CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A new Europe

In order to take back control of our destiny, we need Europe. For many years, our political leaders have led us to believe that Europe is the problem, and that it is responsible for all our ills.

Do we need to remind them that we are Europe? We are the people that history and geography placed at the center of Europe. We created it, and we chose it. We appoint its representatives. Let us be clear about this: electing the president of the Republic of France means electing the person who is going to sit at the table of the European Council on France’s behalf.

And when I survey the wider world, I am certain of two things: what brings Europeans together outweighs the issues dividing us; and we have little chance of standing up to China or the United States if we are not capable of understanding that fact.

Fundamentally, whose heirs are we?

As a political edifice, Europe is a new kid on the block. It is only sixty-five years old, and despite that fact, it is already exhausted. Over the decades, the founding fathers’ ideal has become bogged down in bureaucracy. It has been misplaced among the treaties, and gone off track due to a lack of vision.

The European edifice was based on three promises: a promise of peace, a promise of prosperity, and a promise of freedom. A profoundly French venture.

The European edifice is the offspring of peace, and it consolidated that peace. For decades, it turned a dream of peace into a reality for millions of Europeans. So much so that many of us managed to believe that conflict would be no more, forgetting that conflict formed the historical undercurrent of our continent. The European dream has always been a dream of empire and unification through war: from Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, through to the Hitlerian tragedy. We must never lose sight of the fact that war is our past on this continent, and that it could also be our future if we do not build a free Europe. For the first time, we have managed to unite the continent through peace and democracy. Our European dream has taken the unprecedented form of a non-hegemonic edifice, designed to enable neighbouring peoples to finally live together in peace after the terrible suffering caused by two world wars. No less important was recovery from the social trauma caused by those wars: the Holocaust, mass murder — a complete betrayal of the Western ideal.

The second original promise was that of a prosperous Europe. Devastated by war, Europe could only conceive of a common venture on the condition that it was aimed at economic recovery. Despite the adversity of that time, Europe succeeded in building an economic and social model unequalled in other parts of the globe.

The third and last promise was that of a free Europe, with unrestricted mobility for persons and goods. Concrete examples of that mobility are the Schengen open-border zone, the academic-exchange program Erasmus, the euro single currency, and the removal of barriers such as bank charges for cross-border transactions or telephone-roaming charges.

For Europeans today, these three founding promises seem to have been betrayed.

The promise of peace has been undermined. The Syrian, Libyan, and Ukrainian crises; migrant pressure, the like of which had not been seen for sixty years; and, worst of all, the repeated terrorist attacks on our own soil have made people painfully aware that the course of history has not changed. War and conflict are not things of the past.

The promise of prosperity has been betrayed. Europe is bogged down in sluggish growth. Personally, for as long as I can remember, and ever since I became acquainted with world affairs, I have heard people talking about financial crises. At the present time, one young person out of five in the Eurozone is unemployed. In such a situation, how can we expect new generations to subscribe to the European ideal? When the euro was threatened, Europe was able to survive the emergency. However, we have to face up to the fact that austerity is not a way forward, and that reducing sovereign debt does not in any way constitute a productive political goal.

The promise of freedom has been jeopardised, too. Freedom of movement, in particular, is called into question every single day. It may be questioned for economic reasons, or on grounds of inclusion and migration flows. Or for security reasons, owing to the terrorist threat. Or, more generally, because continuing unemployment and worsening inequalities lead to citizens rejecting openness and being tempted to shut the world out and retreat into their shells.

These three promises must not be called into question. They still represent an incredibly fine venture. However, we cannot succeed in that venture if we turn our back on others.

So what has happened?

The European Union has languished and become enfeebled, and we are all to blame. There is, currently, a noticeable paucity of ideas and methods. The whole system has capitulated, and is at a standstill. Summits bringing together heads of state and of government have become a parody: getting together behind closed doors, repeating lofty principles, changing a word or two in a statement so that it sounds slightly different from the last one. The system is cut off from the world and from real life. What did the Breton farmers I have met in the last few months have to say about all this? They did not say that they were against Europe, or the common agricultural policy that is so important to us. But they explained that they were against over-regulation, against over-zealous bureaucracy, and against interventionist policies overseas, so far removed from their real needs.

