For Angélique Bouin, permanent correspondent of Radio France in Brussels, producer of the weekly program “Europe, you love it or you leave it” on Inter, the reporting profession consists not only of following the news which has only known peaks (Brexit, Covid, Ukraine) but also of showing through the reports to what extent the decisions taken in Brussels have a direct influence on our daily lives.
When we think of Europe, we think brake, bureaucracy, technocracy, central bank. However, the debates held there aim to improve the daily lives of European citizens. But it is always fashionable to blame Europe for all the ills of a society.
Admittedly, not everything is perfect, and how it could be – yes, it is sometimes heartbreaking with contradictions – but there is also a form of cowardice and irresponsibility when Europe sees itself imputed responsibilities in national governance crises.
Yes, its mysteries are complex, yes a text of law knows the longest route there is and can go on for months and months without seeing the light of day which will end up adopting it, but as Angélique Bouin points out, we cannot perhaps struck in Strasbourg by the high quality of the debates, the great mastery of the files, even the most technical, by the MEPs. Last Monday, May 9, the ThinkTank Europa-Nova held its annual conference with franceinfo at studio 104 of Maison de la Radio et de la Musique.
Round tables and conversations have drawn the outlines of what Europe could be in 2050, 30 years after Maastricht. And in the questions put to him, the challenges of energy, the green deal, social issues, digital sovereignty, the defense strategy between China, the United States and Russia, migratory flows, we feel how the European bloc must not split from the inside, but on the contrary bring a breath and a strategy which place the citizen at its heart.
The European citizen must not live with the feeling that the machine which represents him is there to crush him. On the contrary, Europe as a whole, its identity, must improve its way of life. In the post-Covid debates around health, it is about antimicrobials, making chronic diseases preventable, fighting against the aging of the population, improving health infrastructures while in many countries, the public hospital is in crisis, due to a lack of resources and budget cuts. Whatever the subject, it is indeed our lives that are at stake.
The correspondents in Brussels are not evangelists of the European cause, and when situations are Kafkaesque, they are the first to deplore it and talk about it. But we must salute their educational work to encourage citizens to take a better interest in the subject, to seize the debates, to understand how it works, to then discuss it and improve what needs to be improved.
One of the keys to our common future, to our individual lives, is through this understanding and this involvement. Our future is being played out here, and as François Hollande said on Monday May 9 at studio 104, it is not surreal to imagine one day, and why not by 2050, a European president elected by universal suffrage.