Au parlement européen

The financial crisis has exposed the weaknesses of all the larger European countries. As we might have feared, this shocking revelation has dealt a serious blow to our beloved France, which has been very slow to undertake the necessary reforms and is still addicted to public spending. However, the biggest shock has come from the United Kingdom: in just a few months, the country’s ‘Cool Britannia’ image promoted by Tony Blair has fallen victim to the dreaded curse of the Picture of Dorian Gray.

The UK is all at sea. Its flagship, the prestigious City of London, suddenly appears to be steered by the blind. The glorious pound sterling has been reduced to an insular currency. The local press has turned its guns on Westminster, the mother of all parliaments, where many of the expenses claims submitted by MPs and Ministers have been exposed as fraudulent. Despite the injection of additional funds over the past few years, the health, education and transport services are still some way adrift of the Scandinavian model.

It gets worse, however: the UK does not know where it is heading. Should the economy be rebuilt by reviving high-tech industry and advanced technologies, or by confirming financial services as the top priority? Should these financial services be governed by a new legislative framework, or would it be better to restore trust in their creative abilities? In the long term, is the complete freedom to determine the salaries of the financial whiz kids who make – and sometimes break – London’s fortune compatible with the principles of social justice put forward by a left-wing government? Is it possible for the UK to advocate opening up to the outside world in all areas whilst gradually closing itself off from Europe? Aside from the very orthodox litany of the environmentalist creed, now shared by all political parties in the western world, the Conservative Party and its youthful leader, David Cameron, do not give the impression of currently being in a position to provide more specific answers to the major problems facing the country. Lire la suite…

La crise financière a mis au jour les fragilités de tous les grands pays européens. Comme on pouvait le craindre, ce terrible révélateur a été cruel pour notre cher hexagone, qui a tant tardé à engager les réformes nécessaires et qui est toujours drogué à la dépense publique. Mais la plus mauvaise surprise est venue de Grande-Bretagne : en quelques mois, la sémillante image du pays de Tony Blair a été victime de la terrible malédiction du portrait de Dorian Gray.

L’Angleterre ne sait plus où elle est. Son navire amiral, la prestigieuse City de Londres, est soudain apparu gouverné par des aveugles. La glorieuse livre sterling est ravalée au niveau d’une monnaie insulaire. La presse locale se déchaîne contre Westminster, la mère de tous les Parlements, peuplée de députés et de ministres trichant sur leurs factures personnelles. Malgré les tombereaux de crédits supplémentaires déversés depuis quelques années, les services publics de la santé, de l’éducation et des transports ne rattrapent pas le retard accumulé, disons, sur le modèle scandinave.

Mais il y a plus grave : l’Angleterre ne sait pas non plus où elle va. Faut-il reconstruire l’économie en réhabilitant l’industrie et les technologies de pointe, ou en confirmant la priorité absolue aux services financiers ? Ceux-ci doivent-ils être soumis à un cadre législatif nouveau, ou vaut-il mieux refaire confiance à leur fantaisie créatrice ? La liberté absolue des rémunérations des golden boys qui font la fortune de Londres, et parfois sa ruine, est-elle durablement compatible avec la justice sociale mise en avant par un gouvernement de gauche ? Peut-on plaider l’ouverture au monde dans tous les domaines, et se fermer peu à peu à l’Europe ? Mise à part la litanie très orthodoxe du credo écologiste, désormais partagé par tous les partis politiques du monde occidental, le parti conservateur et son jeune leader David Cameron ne donnent pas l’impression d’être en mesure aujourd’hui d’apporter des réponses plus précises aux grands problèmes du pays. Lire la suite…

L’annonce d’un projet d’emprunt national est un nouvel exemple de l’habileté tactique de Nicolas Sarkozy. Aidé – hélas – par l’inculture économique de nos compatriotes, il transforme le péché mortel du surendettement national en un remède miracle pour financer des investissements d’avenir inédits. Au lieu de tourner en rond dans des manifs mensuelles impuissantes contre les méfaits de la crise, les partenaires sociaux sont invités à travailler sur de nouvelles idées de dépenses, pour lesquelles aurait été trouvé un financement miraculeusement indolore, vertueux et quasi illimité. Le contribuable, qui avait toutes les raisons de craindre que la montagne de dettes débouche sur une augmentation de sa charge fiscale, se retrouve transformé en épargnant vertueux, qui sera financièrement récompensé de sa contribution valeureuse et civique au redressement national. Ce faisant, le Président gagne du temps pour faire patienter l’opinion, jusqu’à ce que le plan de relance décidé il y a quelques mois commence réellement à produire ses effets positifs.

