Giampiero Bordino (ed.)

Un nuovo diritto per la democrazia e lo sviluppo in Europa. L’iniziativa dei cittadini europei (Ice)

[A New Law for Democracy and Development in Europe: The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI)]

Bologna, Il Mulino, 2013

Publication sponsored by the Einstein Center for International Studies, Turin

The coincidence of three circumstances led the European Federalist Movement (MFE) to promote a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) for employment and development. The Einstein Center for International Studies (CESI), interpreting, as it always did, its statutory mission to support the knowledge of the European federal unification policy, promoted the publication of the anthology here presented, edited by Professor Giampiero Bordino, which explains assumptions, methods and objectives of the ECI.

The first, fundamental circumstance is the economic crisis. It is the poisoned fruit of a financial crisis that has among its causes: the fundamental imbalances in the balance of payments (in particular of the United States and China); the asymmetric international monetary system which allows the United States to finance indefinitely its twin deficits (of the balance of current payments with foreign countries, and of the federal budget) thanks to the double role of the dollar (as national and international currency); the financial deregulation that in the last three decades, characterized by growing American deficits (due to wars and internal consumption), attracted to the United States the capitals needed to finance them; the growth of inequality in income distribution, despite the reduction of absolute poverty; the limits of an economic model characterized by the overexploitation of natural resources and the underuse of human resources. The euro, a currency without a State (or with too many States) is subject to violent speculative attacks, led by Wall Street, directed at sovereign debts considered completely sustainable until 2007 (as evidenced by the spreads then in force). The European responses, once again influenced by national self-interests, have not been able to reconcile rigor with development. The financial turnaround, needed to reduce the debt burden, caused contractions of the gross domestic product much higher than expected (as recognized by the IMF). In some countries, the cure has worsened the disease, since the fall in GDP, and hence of tax revenues, has increased the debt/GDP ratio.

Unmet needs (especially of common goods) and available production resources (especially young unemployed people) describe a typical Keynesian situation in which government intervention is necessary to address capacities, otherwise left idle, to satisfy needs, otherwise ignored. Keynes was an English nationalist and his frame of reference was that of Great Britain, even if extended to a boundless and transient Empire. It must therefore be noted that our theoretical framework, from the economic point of view, is rather post-Keynesian. This heterodox doctrine, as opposed to the neoliberal and to the neo-Keynesian ones, recognizes the impracticability of national recipes in a world characterized by fundamental interdependencies. Free-riding is the most important example, but not the only one, of this difficulty: a state that relies on deficit spending to support domestic demand will see foreign companies benefit in proportion to the country’s propensity to import. In the European context, where interdependence is enormously greater than the global one, the adoption of Keynesian policies at national level is even more absurd (but Germany first and France now resorted to them). So, the main theoretical reason for which a plan for development and employment should be implemented at the European level is clear. There is also a practical reason at least as compelling. The European Union has zero debt and has a triple-A rating, therefore investments made under its control and financed by its lending capacity would enjoy a very favorable cost of money, provided that the Union itself possesses a tax revenue to be used to service the debt. In the federalist Initiative it is proposed, to this end, to destine to the European budget the tax on financial transactions and a carbon tax. We do not hide the fact that the likely opposition of Great Britain would require the establishment of a separate budget for the eurozone alone. The special European plan for sustainable development, the roadmap from the Fiscal Union to the European Federation and the positive effects on the state of expectations are presented, respectively, in the essays by Alfonso Iozzo, Alberto Majocchi and Simone Vannuccini.

The second circumstance, political and legal, is given by the introduction, in the Lisbon Treaty’s Art. 11 of the European citizens’ right to ask to the Commission to make a legislative proposal in matters falling within the competence of the EU. As noted by Laura Roscio, “it is the first transnational instrument of participatory democracy in world history: a right and an unprecedented power that will allow citizens to influence the agenda of the Community, directly contributing to the definition of the legislative program of the EU”. This tool offers to the MFE and to the UEF the opportunity to support the “Campaign for the European Federation. Federal Union Now!”, with a complementary action, able to use the rights already obtained and the existing legal framework to exert pressure from the bottom on governments in favor of a balancing between rigor and development policies, an action all the more necessary and urgent as the crisis widens the gap between citizens and the European institutions, and increases the consensus to nationalist political parties, separatist ones, xenophobic ones, whose common neo-nazi virus cannot be overlooked.

The legitimacy of the request for further progress towards the federal unification of Europe is also based on the ability to use the institutions already conquered by the federalist action. The preface by Antonio Padoa Schioppa, the two essays by Paolo Ponzano and the one by Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann claim the responsibility of the federalists in the use of this new popular law and constitute the legal framework of the Initiative, reproduced in Part One. The afterword by Enzo Cheli puts a stamp of legitimacy on the work of the authors.

The third circumstance is symbolic, but not less important. The year 2013 has been declared the Year of European citizens. Their participation in the European public life is deemed necessary in actual fact or just to pay lip service? We have to assume good faith. This explains why the volume opens with a series of texts that interpret the new ECI right as an important moment of a more general movement for inclusion, citizenship, direct democracy and a new federal political culture. The preface and the introductions by Giampiero Bordino, as the essays by Giuseppe Allegri, Elisabeth Alber and Emmanuel Sigalas give this perspective to the ECI: a sense of history and the possibility that men can introduce “a spark of freedom” in it.

Translated by Elena Flor