A Political and Moral Essay

The theses which follow will appear utopian, as indeed they are. But utopia becomes a necessity when change is a matter of urgency.
This is because:
- the dangers which threaten men and citizens at the start of a new millennium can’t allow the political conscience to remain half-asleep any longer;
- societies’ problems must be faced and tackled at a world-wide level due to the globalization of the economy and the worldwide spread of cultural information;
- a new historical subject is now emerging: Europe as a regional ensemble, and this in spite of the obstacles raised by the Nation-States, which themselves control the project.
Europe must become our hope now, and this hope must be realized in the future.
It will certainly be remarked, and it may or may not shock some readers, that nation-state has already been eliminated from our perspectives. But for the clarity of our thesis this was necessary. A true vision of the new Europe cannot be reached if a general and stubborn blindness to fast changing realities persists: among these realities, at the turn of the century, are the erosion of decision-making powers, the condemnation for historical crimes and the loss of political pertinence of the State this State which emerged between the XIII and XVI centuries, hardened by an authoritative rule and centralization between the XVII and XX century and reached its own frontiers through inexpiable wars. As far as the concept of nation is concerned we will take it at the time when it was created in France after the American model between 1789 and 1793 before it degenerated into imperialism and centralization.
Today, Europe can, in its turn, become such a Nation and it seems there is no other model. It is a negotiation of history and all history is made by negotiations which will tell how the State can become a mediator towards this indispensable mutation, and how the guarantees it offers, in spite of its functional tyranny, to men and citizens, can be safeguarded under the seal of a new historical subject.
According to what has become more and more obvious in recent years "re-founding the Republic" cannot be seriously envisaged. In Europe the days of the Republic are over. Only a European Constitution can help us to get out of four kinds of dead ends or deadlocks that appeared at the end of the century and which are the final phases of previous evolutions which have suddenly accelerated.

The dead end of State-nationalism
At the same time that the globalization of the economy and stock-exchanges put an end to "national markets" which had promoted and supported the building of nation-states in the period of history which goes from the XVI century to the 1960Õs, these Nation-States lived on in their shape, structure and nominal sovereignty.
In the Balkans we have seen a return of nationalism in the forms of cruelty and savagery we thought had disappeared once and for all with nazism. The remedies that the international community found to this series of savage conflicts, after two local wars (Bosnia and Kosovo), are merely local partitions which are nothing but a return to the sources of the trouble, i.e. State-nationalism, serve as a protection to war criminals and show their impotence to alleviate ethnic tensions.
The American military air intervention in Serbia was carried out practically out the limits of legality sanctioned by the U.N. This operation, after the war against Iraq, has proved that this organization of Nations to safeguard peace was but a Club of States where force prevails in both cases the force of a self-proclaimed "world policeman". It has renewed the scandal of the great bombing raids of the second world war: the punishing of civil populations for the crimes committed by their oppressors.
However two principles have emerged which will stand as hand marks in the history of humanity:
- first: the right and duty to intervene in the defence of oppressed communities on condition that the strategies of great powers do not choose arbitrarily between groups (why Albanians and not Kurds?) and that a clear distinction be made between peoples and their oppressors;
- second: a supra-national responsibility in peace-keeping and protection of freedoms. If in this respect Europe has been absent or has lagged behind, the idea of a European military force of intervention has, at least, taken shape.
But can these two principles be acted upon by this other Club of States which is Europe in its present form?

The dead end of Territory
National markets were organized in the capitalist phase of the XIX century as the regency of a central power over territory within its borders, coupling this, at time, with a free-trade policy as conditions required, which seems somewhat hypocritical!
In the case of a hyper-centralized State, of which France has been the model, the capitalist power has applied to its territory a strategy of regular exploitation of its peripheries which looked rather like an "internal colonialism" and was very strong between 1860 and 1970.
Stop-gap measures generally known as "aménagement du territoire" (i.e. town and country planning) taken in a final period (1950-1970) very closely followed the process of territorial imbalance. At the same time the weight of the Common Market worsened the imbalance at the periphery, making this "internal colonialism" more visible (cf. coal crisis and pit closures) by the end of the period. In their turn the advances in the constitution of this Common Market which have led to the marginalizing of the strong areas of the national territory and the increasing globalization of the economy, have, since about 1980, created a new economic situation. The French center the Paris area is far from the center of Europe and cannot protect itself any longer except by means of a massive national investment in the "inescapable Capital" and a perverse use of regionalisation towards a further growth of the Ile de France region. "L’aménagement du territoire" is, in practice, forgotten.
On the contrary the French regions, like all those of Europe and in spite of the handicap of a biased process of regionalisation, have begun to "feel the space", that is to say to discover the natural relations of their geographic situation which the artifice of a territory drawn by ancient wars and power diplomacy had blurred for centuries.
At the same time European contracts, credits and subsidies at the outset controlled by the States tend today to be freed from the supervision (cf. the Interreg. Programs). The Europe of areas and regions is in the process of being created as the limits and constraints imposed by States are weakening or fading out. It is the very concept of "territory", a political boundary-marking imposed on socio-economic conditions, which has become outmoded and practically useless. It covers a reality which already belongs to the past.