Cet emprunt « politique », au sens fort du terme, comporte un risque : celui de ranimer dans l’esprit de nos compatriotes, toujours trop prompts à s’exonérer des efforts nécessaires, l’idée qu’il existe à nouveau une « cagnotte » propre à régler nos problèmes sans douleur. On se souvient du débat surréaliste auquel avait donné lieu, sous le gouvernement Jospin, l’apparition inattendue d’une réduction de l’énorme déficit budgétaire de l’époque : majorité et opposition avaient alors rivalisé pour proposer des dépenses nouvelles, en confondant dans une commune allégresse un moindre déficit et un pactole de ressources nouvelles ! Lire la suite…

The announcement of plans for a new national loan is another example of Nicolas Sarkozy’s tactical skill. Helped – sadly ¬– by the economic illiteracy of our fellow countrymen, he is turning the mortal sin of excessive national debt into a miracle cure to fund new forms of future investments. Instead of endlessly and fruitlessly demonstrating every month about the impact of the crisis, the social partners are being asked to come up with new spending ideas for which miraculously painless, virtuous and virtually unlimited funding appears to have been found. The taxpayer, who had every reason to fear that the mountain of debt would lead to an increase in his taxes, ends up being turned into a virtuous investor who will be financially rewarded for his valiant patriotic contribution to national recovery. In so doing, the President is gaining time to keep the general public quiet until the recovery plan that was agreed a few months ago really starts producing positive results.

The risk with this ‘political’ loan, in the strongest sense of the word, is that it might give our fellow countrymen, who are always only too ready to wriggle out of whatever efforts are needed, the idea that we once again have a pot of money big enough to solve all our problems painlessly. This brings to mind the surreal debate that took place under the Jospin Government, when there was an unexpected reduction in the huge budget deficit at the time: the ruling and opposition parties competed with each other to come up with proposals for new expenditure, in the mistaken belief, as they rubbed their hands with glee, that a smaller deficit meant more money to spend! Lire la suite…

In one of those reversals of moral judgment so familiar to our media-fuelled political system, the ‘stay-at-home party’ has been declared the biggest winner in the latest European elections. This is not the first time: it has become commonplace to regard candidates and/or political parties as both responsible for and victims of the disaffection of sovereign voters. These voters, in exercising their sovereign right, feel that they have every right to choose whether to turn out and vote in order to ‘reward’ the policies they like or, instead, whether to go about their normal business on polling day in order to ‘punish’ all the policies that are not worth a trip to the polling station. Meanwhile, on election night, the television studios are full of people shedding crocodile tears who, between sobs, try to outdo each other in lamenting the lack of effective policies and the decline of democracy.

In the case of the latest European elections, the record levels of collective hypocrisy are not unrelated to the record number of abstentions. Ever since January, either out of laziness, ignorance or, occasionally, out of jealousy, the editorial staff of the major broadcast media have repeatedly hammered out that no one cared about Europe, that Europe was too far removed from everyday concerns and that the French had decided not to turn out and vote. For different reasons, most political parties felt that it was tactically wise to maintain that feeling, even while claiming the opposite: with the notable exception of the Greens, candidates focused their efforts simply on ensuring that their hard-core supporters turned out to vote. The public television service surpassed itself in deliberately ignoring the spirit of its role: it was the party leaders and not the candidates who were invited to attend the only national debate to be aired on public TV (which did not even broadcast a proper election night special)! Some of the regional press went along with this near-boycott, which was not really compensated for by the efforts of other newspapers, though these were, fortunately, supplemented by a large number of new websites, blogs and internet media. Lire la suite…

C’est une première. Depuis trente ans, les électeurs avaient pris l’habitude de considérer que l’élection du Parlement de Strasbourg n’avait pas d’enjeu de pouvoir très clair : dans ces conditions, ceux qui allaient aux urnes préféraient en profiter pour exprimer leur mécontentement envers le gouvernement en place. En 2004 encore, l’impopularité de Jacques Chirac et du gouvernement de Jean-Pierre Raffarin avait valu au PS de conquérir deux fois plus de voix et de sièges que l’UMP. C’est cette tradition qui a conduit, par facilité autant que par paresse, le parti socialiste et, de manière plus surprenante, François Bayrou à refaire campagne cette année au nom du « vote sanction ».

