The deep crisis the world, and Europe in particular, are experiencing is largely due to the rise, since the 1970s, of great concentrations of economic power in the global market, which resulted in a decline of politics and the subordination of governments and the real economy to finance. The impact these processes could produce in the delicate environmental, social and institutional balance was underestimated. The increase in unemployment and the worsening of the living conditions of large segments of citizens put the social cohesion at risk and moved citizens away from politics. In a world marked by growing interdependence, in which all states are involved in processes of integration, peace, freedom, democracy and social justice can be safeguarded only at the global level. Europe which, until a few years ago, was living in a context of general welfare, with a social model that guaranteed protection against the major risks for life, is unable to deal with the crisis and globalization challenges. The political project of the Founding Fathers of the EU which aimed to create, for the first time in history, democracy also at the supranational level, remained unfinished. The process of federal unification, after important successes such as the creation of a supranational parliament, a European common market, a single currency, a Court of Justice, a Charter of Fundamental Rights, has jammed.
In order to face the crisis and globalization challenges, Europe should have done the last step towards federation: a democratic and federal EU government. The powers of economic, social and fiscal policy and of foreign and security policy, required for acting, had to be given to the European government. Europe, starting from the Eurozone, needed a federal budget of at least 2% of GDP, boosted mainly by own resources coming from European taxation. The consequences of the incompleteness of the unification process are serious. Europe has not today the means to foster development, competitiveness and employment. The exponential increase in unemployment is generating a dangerous rupture of social cohesion (26 million people unemployed in 2013, an unknown number of under-employed workers, especially among young people, 119 million Europeans at risk of poverty). So it is urgent to remove the obstacles that remain at the European level for starting an ecologically and socially sustainable development, aimed to create job opportunities, “more and better jobs, stable and of high-quality” in line with the Delors Plan and the Lisbon Strategy. A democratic Europe must be set up on the basis of these projects that have remained unaccomplished. The states, if they wish to take part in the creation of a new supranational sovereignty, which would restore their credibility, must promote a redistribution of powers and competences to Europe and to the regional and local communities.
The anti-crisis measures taken up to now by both the Member States and the Union have proved inadequate to answer to the serious challenges facing Europe. We will not get out of the crisis by austerity measures alone, that, without appropriate growth-enhancing policies, have produced recession, weakening the competitiveness of the European economy. Therefore it’s necessary that the European institutions, primarily the Parliament and the Commission, foster economic recovery and employment, by implementing urgently A European Special Plan for sustainable development and employment. A European New Deal funded by European taxes on financial transactions and carbon emissions, and Euro project bonds. A decisive boost for this change of course can only come from citizens who know that moving towards political union does not mean being subjected to new constraints, but, on the contrary, means creating new opportunities to relaunch employment and fill the gap between the European institutions and the daily life of their citizens. This is the meaning of the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), New Deal 4 Europe - For a European Special Plan for sustainable development and employment. The Lisbon Treaty ( Article 11.4 ) introduced this instrument of participatory democracy that allows one million EU citizens from at least seven European Union member states to propose legislation to the European Commission. The collection of signatures can be done on paper and online, via open source software made available to the citizens by the Commission. Within twelve months of the effective registration of the initiative, the proposal must be submitted to the Commission which will propose it to the European Parliament.
At the end of 2011, the Italian Federalist Movement (UEF-Italy) launched the ECI. This proposal has gained the support of all those who share the commitment to build a democratic and federal Europe. Besides the European federalists, the ECI has been supported by trade unions, civil-society organizations, mayors of important European cities, personalities of the world of culture. National promoters’ committees have been set up in 9 EU member states (Italy, Greece, Spain, Belgium, Germany, France, Cyprus, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic). Personalities of the world of European culture signed a MANIFESTO in support of the ECI, that was published in the major European newspapers (see Annex I). On February 28th, 2014, a Network of European Cities, “The Mayors of Europe for a New Deal for Europe”, was created in support of the ECI, promoted by the Major of Turin Piero Fassino (President of the National Association of Italian Municipalities) and the Major of Lyon Gérard Collomb (see Annex II). At the end of December 2013, the European Committee was set up and in it there are leading representatives coming from important European trade unions, civil-society and federalist organizations. On January 7th, 2014, the request for ECI registration was submitted by the European Committee to the European Commission, which on March 7th sent the communication of its official admission. On March 24th, the official launch of the Campaign took place with press conferences in Brussels, Rome and Paris and with dozens of signaturecollection initiatives using paper forms. On April 15th, the certification procedure necessary to start the online collection of signatures was finalized. Since that date, the collection of signatures has started in the countries promoting the ECI. The European elections gave more impulse to the proposal and allowed the citizens to call on the candidates to the European Parliament and the new Commission to support the ECI and the development and employment issues.
A multilingual website has been set up (www.newdeal4europe.eu), where people can find:
- Forms to collect signatures on paper
- A button “SIGN HERE” linking directly to the EC form where it will be possible to sign online
- The ECI’s text and its Annex
- ECI’s Presentation and Info-kit (multilanguage versions)
- Newsletters
The ECI can also be shared via social media on:
Twitter: www.twitter.com/NewDeal4Europe
Facebook: ww.facebook.com/NewDeal4Europe
GooglePlus: plus.google.com/+NewDeal4EuropeEurope
Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/NewDeal4Europe
Youtube: www.youtube.com/NewDeal4Europe
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Translated by Laura Roscio
Annex I
MANIFESTO For a European Plan for Sustainable Development and Employment
Six years have passed, but the severe crisis that Europe is experiencing is not yet overcome. The euro, a pillar of the single market, is not yet in a safe condition. The risk of economic policies being re-nationalized, a disastrous event for the economy and welfare of every country of the Union, no one excluded, is serious and real.