The dead ends of globalization
Runaway globalization accelerated during the last five or six years of the XX century, this was largely a consequence of the collapse of state-socialism (here communism). It seems to be reaching a climax without serious obstacles in its path. But its triumph seems to beget its own deadlocks.
We see three of them:
- By suppressing or erasing national borders it allows the competition of large interstate regions which take shape on a global scale and whose chances suddenly look unequal. This unequal development that pertains to the very nature of capitalism, accelerated by the stock-exchange driven economies encompasses the whole planet. It renews and carries to its highest level the colonialism of the ancient colonialist powers, but also on a smaller regional scale, for example in Europe, it revives the internal colonialism of centralized States. Since globalization obeys no strict rules or laws it cannot but produce inter-regional social conflicts of which the current structuring of Europe between South and North, West and East seems to announce.
- As the whole world is covered by the global market it makes traditional means of production obsolete and it disrupts ways of life and social-cultural habits which must fall into the melting-pot of a unified consumer society. This has already produced a kind of backlash. The fundamental cultural claims which emerged thirty years ago in Occitania (South of France) on the Larzac plateau have now manifested themselves in the demonstrations of Seattle and Davos in all their humanist impetus and picturesque riotousness. Thus all that was local is being moulded into the planetary. The conflict cannot but deepen.
- Finally the collusion between the political classes, the illegal fringe and the criminal classes, which were commonplace but relatively unusual in the old days, has just taken unheard dimensions. It has developed, with the most dangerous traffics (such as drugs and arms deals) at the very heart of the Wall Street stock exchange power. It has seized the substantial influence over some national governments. In Russia, for example, it has resulted in a paradoxical situation where a reinforced state-nationalism serves in its shape a Mafia-state as a screen or shield for international criminals. The danger has become huge.

The nuclear dead end
During the last half-century, atomic energy has supplied the club of powers who had the means with an arsenal of destruction capable of condemning the planet to death several times over. The equilibrium of terror has undoubtedly prevented a world-wide conflict. But this has now resulted in a deadlock from which we find no exit. It is obvious that this deadly arsenal must be destroyed (which is much more difficult than building it) but due to the weight and persistence of state sovereignties there is no world authority capable to take this decision. A stark paradox: planetary development has escaped from the hands of the States but the destruction of the planet remains in their hands and at the mercy of their petty quarrels and rivalries.
Civil nuclear power poses a danger as well. Chernobyl has proved and continues to prove that the gain in productivity brought about by atomic energy is paid back through a threat to the planet. A contest has now been undertaken between the maintenance of atomic power plants and the fight against the dangers they involve (which cannot be reduced to zero). Germany has made the first move, although insufficient so far, in order to deal with this dilemna.
France is coming to a turning point: its "all nuclear strategy", once a subject of great national pride, despite the destruction without pity of regional resources such as coal, cannot be reversed without a negotiation with its electricity consumers and European clients. Either France keeps its nuclear electricity supply and poses inacceptable threats to Europe or it joins a European plan to replace atomic energy with a mix of new energies and the use of other former non-renewable fuels. In order to escape from these dead ends the proposal of European democracy, according to me, should have three dimensions.