The founders of Europe believed that political union would be a natural consequence of union in the economic domain, and that a European state could be created from a single market and a single currency. Half a century later, reality has dispelled that illusion. Political Europe has not happened. Any hope of it has been sorely diminished, and it is the fault of us all.

First of all, because it was our own desire to weaken Europe. Heads of state and of government have done everything they can in the last few years to put in place a weak leadership to run the European Union. They decided to create a commission with twenty-eight commissioners. This is not workable, and the organisation of the commission clearly needs to be changed if we want to go back to the truly collegiate nature and efficiency of the commission under Jacques Delors.

Gradually, the European Union has abandoned its vision in exchange for official procedures, confusing the aim — to unite Europe — with the technical, monetary, legal, and institutional means for union to be achieved. And so, ultimately, this part of the vision was thwarted, as were others. Seeing Europe as the source of all our problems became a reflex, whereas questioning the role of the commission or its many directives was tantamount to being a bad European.

For the French people, matters came to a head in 2005. In that year, through a referendum, we realised that Europe as it had become might no longer be the Europe for us. It had moved too far towards neoliberalism, and had become too far removed from our values. In practice, people feared losing the benefits that our country had traditionally drawn from the European Union — such as in the domain of agriculture — and were concerned about new challenges, such as immigration.

These negative feelings have been exacerbated since the 2005 referendum, in view of the fact that Europe’s advocates responded to the traumatic “NO” by fleeing the arena of debate and ideas. The Greek monetary crisis revealed shortcomings of the same sort when, between the proclaimed apocalypse and the stop-gap strategy finally negotiated, the European political elite sidestepped certain discussions that were sorely needed.

Europe has become bogged down because no one takes responsibility. We French have too often believed, in our hearts, that the best way to defend our national interests was to free ourselves from the European rules that we had contributed to creating. In addition, the lack of real control over European policies has created a climate of insecurity. It is significant that, due to the lack of a suitable forum, no true political debate took place concerning the decisions that led to a situation where the single currency had permitted certain states — Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and also ourselves — to live beyond their means and to court disaster. The choices made by European leaders, the practices of their administrations, the proliferation of rules, and inadequate implementation of the principle of subsidiarity ought to be subject to exacting oversight at all times. Currently, European institutions are incapable of such oversight.

They are also, broadly, unable to defend effectively the values which, beyond the economy, form the foundation of Europe. Nobody should be able to conclude that humanism stands for so little. I have always supported the Greek government’s efforts to stay within Europe’s monetary union. Nevertheless, I am amazed that at no time did European negotiators see fit to insist that the Greek authorities comply with the European rules that they had clearly neglected in recent years — in particular, those relating to the right of asylum. Certain recent decisions by the Hungarian government jeopardised the very principles on which Europe was founded, and were not the subject of one-tenth of the summits into which we rush headlong when taxpayers’ money or the banks’ financial robustness seems to be at risk. We must not consent to such compromises.

Last but not least, the European Union contributes to its own downfall when it fails to stand up for itself through an excess of conformism and a lack of vision. What can we say about the February 2016 agreement that offered the United Kingdom an ‘à la carte Europe’, yielding to its blackmail?

For all these reasons, I believe that we have squandered the last decade.

Brexit is the name of this crisis and the symptom of the fatigue that is pervading Europe. However, let us hope — and, as reformers, hope is our role and our duty — that it is also the beginning of an indispensable transformation.

Brexit is not a selfish act. Let us never denounce any citizen for having voted “badly”: it would be nonsensical. Of course, it would be easier to “dissolve the people”, as Bertolt Brecht said, than to face facts. I prefer the second alternative.

Brexit is the expression of a need for protection. It expresses a rejection of the very social model that the British political leaders have defended. Protection from a society that advocated openness, without concerning itself with the industrial, economic, and social destruction necessarily engendered by such openness when it takes place too quickly. Brexit expresses the weaknesses of a political class that found its scapegoat — Europe — and failed to explain that leaving Europe would lead to disaster. Protection from a public debate in which experts’ arrogance and demagogues’ lies were lumped together indiscriminately.