Le boomerang leur est revenu en pleine figure. Les socialistes ont perdu près de la moitié de leurs sièges européens, tandis que le Modem connaissait une véritable déroute.

Car, entre-temps, les citoyens ont compris la leçon de la formidable accélération de l’histoire, bien mieux que beaucoup de leaders politiques. La manière dont Nicolas Sarkozy, au nom de la présidence française de l’Union européenne, a su faire face aux crises majeures de notre temps – la guerre russo-géorgienne, la crise financière, la récession économique, les changements climatiques – a démontré que les grands enjeux du siècle se décidaient désormais au niveau de l’Europe. Les faits ont décidé d’eux-mêmes : le souverainisme est devenu sans objet. Plus personne ne peut prétendre sérieusement que le traitement de ces grands sujets passe par « moins d’Europe ». Le Danemark, la Suède, la Pologne, la Hongrie, les pays baltes, et même de plus en plus de Britanniques, regrettent amèrement d’avoir tardé à rejoindre l’euro avant la tempête financière. Le flamboyant Philippe de Villiers se retrouve seul élu des 532 candidats de la nouvelle famille eurosceptique « Libertas », qui n’ambitionnait pas moins de 100 élus dans toute l’Europe ! Son allié irlandais, Declan Ganley, le « héros » du « non » irlandais au traité de Lisbonne, n’a même pas franchi le seuil minimum pour assurer sa propre élection chez lui. Quant à Jean-Marie Le Pen, il pourra se consacrer à arbitrer la querelle de sa propre succession politique entre sa fille Marine et son ancien dauphin Bruno Gollnisch : tous trois sont les seuls rescapés du Front National au Parlement de Strasbourg… Lire la suite…

It’s a first! For the past thirty years, voters have not really felt very clear about the purpose of the European Parliament elections, and so those who did go out to vote tended to use them as an opportunity to express their dissatisfaction with the government of the day. Even in 2004, the unpopularity of Jacques Chirac and the government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin won the PS (French Socialist Party) twice as many votes and seats as the UMP (Union for a Popular Movement). It was this tradition which – because it was the easy thing to do, and also out of sheer laziness – led the socialist party and, more surprisingly, François Bayrou, to campaign in this year’s election on an ‘anti-government’ ticket.

This strategy has backfired on them spectacularly. The socialists have lost nearly half their seats in the European Parliament, while MoDem has experienced a crushing defeat.

The fact is that the public has by now realised, more so than many political leaders, just how quickly history has moved on. The way in which Nicolas Sarkozy, during the French Presidency of the European Union, managed to tackle the biggest crises of our time – the war between Russia and Georgia, the financial crisis, the recession, climate change – showed that the major issues of the age were now to be decided at European level. The facts speak for themselves: sovereigntism has now become pointless. Nobody can seriously argue that tackling these major issues should involve ‘less Europe’. Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, the Baltic countries, and even increasingly the British, bitterly regret having put off joining the euro before the financial crisis broke. The colourful Philippe de Villiers was the only candidate elected out of 532 from the new Eurosceptic family ‘Libertas’, which had set its sights on winning no less than 100 seats across Europe! His Irish ally, Declan Ganley, the ‘hero’ of the Irish ‘no’ vote on the Lisbon Treaty, did not even get the minimum number of votes to be elected in his own country. As for Jean-Marie Le Pen, he can now concentrate on sorting out the dispute over his own political succession between his daughter Marine and his former heir apparent, Bruno Gollnisch: these three are now the Front National’s only remaining survivors in the Strasbourg Parliament. Lire la suite…

« L’Europe existe, à nous tous d’y prendre le pouvoir », article paru dans « La Tribune », le 2 juin 2009