In The Days

• Source: Independent
• News Date: 10/27/08
• Author: Sharon Ellul-Bonici
• Submitted By: Remnant

The European Parliament moved the plenary session back to Strasbourg this week, after the collapsed hemicycle ceiling was repaired. So it is back to the monthly travelling circus routine between Brussels and Strasbourg, a folly that costs European taxpayers e250 million annually.

New World Order

“And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.”
—Dan 2:43

Yet this time the dull Strasbourg building was again enlightened by the very colourful French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who addressed the plenary last Tuesday as part of the “European Council Report and Commission Statement” (on the EU summit in Brussels the week before). Continuously gesticulating, with dramatic body language to make his point, Sarkozy is definitely one of the best speakers I have listened to at a European level. Not only does his rhetoric clearly define his aims without letting off too much of the truth, he also has an uncanny ability to wriggle out of answering difficult questions without appearing to evade them.

Equally grandiose is his vision for Europe, although not new to anyone who has followed the development of the European Union. “Europe,” he told Euro-parliamentarians, “stopped the war in Georgia and got a commitment from the Russians to withdraw their troops” (following the terrifying attacks committed on the South Ossetian Russian population by Georgia’s Saakashvili, a US puppet of dubious capabilities). Reminded by an MEP that his personal initiative to Russia and Georgia, although commendable, had no mandate from the European Council, which means he was not representing the EU, Sarkozy admitted that he had no mandate, but “the Russian troops had no mandate either,” he added, before further explaining that he was a man of action first, discussion later.

Europe must speak with one voice on the world scene, Sarkozy emphasised, leading the way in resolving conflicts around the globe and in finding solutions to the current financial crisis, which is only set to worsen.

Most EU leaders share Sarkozy’s vision. It is a European Union that is able to take over the “banner of democracy” from the declining (some would say fallen) United States. And although it is arguable as to whether this US banner is one of international democratisation or of despotic imperialism, there is little doubt that this is the current direction of the so-called “European project”.

To replace one you must act like one, or so, it seems, is Sarkozy’s thinking. Calling for an “economic government” for the euro zone, he argued that the EU has a single currency, it has a central bank and it has a monetary policy, yet it has no economic government with which the European Central Bank can discuss financial matters. When reminded by a French MEP that the Maastricht criteria forbid any political influence of the central bank, and that the Treaty of Lisbon would have even forbidden the subsidising of banks and other enterprises, Sarkozy played around his belief that the Lisbon Treaty is not perfect.

If my counting is correct, during the morning session alone Sarkozy downed five cups of espressos soothed by cool water. It was definitely his stage and he needed that caffeine. For this was no ordinary speech and an “economic government” is no simple matter. It is a huge leap forward, for there is no way of defining a limit to what such a government could do. It would eventually require something like the US Treasury Department that would govern a central European budget. That is quite different from the current system of pooling in by member States in order to fund projects across the EU (apart from financing the EU institutions). An economic government would eventually govern a budget for anything that falls under the competence of the Union, including, in time, a federal police and the military as provided in the Lisbon Treaty.

Touching on the Lisbon Treaty, Sarkozy said he has a road map for a solution to the Irish question – last June’s rejection of the Lisbon Treaty in the Irish referendum. To this end, he said he would submit his road map at the December summit just before the termination of his six-month EU presidency.

Indeed, the Lisbon Treaty is an essential component of Sarkozy’s vision. As he stressed last Tuesday, “Europe” needs to be institutionally reformed. “We cannot go on with a system of a rotating EU presidency,” he declared.

The Lisbon Treaty not only provides for a “permanent” EU president and a foreign affairs minister, it also lays the foundation of his vision by further limiting the veto and mostly doing away with intergovernmental conferences to revise the treaties.

But Sarkozy goes beyond a “United States of Europe”, as former Belgian Prime Minister Verhofstadt used to call it. Europe, he maintained, has to lead the way out of this global financial crisis by centrally-positioning itself in the formation of a “new world governance”, or as Commission President Barroso put it, “a new global order” (reminiscent of Bush senior’s famous “New World Order” speech in 1991).

To this effect, Sarkozy revealed that starting from mid-November, the United States and “Europe” will hold a series of world summits to which the rest of the G7, along with other influential nations, such as Russia, China and India, will be invited.

It all sounds paradigm shifting. And no doubt there are many citizens across the EU that are taken in by this kind of talk. After all, is it not better to be a citizen of a powerful federal State, rather than a puny State with little or no influence at all? It all depends, of course, on whether the citizens of the powerful State share in that power and are allowed to benefit from the generation of wealth.

The Soviet Union was powerful, but this did not feed and clothe the Soviets in a way they would have preferred. Nor did it give them democratic powers with which to protect their rights, even if their constitution guaranteed such rights. And like the Americans, the Russians had to pay for (and fight in) imperial wars of aggression. The United States, of course, is another case in point that unfolds as we go along. I believe Maltese citizenship is nowadays worth much more than an American one.

The question of whether the European Union is ushering in a new era for Western civilisation, or whether it is in fact a symptom of the West’s decline, has become a moot point in the debate on the future of Europe.

For even if this is a significant point, we are reminded that “Europe” is itself the “beacon of democracy”, and entrusting its political centre with more powers could only lead to more democracy across the globe and more wealth to its citizens. True to financial lingo, Europe’s past holds no guarantees for its future. Yet Sarkozy seems to be guaranteeing that Europe’s future will not mirror its past.

Sharon Ellul-Bonici is a prospective MEP candidate with the Malta Labour Party and currently works in the European Parliament.