Contrarily to what supposed to be ‘political leaders’ such as Michel Rocard or Daniel Cohn Bendit are saying, the EU integration project as dreamed in the 50s is not dead, but what they stand (60s/70s) for and what they are in the political arena is indeed dead. It is not the EU political future which belongs to yesterday; it’s they and their friends who do have no political future.

They dreamed of a US-style federation for Europe. And they suddenly discovered that it will not be. So they conclude that the EU project as planned by its founders is terminated, kaput. What arrogance! Where did they learn that Monnet or Schuman, for instance, where sharing such a dream? Who are they to say that? What European achievements can they personally claim to prove to us that they belong to a generation of ‘builders’?

Is it the inability of the former to become a French president, or the incapacity of the latter to become anything else but the ‘68’ student leader, which give them this authority?

Is it their tendency to believe that because they do not have enough imagination to think of alternative roads towards the future that therefore there are no roads but that of submission to what “happens”?

Is it their complacency to stay among their ‘institutional ring’ and to believe that history is being made therein that give them such a somber perspective?

Well, maybe I can agree on the last explanation. One striking thing when you move around in the institutions these days is that they still think that they are making the agenda for the future of the EU. After the collapse of the stability pact, after the ongoing collision between the Turkish question and the constitutional referenda, it is somehow amazing to see that those people still think they are able to plan anything serious for the future.

The coming year will demonstrate on a very large scale that from now on European citizens are emancipated from the EU institutions and the national political parties. Why?

Because they do not trust those ‘leaders’ anymore.

And why don’t they trust them anymore? Well that’s not very tricky to figure out. In politics, leadership is connected to vision, will, and courage (which is more than often the courage to say ‘no’, not ‘yes’); and in democracy, with leveling with people, bringing in new players, talking to people’s mind and soul. It is also directly linked with being able to lose: to lose or not to seek a ‘golden seat’ in one or the other institution, to refuse to follow the most powerful players when you believe you should not. Well, all those kinds of things are things that they have not done for at least a decade.

A lot of very good people are trapped today within the EU system: good civil servants stuck in their Commission jobs by incompetent or dishonest top managers, good EuroMPs blocked in their attempt to act as representative of the European people by their national party bosses, good lobbyist or NGO representatives who would like to combine the interest of their sector or cause with the general European interest (if any institution is still able of embodying it), good European correspondents who dream of being able to tell their readers what they really see and think of the Brussels circus.

And of course, there are 450 millions European citizens who essentially are convinced that the European Union is their collective future and are increasingly desperate stemming from the knowledge that their political classes and leaders are absolutely unable to provide any long term vision, to demonstrate any political courage and therefore to offer any reason to support the current political course of the EU.

So Mr. Rocard and Cohn Bendit (and those who share there opinion in the EU system), let’s prepare your retirement plan. Obviously you have lost the ability to speak even of what could or should be Europe’s future. You are the past. Already. That’s life. New European forces are moving up. They will emerge in 2005.

Paris,
Franck Biancheri