In this sense, Brexit is not a British crisis, but a European one. It should cause alarm bells to ring throughout the member states, and it should be a wake-up call for all those who remain blinkered to the negative effects of globalisation. In fact, people fall into two almost equal camps: supporters of an open society, and those who advocate a closed society. This rift has emerged from all of the ballot boxes: the regional elections in Germany, the local elections in Italy, the Austrian presidential election, the Polish and Hungarian excesses, and, of course, here in France with the rise of the National Front.

So we have to go back to the drawing board with Europe — starting from its origins.

How can the phoenix rise again? How can a reinvigouration policy be conducted in a climate of growing skepticism?

We need to rekindle a desire for Europe — a shared undertaking for peace, reconciliation, and development. There is nothing harder to define than a collective plan, which is quickly diluted by individual interpretations. In order to succeed, we must not start out with technicalities, or complex and bureaucratic solutions. We must construct a true political plan. For many European countries, Europe is not limited to a market, but is a space with a certain idea of humanity and of entrepreneurial freedom, where progress and social justice is asserted. Those countries must re-appropriate the project for themselves, and take the necessary steps to ensure its success. That philosophy was advocated for many years by Jacques Delors. It is up to France to take the initiative and to work with Germany, Italy, and some others to set our Europe right.

We need to build this new European venture around three concepts: sovereignty, a taste for the future, and democracy.

Let us begin by accepting the diagnosis: the rift today is between those for an open society and those for a closed one. Reformists and progressivists alike must support an open society and Europe’s choices.

Being an advocate for progress today is to say that our relationship with the world is not one of isolation. It means understanding that we have more to lose than to gain if we withdraw into our shells. It means convincing others that openness is only tenable if it is accompanied by protection. It means ensuring that openness can benefit all citizens, in all member states.

However, we have confused sovereignty and nationalism. I say that those who truly believe in sovereignty are pro-Europeans: Europe is our chance to recover full sovereignty. What are we talking about here? Once again, let’s go back to the meaning of words to clarify matters. Sovereignty means a population freely exercising its collective choices, on its territory. And having sovereignty means being able to act effectively.

Faced with the current serious challenges, it would simply be an illusion, and a mistake, to propose to rebuild everything at the national level. Faced with an influx of migrants, the international terrorist threat, climate change, the digital transition, as well as the economic supremacy of the Americans and the Chinese, Europe is the most appropriate level at which to take action.

Who can seriously believe that we alone can control migration flows from North Africa or the Middle East? That we can regulate, alone, the North American giants with their digital platforms? That we can meet global-warming challenges alone? Or that, alone, we could negotiate balanced trade agreements with the United States or China?

In the next few years and in these different domains, we must move forward with the other twenty-six member states of the European Union. Let us stop and consider migrant flows for a moment. This subject is deeply associated with sovereignty, but action at the European level needs to be strengthened in the light of threats that are more and more global in nature. The idea put forward by some people that true protection could be provided by going back to national frontiers is completely fanciful. Do they imagine that we are going to redeploy our armies at our borders? Or close our borders with Germany, Belgium, Spain, or Italy? Is this what we really want? This path is even less relevant in view of the fact that many of the terrorists who have attacked our country in the last few months were French, and lived in France and Belgium.

In Europe, our interests converge on this point. But we need to step up action and establish a real policy — today among the twenty-eight member states, and after Brexit among the remaining twenty-seven. This presupposes investment in an effective joint border force and coastguard, and a joint identity-card system. Because whoever arrives in Lesbos or Lampedusa has a foothold in our country. Realistically, at this time, the force that we call Frontex is only able to intervene if a state requests its intervention, and it has very limited resources. Cooperation among our national forces is inadequate.

The question of borders is a fundamental one today. However, we must deal with the question at the right level. Giving ourselves the means to protect our European borders is the appropriate response.

Making such a security policy effective also presupposes that we coordinate our actions with respect to third countries. First of all, by looking at conflict zones and migrants’ countries of origin. The European Union must organise its refugee policy according to the countries of origin. Europe’s error was to fail to put in place such a policy prior to the beginning of the financial crisis.

Next, we must set out a coordinated development-aid policy for those same countries, to help them manage refugee flows themselves — particularly in regions near the Syrian conflict zone. And here, too, another mistake was made when several million refugees were trapped in those countries. Europe was asked to help by the United Nations without having been proactive, and therefore without having any plans in place.

