Europe from below - Euractions - Comments

European referendum campaign newsletter 01/07 - Tex

Tex — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:48:06 +02:00

Dear Europe (by lack of a more personal name...),

Your simple answers provide startling insights in your motivations and goals. Let me be clear: I applaud your political involvement and intention to be part of the solution rahter than the problem, but in fact this is exactly what you will make us part of.

My bet is that you are very much in favor of EU symbols like the blue flag and Ode to Joy. To me, that is nationalism in a different jacket. Nation states are maybe not the best solution, but it surely is the less worse one.

Indeed, climate change cannot be solved by France alone, but neither can it be solved by 6% of the world population that lives one on top of the other on the tiny dot of the world surface we call EU!

If there is any global problem you want to address by founding a federalist state you should go for the big prize of a world government. And that's where you get me scared...

Instead of focussing on how we can best institutionalise our international cooperation, we should focus on the problems itself. Binding treaties, commitment to international coopeeration and stimulating innovation will do a much better job at making this world a better one.

Best,
Tex

European referendum campaign newsletter 01/07 - Europe

Europe — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 01:25:23 +02:00

Dear Tex,

thank you for your comment.

The answer is very very simple to me.

We need a federation, or a European government as you prefer, because there are some problems that cannot be solved by national governments and are common to every citizens in Europe.

The problem than cannot be solved by national countries are the same you have mentioned in your comment:
preventing climate change and immigrants are clear issues that need a common effort by a true European government.

To prevent climate change we need common solution to reduce or change our lifes. It makes no sense to Germany alone, for example, to make a good policy respect to this issue if all other European countries take another decisions.

Immigration is another problem that cannot be solved by Spain or Italy or France or Greece. Think about the movement of million of people coming from under developing countries towards Europe and richest countries. Do you really think that France can adopt a policy that can stop this global movement ? I think that the only option is that immigration policy will become a European issue. A European government (with a budget) can make serious policy starting, for example, investments directly in developing countries in order to make them indipendent. A European government has the power to implement a Marshall plan for Africa or to drop the illegal deb that is already been paid by those countries.

If you want to do something you shoud have a federal government that can adopt common policy that should be followed by every European country.

Creating or advocating for a European federation doesn't mean that regional level will not work or exist. It's true the opposite. Federalism is best way to have different level of governments starting from local to global (through regional, national, regional and world level). National states often oppose regionalism because they see in it a shift in power. Instead regionalism grew up better inside the European integration process. We can say that national states are losing power in two directions because there are problems too little to be solved by them (that can be better managed by regional level) and other too big that are better faced by sovranational institutions.

The principle of subsidiarity (one of the main principle of federalism) says that each problem shoul be solved at the appropriate and lowest possible level.

So there are local problems that can be solved by municipality and global problems that also Europe is not able to solve. In these cases we need a world government.

So dear Tex if you want to be realistic and solve REAL issues you have to abandon the old national view and adopt a cosmopolitan vision of the world.

European referendum campaign newsletter 01/07 - Tex

Tex — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 00:03:16 +02:00

Hi,

So, could you remind me why we need a federation? Are you that convinced governance by the European Commission and Parliament is better than the job done by national authorities?

Don't get me wrong, I think the European construction of the past 50 years has been a great success, but why are you advocating a strong European central government? To me these are the old views. Just look at what's happening in Spain, Belgium, UK: regional governments get more and more recognition. In fact, the world counts 27 new nations since 1990! Yep, Europe is leading that trend.

Instead of making people believe we have a major institutional crisis on our hands, wouldn't it be better to focus attention and resources on REAL issues like reforming education, innovation, including immigrants, genomics, preventing climate change, etc... ?

Tex