commission another chance to provide its own European funding as we did in the Covid era with a fund of 800 bn euro. Taboos have to fall again.
In the 1970s, the then EEC was also lagging behind the U.S. We called it ‘eurosclerosis’. We made up our ground through Jacques Delors’ single market in the eighties. Now we have less time for catching up. That time has passed. The Draghi report is a long plea for ‘more’ Europe, not less Europe, for a European ‘economic miracle’.
In short, we need to become much more autonomous and thus less dependent on military security, food, energy, batteries, lithium, chips, AI, illegal migration. This greater European sovereignty is not an end in itself but a means to sustain the European social models and our democracies. We do not want to ‘make Europe great again’ but neither do we want to become smaller!
Long-term vision
Short-term thinking is typical of a mentality of too many people in our consumer societies, in our democracies and in parts of the economy. Regarding the latter, the financial crisis has taught us how dangerous reckless, egocentric and greedy behaviour is. Complacency is another cause of shorttermism. Parts of the European industry missed the train of the digital revolution and are now condemned to a race to catch up. They thought there were unbeatable. They are.
Growing societal individualisation and political fragmentation automatically bring shorttermism, the preference for ‘hic and nunc’ and ‘my national interests first’. Moreover, many political parties have often become too small to take big political and electoral risks needed for future-oriented projects. But we shouldn’t have a democratic deficit and a leadership deficit at the same time. Climate policy is precisely in function of the long term although we are already seeing today the negative consequences of climate change. Of course there always must be room for adjustments and amendments on existing plans, but the long term direction, must be maintained.
Climate is also existential for humanity. Therefore it cannot be the subject of geopolitical rivalry. Cooperation on climate change, for instance with China, should be possible.
Long-term vision for the EU also entails decisively opting for its enlargement. Some miss the bigger picture, a vision of Europe as a continent of peace and democracy, of values. The 27 should recognise that Russia is trying to regain ground after losing control of 100 million people in Central Europe and in the Baltics in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. All this on top of the loss of 100 million people in the Eastern part of Europe and in Central Asia, now living in independent states.
With Russia, we are decoupling almost completely across the board. With China we are de-risking, a balance between our economic and our security interests. China is a partner, a competitor and a systemic rival. China also became a few days before the Russian invasion in Ukraine, the self- proclaimed ‘friend without limits’ of Russia, our enemy. It changed the relationship with the EU dramatically.
As Europeans, we cannot be focused only on our own continent. Therefore, we must forge alliances on a global scale. In recent years, we concluded successful free trade agreements with Japan, Vietnam, Canada, New Zealand. It is unfortunate that a Mercosur agreement with Brazil and Argentina has not yet been finalised. I hope we will conclude soon. We should not be naive but neither should we be closed. The EU remains one of the most open economies in the world; around 72% of the EU’s imports benefit from zero tariffs. Among the EU’s key trading partners, China has the lowest share of zero-tariff imports, standing at only 46%.
I could also talk about Africa with its immeasurable mineral resources and high potential for migration due to the gigantic population explosion (up from 1.2 billion today to possibly four billion people by 2100). Again, the EU is taking initiatives but not convincingly enough.
The long term also has a demographic dimension. The European Union, Russia, China, Korea, Japan are facing more and more population decline and ageing. We have known the figures for decades. Politics does not have much control over the number of births although much more can be done on child-friendly family policies.
The more economically productive we are the less need there is for migrant workers, compensating lower birth rates. Higher productivity relates to economic and industrial policy. Over the last 20 years, product per man-hour in the United States grew twice as fast as here. Why? The digital revolution was in Europe not yet revolutionary enough.
There is another argument for higher productivity growth. Levels of public debt in many western countries are running at multi-decade highs. Ageing populations and the rising cost of welfare and health will exert powerful upward pressure on government spending over coming decades. It is a problem for the entire western world. America’s annual deficit is now 7% of GDP, almost twice as large of that of the eurozone (3,6%). Debt also is a challenge for China.
More European cooperation and integration.
Sometimes the motto of ‘more Europe’ is attributed to political elites while the people are said to be more eurosceptic. Perhaps the reverse is true. A new Eurobarometer poll finds trust in the European Union at its highest point since 2007, with 51 per cent saying they tend to trust it. A vote for a eurosceptic party does not mean those voters approve the program of the party as a whole.
Do we need a new European Treaty for a better functioning of the Union? I would add that I myself am in favour of amendments in the Treaties (on the unanimity rule for major decisions, of course) rather than a general overhaul of the Treaties. The last exercise of that kind took eight years. We shouldn’t get caught up in a big institutional debate that divides member states and citizens at a dangerous time when we absolutely need unity.
I mentioned the need for ‘more Europe’ already several times. For the sake of unity, it is not a good idea to weaken one of the pillars of the Union by reintroducing national border controls and endangering the passport free Schengen-zone. We also need to further strengthen the EMU, that other pillar of the Union. Little work has been done on this over the past 12 years. The third pillar, the single market -the largest in the world- is not yet single enough, especially for services. Enrico Letta’s report pointed this out well.
All this does not mean that nothing has happened in the Union to achieve all these objectives mentioned in this account. On the contrary. A number of reforms are in progress. Others are under construction. We know what to do. There is no shortage of ideas. We need the Europe of the results. We must also be prepared for the possibility of unforeseen developments that will necessitate a unified and forceful response. I am thinking of the change of power in the US and all its consequences on the war in Ukraine which is existential for the EU. It is possible that we may react in the future more united and stronger than feared as we surprisingly did in the pandemic and after the Russian invasion. As a matter of fact, the Union has surprised many throughout its young history, and in the recent past. We even surprised ourselves.
Perhaps an even more important goal than any other is to safeguard democracy in the EU and in the West. Much is at stake. Democracy can be temporary.
Nevertheless, I am a man of hope. We badly need hope. Hope is a verb. We have to create our own hope. It is not passive but an active concept. Hope is the opposite of fear. It is an expression of vitality and life. Fear paralyses and weakens. The Christmas season is a time of hope.