“Prosperity, democracy, solidarity: these were the three objectives of European construction when it began with the ECSC and the Treaties of Rome, and such they remain. Success was there for a long time…” writes historian Nicole Gnesotto in her essay Europe: change or perish published by Tallandier editions last January.
It is true that the creation of the ECSC was, after the Second World War, a great step forward in the reconstruction of Europe devastated by the war. Here Robert Schumann was the follower with Jean Monnet for France of the idea of a United Europe, even of the United States of Europe, as Victor Hugo had proposed or others who, throughout the first half of the 20th century, had laid the foundations of the concept of a united Europe, also a political Europe, but a Europe with many questions, Denis de Rougemont, Louise Weiss, Paul Valéry, Count Coudenhove-Kalergi, Romain Rolland, Stefan Zweig, Jules Romain, Thomas Mann, Aristide Briand and so many others.
“All in all, even the most skeptical of European citizens could not deny the considerable contribution of European construction to prosperity, democratic stability and solidarity with the most deprived, in Europe and in the rest of the world.”
Nicole Gnesotto, historian
But with a more than positive balance sheet, Nicole Gnesotto also sounds the alarm by pointing out that we must not stop at this observation: “Yes, Europe is a world reference. But will it one day be able to move from a status of world reference to a role of world influence? That is the whole question of the future of the Union.”
The question is posed, because today what we call Europe must face a frenzied globalization which enriches a minority, and leaves aside a majority. The financial crisis of the 2010s and the pandemic crisis highlight this reality which provokes disenchantment among the European population.
“It is first of all a feeling of economic vulnerability that strikes a good part of the middle classes, faced with the acceleration of an often incomprehensible globalization”, says Nicole Gnesotto, pProfessor at the CNAM, where she created the “European Union” chair, Vice-President of the Jacques-Delors Institute, specialist in European and defense issues.
Here, if Europe is an economic giant, but as has often been said, a political dwarf, Europe, its institutions and those who run them, have omitted the concept of geopolitics which prevails today in any action political and economic, even environmental. And it is this rub that hurts, because the absence of geopolitics is causing precious time to be lost in the construction of the European Union, at a time when powers such as China are appearing, a Russia-China union, to come India, among others.
words that “draw a universe of maximum risk against a background of minimum political prevention. The confusion affects both our strategies and our values”, underlines the historian. This is why Nicole Gnesotto’s book is called Europe: change or perish.
Its political non-existence considerably slows down the path of the Union in international politics. And perhaps this slowdown is due to the heaviness of its institutions. But, in addition to the question of globalisation, Nicole Gnesotto also addresses the question of European defence. If this notion remains a “sea serpent”it is nonetheless true that a question appears, more glaring today than ever, the question of NATO and the American umbrella.
If the great ally remains so, the United States, from the Obama era, through its international policy, show the Europeans that their interests went more towards Asia than towards the “Old continent”. Question then, and in spite of the topicality of the Ukrainian crisis, Europe will have or will be able to remain under the umbrella of Washington, and should not it take in hand its defense? A vast question that still remains unanswered today, while the tensions around Europe are real.
Nicole Gnesotto also devotes her work to the Franco-German couple. Is it still a couple or rather a partnership as it is called across the Rhine? Can a single couple guarantee the stability of a union of 27 states?
Another couple begins to take shape facing a rather Germanic Scandinavian and Protestant Northern Europe, the Franco-Italian couple, more in phase with a Catholic-Orthodox Southern Europe, a Paris-Rome line which could be at the birth of a European group made up of France, Germany, Italy and Spain, representing a majority of Europeans and real economic weight, ensuring European governance.
Moreover, the question of the form of governance has been addressed very little since the creation of the ECSC. Wouldn’t it be time to think about it seriously if this union of states wants to face up to present and future challenges?