The European government
There is no mistery about that Europe needs a unified government fully responsible to an Assembly elected by universal suffrage on a non-national list system, with regional modulations necessary to equalize chances, if needed. Her chief innovation would be the affirmation of a political subject of a new kind: the moral political subject. But if we look at things properly this is what the Nation meant in 1789. In order to reach this goal the laying out of democratic European institutions ought to be accompanied by four solemn declarations. Declaration to renounce nuclear power and such industries destructive of the biosphere, within the framework of a European comprehensive plan of conversion spread over twenty years (Europe of ecology). Declaration of acknowledgement of a right to self-organization by national communities, regional or immigrated, in particular linguistic and cultural terms (Europe of Cultural Rights).
Declaration about power, which in a democracy cannot be but ascendant, which means that a decisional pyramid is established from the civic-base unit (municipality or country) up to the European top, passing through the level of regional government (Federal Europe). Declaration of acknowledgement of social solidarity, that is to say to replace the particular and ineffective fights against unemployment with a periodic revaluation of employment distribution and financial supports (Social Europe). Such an organization propped up by such important pledges does not solve the world’s problems but it defines a privileged area for civic experimentation and establishes at a planetary scale a pole of training and impulse for "universal peace making".

European Territorial Organization
The anarchy which the centralized State maintains in the development of regions and the recent intervention of globalization must be replaced by a rational organization, which poses three questions.

The question of the "civic area" of Europe
Currently the enlargement of Europe is defined on the basis of the application of Nation-States without any consideration of geographic, historical or cultural coherence. Originating in a local and conjunctural agreement at the world scale, between a group of occidental States the European area runs the risk of becoming a territorial monster brutally and carelessly traversed by insuperable contradictions. A debate must be established between the fifteen member States in order to decide a transition period during which a sound procedure for enlargement will be defined according to a strategy of internal complementarities and external links and connections.

The question of the basic organic unit
It will be necessary to balance globalization and the territorial weight inherited from States with a manageable form of local democracy which will lead everywhere to the promotion of the relational geographic unit either traditional or post-modern which is known as "pays" in France, "kreis" in Germany, "comarca" in Spain, etc. But we must give this system a well-defined ecological function to protect and organize the local environment, together with a social function of resource equilibrium and work-distribution. It should be given a civic statute, i.e. an Assembly with concrete powers elected by universal ballot.

The question of strategic space organization
It must be clearly stated that it cannot be the State which has deliberately shown that it preserved territorial dysfunctions, the tyranny of center and isolationism. The basic founding unit must be the "European Region" as much as possible with a well-defined historical and cultural identity and with equal powers within the whole concerned area. The region being open by contract to inter-regional relations on the European scale but also to the outside world (for example on the Mediterranean). The setting up of institutions and the joint development of the Senate and a European Economical and Social Committee operating in close cooperation with the European Assembly. Regional autonomy must be guaranteed at its own level by a Parliament elected by universal suffrage based on the countries.The creation of a European Area to regulate globalization It has two basic aspect.

The economic aspect
We need to create at the European level what the States, by betraying their proclaimed sovereignty, have not been able to create and which does not exist in the Europe we have built so far: a tool for the control of global mobility of capital. This does not constitute an archaic form of protectionism. It actually consists in letting produced resources flow upward and investment flow downward through a European Development Bank controlled by Civic Power at its three levels and which would implement the fundamental choices made by these assemblies. This is the present dynamic form which suits the functioning of a liberal economy of "regional ownership", which was formulated in the old days to correct "internal colonialism". This might be the beginning of a "third way" between dead socialism and a capitalism which has reached its dead end.

The cultural aspect
It is first of all linguistic. Always in the linguistic history of mankind the market of goods has been accompanied by a market of language. Globalization sustained by Internet has resulted in a surprisingly fast world-wide spreading of English. One can regret this new form of imperialism but it is vain to think opposing it. The game has already been lost. From this point of view the refusal of the French which has a tint of imperial nostalgia is only a series of ineffective and sometimes ludicrous diversions. In this field Europe has a positive choice to make whose economical aspect cannot escape anyone. But this choice of a practical tool for universal communication leaves intact the statement of a right, also universal, recently strongly put forward: the right of any language and any culture to its free development and the right of those who are in danger to be the object of rescue operations. This way another dimension of globalization has been defined which we shall call for cultural plurality. Of this plurality where French, in the same way as German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish but also Breton, Occitan, Gaelic, Welsh, Catalan, Frisian etc. have a chance to keep a place in the modern world, a European Bureau of Cultural rights should be responsible.
All these options not only would tune Europe up to the evolution of the world in its most positive aspects, but would constitute an example for others, or, as the Nations at a stage of power and self-celebration, liked to say of themselves in bygone days, Europe would become a "lighthouse" for the world.