Lastly, it is clear that in the coming months we will need to broach the subject of cooperation with the United Kingdom as regards the subject of immigration. The United Kingdom’s current financial contribution will not suffice: France cannot bear the burden of refugee camps alone. Even beyond financial contributions, it is imperative that the United Kingdom accepts joint responsibility, along with the European Union, for managing the problem of refugees at the union’s borders.

Europe is the proper level of sovereignty protection for these matters.

Let us take another example — that of trade. A sovereign Europe will also regulate free trade and achieve a more humanised form of globalisation. As minister, I initiated that fight when defending our iron and steel industry against unfair competition. I defended the need for trade policy to remain a European issue — sometimes entirely on my own, and particularly regarding the agreement with Canada — because we are stronger together. What protection could France alone put in place against China? What sort of beneficial trade agreement could such and such a country negotiate with our larger partners?

However, if we delegate responsibility for free-trade agreements to Europe, we must ensure that there is earlier and more regular participation by citizens in the European Parliament and in national parliaments. It also means heightened transparency, and, above all, more effective protection against unfair practices. I favour stepping up anti-dumping measures, which must be swifter and more powerful — as they are in the United States. We must also put in place, at a European level, foreign-investment controls in strategic sectors, to protect any industry that is essential to our sovereignty, and to guarantee European control of key technologies.

The European Union, if we are decisive about this and if we draw all the necessary conclusions, is what will enable us to build our place in the globalised world and provide us with fair protection there. This is the pillar around which we must create a new Europe.

The European Union also needs to be built around a taste for the future, a joint aspiration for recovery. Today, the European Union, and in particular the Eurozone, is declining due to a lack of ambition. We are crippled with doubts as a result of past crises, whereas what we need are new ambitions, and an investment policy applied at a European level.

In this regard, some voices claim that the euro has been a mistake. That would be to forget its benefits far too quickly: it protects us from currency fluctuations, stimulates trade within the Eurozone, and enables us to obtain financing under historically favourable conditions. On the other hand, it must be recognised that the failure to achieve full monetary union was an error.

Today, the euro is being weakened as a result of the widening gaps between its economies, the slow recovery, and a lack of public and private investment. Previously, in the absence of proper political direction, the euro ended up by accentuating differences between economies in the Eurozone, instead of bringing them closer together. Faced with an unprecedented crisis, the weakest economies collapsed, and the member states had to contend with the debt predicament. Today, in the absence of centralised political direction, the imbalances that have accumulated are taking time to redress, despite an unprecedented austerity policy in many European countries. In spite of the fact that the whole zone ought to be stimulated by the investments essential to its growth, harsh budgets continue to be predominant. The European Central Bank has done everything it could in the last five years, and without its determined action we would certainly find ourselves in a recession.

I will propose that Europe create a joint Eurozone fund to finance investments, to assist the regions most in difficulty, and to address crises. In fact, as levels of national debt differ across the Eurozone, there is leeway to do this with the resources available.

We need a minister of finance to oversee this for the Eurozone. That person would define priorities for the budget and would give backing to member states that carried out reforms in line with those priorities. The minister would be responsible to a Eurozone Parliament that would bring together all European parliamentarians from the Eurozone at least once a month, to ensure true democratic oversight.

At the same time, we will need to decide together to revise the rules of the game and put in place a more appropriate economic policy. The Eurozone has not returned to pre-crisis investment levels, and no economic bloc can sacrifice its future in this way. A European investment plan based on subsidies and not mainly on loans and collateral, much more powerful than the current “Juncker Plan”, must be put in place as soon as possible. That plan must finance the necessary investments in fiber optics, renewable energies, energy interconnections and energy-storage technologies, education, training, and research. All future investments that can contribute to the plan will need to be dispensed from the debt and deficit objectives included in the EU Stability and Growth Pact.

Here, France has a very grave responsibility. If we want to convince our German partners to forge ahead, it is imperative that we apply reforms at home. Today’s Germany has a wait-and-see attitude, and blocks many European projects due to its distrust of us. We have betrayed Germany three times. Once in 2003–2004, when we undertook to make fundamental reforms and only the Germans carried them out. Again in 2007, when we unilaterally put a stop to the agenda for public-spending reduction that France and Germany were conducting together. Then, again, by playing for time in 2013 and not taking decisive action. This is also the reason why Germany is now increasing its budgetary surplus, which is good neither for that country nor for Europe as a whole. Let us never forget that there is a place for French leadership in Europe — but that leadership means leading by example.

