During 2003, a major innovation has been introduced into the French Constitution, namely the right of experimentation. Local and regional authorities will henceforth be able to innovate by exercising powers that are not systematically assigned to all authorities in their tier of government. In point of fact, the Basque Country started experimenting in this way, behind the back of the Constitution, ten years ago! This was the result of a very unusual move by French standards, which was initiated by a few men but now involves the whole of Basque society. The initial idea came to a subprefect of Bayonne, Christian Sapède. Observing that it was difficult for the main players in political, economic and cultural life to get together and talk, he proposed that everyone should rally round a common project: our vision of the Basque Country in 2010. The top brains in the authority for spatial planning and regional action, DATAR, were enlisted to instruct us in the chosen strategy, and a kind of quiet miracle took place. Elected representatives, company bosses, academics, cultural activists and Basque nationalists talked to each other, exchanged opinions and ideas and realised that they shared the same ambition for their region. So they set about working together.
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One of the mysteries of history is the way in which it varies between slow phases and bursts of acceleration. We are clearly experiencing quite sharp acceleration in Europe and the world. The Iraq crisis has shone a glaring light on contradictions that have hitherto been carefully underestimated or even concealed. It requires players on the international stage to ask questions in public that are normally taboo. Observers, quick to jump to categorical and definitive conclusions and overawed by the fracas of words and weapons, have sometimes missed the point.
1 – In spite of the commendable contribution of President Chirac, the seriousness of the transatlantic crisis is not primarily due to the attitude of France. The United States has long since learned how to handle the French loose cannon, the ‘unruly pupil’ of the Atlantic class, just as the European Union has learned how to handle its own unruly pupil in London. On this occasion, for the first time, Germany has joined France in its dissent, and that changes everything. A Franco-German bloc representing 40% of the population and wealth of the European Union, the pioneering axis of the entire process of European integration, cannot be treated like a common outsider. Its opposition changes everything, especially since the French and German leaders are expressing the deep-seated feelings not only of their own peoples but also of public opinion throughout Europe, whose population is protesting everywhere against the military solution.
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Le 1er janvier 2003, nous fêtons les dix ans du marché intérieur européen. C’est depuis cette date qu’est assurée la libre circulation des marchandises, des services, des capitaux et des personnes au sein de la Communauté européenne. Près de 300 lois européennes (les « directives ») ont rendu possible cette révolution tranquille. Mais ce ne fut, ni sans mal, ni sans échecs.
Ma première expérience du marché intérieur, je l’ai connue paradoxalement à l’Assemblée nationale française, dès 1986. Nous venions de ratifier l’Acte unique. J’étais un nouveau député, jeune, enthousiaste et européen. J’ai été très surpris de voir que beaucoup des projets de loi que nous soumettait le gouvernement ignoraient superbement que, dans ces mêmes domaines, à Bruxelles, les institutions européennes préparaient, discutaient, et finalement adoptaient les directives régissant l’espace unique. Sur le contrôle du marché financier, la circulation des travailleurs, la liberté d’établissement, la validité des diplômes étrangers, nous défaisions tranquillement à Paris ce qui se tricotait patiemment à Bruxelles. Non pas par une mauvaise volonté politique, mais par l’ignorance condescendante dont nos élites politiques, parlementaires et administratives faisaient preuve à l’égard de la Communauté européenne. J’ai alors constitué un intergroupe parlementaire, ouvert à tous les partis, et baptisé « PENELOPE » – symbole de la tapisserie sans cesse remise sur le métier et initiales de « Pour l’Entrée des Normes Européennes dans les Lois Ordinaires des Parlements d’Europe ». Nous avons décidé de vérifier systématiquement ce que nous avons appelé « l’eurocompatibilité » des projets de loi nationaux avec les projets de directives en cours d’examen, voire avec les directives déjà adoptées. A défaut, nous déposions des amendements pour rendre les textes eurocompatibles. Ainsi celui que nous avons appelé « l’amendement Mazarin », opposé à une réforme de l’administration française qui continuait de réserver les fonctions de postier ou de jardinier public aux seuls citoyens français, alors même que l’Acte unique ouvrait les emplois administratifs à tous les ressortissants communautaires : malgré la référence au texte du traité, et l’exemple de Mazarin, Premier ministre italien de la France du jeune Louis XIV, l’Assemblée nationale rejeta notre proposition avec mépris. Combat d’arrière-garde absurde: quelques années après, la transposition d’une directive obligea la France à « capituler ».
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On 1 January 2003, we shall celebrate ten years of the European internal market. Since that date in 1993, the free movement of goods, services, capital and people within the European Community has been assured. Almost 300 European laws, known as directives, paved the way for that revolution. But the internal market has not been without its difficulties and its failures.
My first experience of the internal market came, paradoxically, in the French National Assembly back in 1986. We had just ratified the Single European Act. I was a new Member of Parliament – young, enthusiastic and pro-European. I was very surprised to see that many of the legislative bills the government was presenting to us were drawn up in blissful ignorance of the fact that the European institutions were preparing, discussing and ultimately adopting directives governing the single market. On supervision of the financial market, on free movement of labour, on freedom of establishment, on the validity of foreign diplomas, we in Paris were quietly unravelling what was being patiently knitted together in Brussels – not out of political malevolence but because of the condescending ignorance of the European Community demonstrated by our top politicians, parliamentarians and administrators. For this reason I formed a parliamentary joint committee, open to all parties, which was christened ‘Penelope’ to symbolise the constant weaving and undoing of the European tapestry and as an acronym of Pour l’Entrée des Normes Européennes dans les Lois Ordinaires des Parlements d’Europe (‘for the entry of European rules into national acts of parliament in Europe’). We decided to verify systematically what we called the ‘Euro-compatibility’ of national legislative bills with draft directives that were currently under examination and even with the directives that had already been adopted. If we found any incompatibilities, we tabled amendments to make the bills Euro-compatible. For example, we tabled what we called the ‘Mazarin amendment’ in opposition to a bill reforming the French administration which perpetuated the requirement of French citizenship for postal workers and public gardeners, even though the Single European Act had opened access to administrative employment to all nationals of Community countries. In spite of the reference to the text of the EEC Treaty and the cited example of Cardinal Jules Mazarin, or Giulio Mazzarino, the Italian who served as first minister of France under the young Louis XIV, the National Assembly disdainfully rejected our amendment. This turned out to be a futile rearguard action, because France was forced to ‘capitulate’ on transposing a directive a few years later.
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