14 Dec 2011 Una Europa menys de plàstic?

After last Friday’s summit in Brussels, Nicolas Sarkozy stated that, despite the important new agreements on the eurozone along a theme which could be considered more confederal, there will not be a further transfer of sovereignty from states to the institutions within the European Union; instead we will witness “a shared exercise of sovereignty by democratically-elected governments”. The French president hurriedly clarified this issue and reiterated: “We strengthen our sovereignty and our independence by exercising it with our friends, our allies and our partners”.

Despite being in the early 21st century, state sovereignty is still a taboo, especially at a theoretical level; on a more practical level, though, everything mellows. The lesson to be drawn from this summit is categorical: monetary union will only be saved by exploring ways of economic and political union which enable quicker and clearer decision-making. This involves turning upside-down (rethinking, redoing, remodelling) sovereignty as we have known it since the creation of states in the Modern Age. The new Europeanism born out of the economic crisis is scared of admitting out loud all the things it could end up undoing.

Isaiah Berlin recalled that, in the 17th century, the French would not respect the Germans because, while France was the military, economic and cultural centre of the world, Germany was a region fragmented in around two-hundred principalities. According to this great historian of ideas, this French attitude caused deep resentment amongst Germans and this is how Europe stumbled onwards, battered by wars, until 1945. Now Europe seems to have overcome those lethal prejudices, Franco-German leadership is a reality and, despite it having its detractors and being open to criticism in many aspects, it offers the only valid way which does not involve driving in reverse. By contrast, David Cameron’s intransigent stance is that of someone who does not want to understand that the world portrayed in his childhood’s sticker album no longer exists. It is a shame that the role of British Prime Minister is not held by Mr Clegg – maybe too audacious a figure for his political milieu.

From now on, we will ask ourselves the same questions every day without the need to look at Brussels for an answer: Who rules in Europe? How is Europe ruled? How must we choose those who will rule in Europe? These are questions on the foundations of a large-scale democracy linked to a social model which for the last fifty years has guaranteed maximum levels of justice, freedom and welfare.

But we cannot make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. We must admit that, as professor of European Law Miguel Poiares Maduro said, the main problem is that “none of the EU member States has yet internalised the consequences that the interdependence created by integration has on its democracy”. This phenomenon is disconcerting and it presents all the leaders of the Member States with the following challenge: the traditional distinction between local and EU interests can no longer be used to draft a priority agenda. Given this crossroads, how can a sovereign Parliament pass a budget which, on top, must contribute to achieve a list of targets which have been solemnly given Constitutional status, as in the case of Spain with the limiting of public debt? Over the coming years, political parties and their leaders – also in Spain and Catalonia – will have to engage in the complex mission of redefining what interests must be pursued and how. All in order to prevent citizens from feeling progressively alienated from a process with historic consequences and to conscientiously restructure, both inside and out, the old Nation-State which creates loyalties and hands out benefits.

We have moved from the Europe of welfare to the Europe of sacrifice. And at the same time, nobody is capable of saying how it would be possible to efficiently govern a democracy of over 500 million citizens where a single currency lives side by side with other national ones and where governments, parliaments and all kinds of administrations overlap. Before this serious crisis, the EU had already displayed a highly remarkable inability to take any decisions regarding issues of great concern for the population such as security and immigration, to mention just two burning examples. They call it lack of leadership or democratic deficit, it does not matter. Things can get worse. According to Sarkozy, from now “there clearly are two Europes”: one which pledges its commitment for solidarity and regulation amongst Member States and another one which only responds to the logic of the single market. Old suspicions prevail at a time when diluting them would have been far better.

For some years, the European dream was like a plastic toy: tough, convenient and easy to use. A plastic made to last and last and bring joy to many generations of French, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, and so on. Us Catalans, who do not officially exist in Europe, also found this toy wonderful, because we wanted to see in it some extra qualities which, to be perfectly frank, derived more from the way we looked at it than from the object itself. At this moment in time, now that we have realised that Europeanism is not noble militancy but open-heart surgery, everything changes and it is not yet known whether this change will go in the direction of those old ideas which had nurtured so many efforts or against them. I am hopeful, though: nervous Sarkozy does not want to admit that, almost without a fail, events escape from the hands of those who strive to wrap them up.