In 1974, Jean Monnet realized that, in addition to the economic governance of the single market, Europe needed political governance in order to ensure the common goods. Some Heads of state and government in the European Council, although they are animated by the end of the common good, gathered behind closed doors (with the President of the Commission), can assure a temporary governance until the coming into being of a federal (decisions taken by qualified majority) and democratic Europe: nations united so as to protect their identities in a world where there sovereigns are more and more ridiculous.
There were some great Europeans who did worry about the common good: first Giscard and Schmidt (direct elections to the European Parliament, European Monetary System) followed by Mitterrand, Kohl and Delors (Maastricht: European citizenship besides the national one, single currency, European Central Bank). These presidents gone, the common good is also gone: from now on, the national interest alone will be strongly defended: a round of critics in Amsterdam and Nice.
What’s Europe since 2004?
From the economic and commercial point of view, the communitarian side (the executive, the Commission and a bicameral legislative, the national Council of Ministers representing the States and the Parliament representing the citizens) resemble federalist ideas (decision taken by a majority) but only the Parliament is truly democratic. But, on the whole, the European identity is out there in the world, i.e. the foreign policy, the taxation system, are intergovernmental (European Council) and confederal (unanimity vote). This political rule is neither democratic, nor strong (see Iraq). Passing from one treaty to another, the means have become finality: the European Council, anti-people, anti-federation has become the key to this rule.
(I hear a noise form the tombs of the Founding Fathers)
Meanwhile
In the 1960s, the invisible Anglo-Saxon liberalism, charged to assure at least the material comfort through the easy commerce, will become neo-liberalism under the rule of Reagan in the USA and Thatcher in England: the logic of a market animated by a confused concurrence, where the individual is responsible for his life, condemns the collective solidarity. The State’s only task is to respect the rules of the market. But at the same time the productivity booms.
The latest example comes from France: 200.000 women cashier will become unemployed as a result of their replacement with the electronic cashier. On the other hand, the economy is based on the demand (the market in service for people) whereas the liberal economy is based on the offer (people in the service of the market); this leads to a growth in futile goods, deterioration of our planet and our life.
Individualism kills solidarity and thus the individual. In the end, taken the growth in a lifespan, a social universal system based on an insurance of a single wage-earner (employee and company) is now an absurdity: it has to involve the whole community (a progressive income tax on all revenues). Humans have to change their vision of society, or they are going to destroy themselves.
Conclusions
First of all, the European Union is not a unique market: the concurrence is not between citizens but between states. The state that is with less taxation system and socialism embraces not the progress but the social regress, which is both inadmissible from a human point of view and absurd from an economic point of view.
Then, revalorizing the work and not the revenue is pure demagogy. Productivity is nonsense. The essential is not the guaranteed work but the guaranteed revenue. Or the currency mass of a community is more or less equal to the sum of the market values demanded by its members. Solidarity means a revenue redistribution which renders no one unworthy, and thus leads to minimal guaranteed revenue. Concerning the services, they are but a transfer of buying power, so their price should be established from the subject to taxation revenues.
The future of the work market is the permanent alternation between services and human beings. In the end, by rejecting the European Constitution (language abuse: it is nothing but another treaty) and abstraction of sovereignty (stuck in the past and no desire for the future) the French people have not said no to Europe but they have said no to a neo-liberal Europe which denies them the right to choose or to penalize its government. Or, because the European Council equals immobility, there are voices ready to ignore it.
Bayrou in France, Prody in Italy (the former Commission President), Verhofstadt in Belgium (Prime Minister) are claiming from the Old Europe (the six founders) along with those who share their ideas an avant-garde: a confederation of national states as Delors proposed years ago.
It is evident that the European Constitution will soon need to be rescued, the Union risking to decay because of the lack of good governance. But there is not a single person who can forbid the sovereign nations to organize itself from a social and taxation point of view, refer to a single voice in the heart of the European Council and of the entire world, defend and propose their fundamental value: humanity, a person’s dignity.
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