The emphasis of governments on budgetary rigour, albeit necessary to face the debt crisis, has aggravated the depressive spiral, due also to time compression of the achievement plan, jeopardising the healing of the financial system. It is necessary to think in new ways. In a serious and continuing recession phase, along with the completion of the single market, particularly in the essential field of services, and with the most indebted countries committed to put in place policies aimed to redress their national budgets, we must consider a special plan for relaunching development. A sustainable development based on the realization of European infrastructures, on new technologies, on new energy sources, on the protection of the environment and cultural heritage, on cutting-edge research, on advanced education and professional training.
Such a plan must in the first place promote employment through such an amount of resources earmarked to investments in European public goods as necessary to generate a few million jobs, in particular in those countries where the social emergency of mass unemployment has reached alarming levels, up to the point of putting at risk their own democracies.
These additional financial resources can be found by providing for new Union’s own resources (for example a European tax on financial transactions and a tax on carbon emissions), private capitals (with Euro project bonds) and resources made available by the European Investment Bank.
The inter-governmental cooperation has proved to be utterly inadequate. The European Parliament is taking some action, also in view of the 2014 elections. But in order to impart a decisive thrust to a too slow process, it is necessary that a voice rises up at last from the European citizens.
Hence the importance of the proposal put forward by a large line-up of forces, from the federalist and pro-European movements to trade-unions and to many civil society associations, of the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), as provided by the Lisbon Treaty (Art. 11), For a Special European Plan for Sustainable Development and Employment. This proposal deserves to be strongly supported.
The European integration has been the great contribution to civilization that Europe has offered to the world, after it was torn apart twice for its fault in two bloody World Wars. Its unification process has ensured peace in Europe for more than 60 years now, and a wealth without precedents in history. It has also been a model for the entire planet.
Now all this is at risk. Europe is perceived by its citizens as the primary source of the difficulties created by the crisis, and more specifically as a source of inequality between citizens and countries, no longer as a hope for our future. The comeback of nationalism can be tackled only if the European citizens will demand that Europe proves to be capable of answering to their needs.
The time has come to open the road to an active presence of the European citizens in today’s and tomorrow’s world.
First signatories: Michel Aglietta, Michel Albert, Enrique Barón Crespo, Ulrich Beck, Josep Borrell, José Bové, Roger Casale, Jean-Marie Cavada, Mauro Ceruti, Don Luigi Ciotti, Daniel Cohn Bendit, Roberta De Monticelli, Matilde Fernández, Monica Frassoni, Emilio Gabaglio, Sylvie Goulard, Olivier Giscard d'Estaing, Ramón Jáuregui, Ska Keller, Alain Lamassoure, Pascal Lamy, Jo Leinen, Henry Malosse, Norbert Mappes-Niediek, Robert Menasse, Gerhard Mensch, Yves Mény, Cristina Narbona, Claus Offe, Paul Oriol, Moni Ovadia, John Palmer, Romano Prodi, Javier Rojo, Pedro Sanchez, Gesine Schwan, Salvatore Settis, Dusan Sidjanski, Barbara Spinelli, Alexis Tsipras, Tzvetan Todorov, Guy Verhofstadt, Carlos Westendorp.
Annex II
The Mayors of Europe for a “New Deal for Europe”
The social and economic life of our cities is deeply dependent on the choices decided at the European level in the field of monetary and budgetary policies.
The redressing policies, although necessary, have proved inadequate to put a mechanism capable of relaunching economic growth and employment back in motion.
Local bodies, with less financial resources made available to them, have difficulties in providing public services to their citizens. This affects the levels of social protection and cohesion in our cities, those of education and training of the new generations, and those of the protection of the environment and the territory. The local policies too aimed at furthering the development of small and medium sized businesses, and of handicraft and trade are affected.
It is necessary that at the European level, at which an effective economic policy could be carried out, a “European Development Plan” be initiated, aimed at overcoming the recessive phase which is choking the European economy.
Only at the continental level can efficient and large-scale productive investments be made in the strategic sectors which Europe’s future depends on (research and development, alternative energies and environmental protection, great infrastructures of material and immaterial networks, etc.), so as to make it competitive in the world.
Only a “European Plan” aimed at putting in motion those investments can transmit to the economic and political actors the indication of the goals and which direction to take to pursue them.
Only a “European Plan” fuelled by the Union’s own resources can be seen as credible in the eyes of investors.
A strong initiative is required in that direction: the European Citizens’ Initiative for a “European Special Plan for Sustainable Development and Employment”, aiming at collecting one million signatures in at least seven EU countries, places itself in precisely that perspective.
Promoted by the European Federalist Movement and by dozens of civil society organizations in many European countries, it is also supported by the National Association of Italian Cities.
We, the Mayors of Europe,
• give our support to an initiative that makes our citizens the protagonists of the request for a Europe oriented towards “sustainable development and employment;
• we share its goals, convinced that such a demand of participation constitutes also an important element for the establishment of a “European democracy” in the perspective of a democratic and federal Europe;
• we ask the cities of Europe to create a network in support of the ECI New Deal for Europe, also providing help in the collection of signatures among citizens, with a view to further citizens’ participation in the pursuit of a European Union that produces development, growth and progress, for the benefit in the first place of the young generations.