This being the case, it seems to me that the right way to proceed is very clear. In summer 2017, we are to present a strategy for reforms to modernise the country, and a five-year plan for reductions in current expenditure, implementing them without delay. In return, we must ask the Germans to carry out a potent budgetary-stimulus program. They must move ahead with us on the idea of a Eurozone budget, and on authorisation across all Eurozone countries for investments in our future.

If we want to build an economic power reconciling both solidarity and responsibility, we must apply reforms at state level, but at the same time it is crucial that certain Eurozone member states go further. They should give themselves ten years to achieve tax, social, and energy convergence — which will form the heart of the Eurozone, and without which it will fall apart.

All this presupposes that a genuine political decision will be taken within two years. The foundation of this European fulcrum will see these countries coming together and establishing a joint budget for the Eurozone and investment capacity that can be deployed rapidly. The two years ahead are decisive for Europe and the Eurozone. If these decisions are not taken, it is unlikely that Europe will last very long, in view of the fact that it is currently so beset by diverging interests and weakened by nationalism in many countries.

At the end of those two years, the French people will need answers. Because if we have failed, it will be essential to draw conclusions both for us and for our partners. This fight for Europe is one of the most crucial for the presidency. It is the condition of our sovereignty. And in order to succeed we must convince our European partners right now. This is what I shall do, in close collabouration with Germany and Italy in particular.

The European Union, on the other hand, remains entirely relevant. With its twenty-seven members, it will be a wider circle, but will remain a political and economic space, that of the single market and of overarching regulations. It will be the arena in which competition policy, trade policy with regard to the other great powers, the digital agenda, and energy policy will be conducted, which may require specific regulation.

If we want to make progress on matters of defense and security, we must move much faster with respect to the Schengen area, and be more ambitious in deploying border forces and coastguards, the creation of which has recently been decided upon. Together we need to establish our joint border policy, and to have an ambitious cooperation policy on intelligence and asylum.

The European Union must therefore continue to progress in its capacity to regulate and protect. Because it has the critical mass to do so. And this is in no way incompatible with the convergence needed within the Eurozone.

However, all of this will only happen if we place democracy in the pole position. We must not allow our citizens or our ideas to be monopolised by rabble-rousers or extremists. We must not make Europe into a sort of crisis-management center for a condominium that keeps trying to extend its bylaws because the neighbours don’t trust each other anymore. We must not be waylaid by dogma that would prevent us from meeting the legitimate hopes and aspirations of our compatriots.

We need to take the time for discussion, and re-establish trust. It is a wide-ranging discussion, which I propose to initiate in 2017, at a key political time — that of the French, German, and Dutch elections.

I will propose the launch of democratic consultations throughout the European Union, as soon as the German elections are over, in autumn 2017. In each member state, for a period of between six and ten months, this would involve a debate on the details of the Union’s action, on the policies that it implements, and the priorities that it should have. Governments and regional authorities would make their own organisational choices regarding procedures for the consultations.

The results of these consultations would enable European governments to prepare a concise roadmap, with a small number of shared challenges and specific actions, tracing out priorities for the union’s action and an implementation schedule for the next five or ten years. Each state would then validate this “Plan for Europe” according to their own democratic traditions. For countries organising a referendum, a coordinated campaign must be organised, to generate democratic debate at European level.

In this way, Europe could once again achieve legitimacy, with democratic debate reinvigourated, and involved citizens. Thus, when one member state votes against a new project, it will not be able to block the others from going ahead, because we will have decided, from the outset, that our procedures are to be changed — as Mario Monti and Sylvie Goulard proposed as a means of ensuring success. The dissenting state will simply not join in with that project. Of course, Europe will be more differentiated — it is already. But it will be differentiated in a forward-thinking way rather than by successive backtracking.

This transformation will not happen overnight. It will take years. We need to think in the long term again, and have a vision for the future. But when things take a long time to do, it is even more urgent to start doing them.