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In Cergy Pontoise for a debate on “France-Europe, I love you … Neither do I”
On February 11, 2014, the ESSEC Tuesdays hosted Jean Pisani-Ferry, Yves Bertoncini and Jean-Dominique Giuliani for a discussion on France’s role and place in Europe.
Presentation: Badreddine Lehalali
Interview: Agathe Brangier and Charlotte Steiner
An idea conceived in the nineteenth century, mended in the inter-war period and implemented in 1957, Europe is now a major factor in the lives of the inhabitants of the Old Continent. However, since its fiftieth birthday celebrated with great fanfare in 2007, its popularity rating continues to decline and its usefulness to be questioned. As for its raison d’être, nothing seems more vague.
From enlargement to enlargement, Europe has lost its identity and cohesion. Instead of strengthening it, its successive enlargements have gradually diluted it and its voice is lost in a cacophony of national-selfish claims. The old federalists’ dreams of the fathers of Europe are more than ever opposed to a hardly unionist reality in which everyone defends tooth and nail his own interests.
This bureaucracy with Brussels sauce is not frankly tasty, Europe is more and more disavowed by its people. While in Ukraine we die to integrate it, even among its founding members, some fight to get out. In France, in particular, the National Front, the most virulent spokesman for the withdrawal of the Union, comes first in all the polls for the May elections. Even across the Rhine, breaking the paradigm in which we evolved since the post-war period of a Germany that would be European or would not be, Angela Merkel decided that from now on Europe will be German or no longer. While the Federal Republic is no longer the political dwarf of yesteryear, the other part of the couple, France, lost its influence in the construction process.
In a Europe whose orientations are more and more given by the ECB, France represents indeed a thorny point: Northern Europe versus Southern Europe? Or, without euphemism: Europe of the rich or the poor? The six formerly associated founding members, now dissociated, now look more like a scattered troop of political, economic or moral cripples than an engine pulling the Twenty-Eight up.
So, Europe, soluble problem only in the dissolution? Answer next Tuesday.
Yves Bertoncini is a director of the European Commission and director of the Notre Europe-Institut Jacques Delors think tank.
Jean-Dominique Giuliani is a French entrepreneur and politician, president of the Robert Schuman Foundation.
Jean Pisani-Ferry is an economist, Commissioner General for Strategy and Foresight, expert for the European Commission and specialist in Europe.