Since 1987, when Paul Kennedy published The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, are innumerable the books which upheld the thesis of the decline of the American power in the world. Two events occurred last summer - the war in Georgia and the financial crisis - that made visible to the general public what a few months ago only scholars were able to see. The fact that those events occurred during the Presidential electoral campaign enables citizens to chastise a failed Presidency based on military adventurism, which lied about the Iraqi war, torture and the health of the US economy. At the same time, it makes it easier for the new President to make a fresh start and adapt himself to the new situation.

The conflict in Georgia, a country which benefits from military, economic and political support by the US, has shown that the latter is so powerless that it is unable to defend its ally. The outcome of the war represents a defeat of the strategy of encirclement of Russia through the enlargement of NATO and the construction of military bases around Russian borders. Therefore, the prospect of the entry of Georgia into NATO is growing now more and more distant. Moreover, as a consequence of the secession of Kosovo from Serbia, backed by the US with the support of the EU, Putin felt entitled to invade Georgia and foment South Ossetia's and Abkhazia's secessions. Another aspect of the retreat of the American power is its loss of influence in Latin America, as shown by Russia's joint naval manoeuvres with Venezuela in the Caribbean Sea.

On the other hand, it is to be noted that the US government decision to display the antimissile shield on Czech and Polish territory was taken in the very days of the invasion of Georgia by Russian troops. Moscow stated that it is equipped with missiles which can pierce that shield. It is a clash that takes us back to the Cold War. Evidently, the US and Russia are Westphalian states, which are not yet prepared to recognize a superior authority and are unable to conceive international relations other than in terms of strength. Instead, the EU is a post-Westphalian community, where, since the end of WWII, an experiment is being carried out to overcome national sovereignty through the creation of a single market, a single currency, a single supranational space regulated by law and justice, a supranational Parliament, and has the ambition to unify its foreign and security policy.

The arbitration role played by the EU in Georgia was a success of the French Presidency. Its timely intervention, according to Saakashvili, Georgia's President, prevented Russian troops from reaching Tbilisi. The most significant aspect of Sarkozy's success lies in its tightening the cohesion of the 27 EU member states, especially the former Soviet Union's satellite countries. They felt that the EU assured them a better protection than NATO.

If the outcome of the EU initiative in Georgia is to be appreciated, we should not forget the weakness of its foreign policy, that is still subject to the veto power. In 1970 Henry Kissinger asked: "Europe? What telephone number?". Unfortunately, the irony is still topical. Furthermore, the EU condemnation of South Ossetia's and Abkhazia's separatism is contradicted by its support for Kosovo's secession. The truth is that the only alternative to ethnic nationalism is federalism, that enables peoples to compound their aspiration to autonomy with lasting peace, assured by supranational institutions. And the EU should back this principle without exceptions.

* * *

The financial crisis represents an even more visible sign of the decline of the American power. Following the retreat of the US government control from the markets, begun with the Reagan administration, financial capitalism has become more and more greedy, obese and irresponsible. The illusion of a self-regulating world market without government control became popular all over the Western World. Wall Street has created a mountain of debts that are overwhelming the world economic system and have destroyed the prestige of the American economic model. The "toxic assets" are monsters that have inadvertently penetrated the portfolios of millions of savers and have infested the world economy. The globalized financial market has fostered the growth of banks and insurance companies which have become so huge that they cannot be declared bankrupt. Hence the need for the state to intervene to bail them out. Bush is now overwhelmed by his economic policy subordinate to business interests and speculation and is obliged to propose an emergency plan and to resort to the unpleasant measure of nationalization.

The EU is not equipped to face a similar emergency plan. Macro-economic policies are the competence of member states. The European Central Bank has no supervision powers, that remain in the hands of national Central Banks. However, the crisis can accelerate the unification process, slowed down by the result of the Irish referendum, through the strengthening, democratization and the enlargement of competencies of the EU institutions.

With the euro, the EU has become a monetary power, which has modified strength relations at world level and opened the way to monetary multipolarism. The same evolution is in progress in the military sphere, where the US superiority has been severely reduced in asymmetric wars like those in Iraq and Afghanistan. But what is drastically reducing the US military-spending capacity is the financial crisis. The amount of the fund proposed by Bush to purchase the junk bonds of the banks facing a financial crisis is equivalent to the cost of a second Iraqi war; therefore, it is legitimate to think that the US will not have sufficient resources for its antimissile shield. Moreover, the US is financing its colossal deficit abroad, and the devaluation of its debt by printing money is the way through which the world is paying the bill to the old declining superpower.

It is clear that this system is approaching the end. The US has lost the status of superpower. This represents a great opportunity for the evolution of the world toward a multipolar order without hegemonies, and for the reform of the UN system. The world needs public goods that the US at this point is unable to provide. The EU is called to take new responsibilities and a more active role: it can take initiatives for a "New Bretton Woods", for a world without nuclear weapons, for combating global warming, for regionalizing the UN Security Council. But it can only cope with those global challenges if it becomes able to speak with one voice.

Introduction
The Irish referendum on the European Union's Lisbon Treaty, held on 12 June 2008, produced a negative outcome with the measure being rejected by the electorate by a margin of almost 54 per cent to 46 per cent. Thus for the second time in seven years Irish citizens declined to support a Treaty which their political elites overwhelmingly endorsed. The result plunged the European Union into yet another crisis, the latest following the rejection of the earlier Constitutional Treaty in referendums in France and the Netherlands in 2005. This article analyses the Irish referendum, the main actors and issues which influenced the campaign, and the reasons for the No vote. It argues that the two most significant phenomena which explain the result are the attachment of the Irish people to a particularistic conception of Irish identity combined with a lack of knowledge about both the EU decision-making system and the content of the Lisbon Treaty itself.

Actors and Issues
On the Yes side stood the Republic's dominant political party, Fianna Fáil, as well as the two largest opposition parties, Fine Gael and Labour, and Fianna Fáil's small coalition partner, the Progressive Democrats¹. On the No side many of the party political actors were familiar from previous referendums on EU issues. Sinn Féin has been actively opposed to European integration since the 1972 referendum (though it professes itself to be a pro-European party). The Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party of Ireland also campaigned against the Treaty whilst independent Eurosceptic politicians such as MEP Kathy Sinnott and former MEP Dana Rosemary Scallon gave added voice to the opposition campaign.

So if these were the main actors active during the campaign what were the key issues which framed the debate? The first was the institutional re-calibration which included changes to the structure of the Commission and the modus operandi of the Council of Ministers. Essentially these arguments were about Ireland's voice and institutional representation in Brussels and the changes wrought by the Lisbon Treaty relative to the status quo. The No side argued that the legitimacy of the EU depended on full and equal representation of all member states in the decision-making structures. The right of each state to a seat at the Commission table at all times was thus sacrosanct. The loss of a commissioner for one term in three, effectively five years out of every fifteen, was presented by the No side as a significant further loss of sovereignty and influence for Ireland with no compensating 'side payments' offered within the broader institutional matrix. Public opinion, analysed both during and after the campaign, demonstrated a strong attachment to the idea of a permanent Irish commissioner and in this sense the No argument was certainly very successful.

The issue of an emerging European defence and security policy has featured strongly in Ireland's European debates since at least the Maastricht Treaty and was again a significant concern among voters in the 2008 poll. A number of political parties, including Sinn Féin, along with a range of civil society groups coalesced around this theme and argued that Irish neutrality had been steadily eroded by successive treaties and by membership of NATO's Partnership for Peace (PfP), and would be further compromised by Lisbon. In effect the No side sought to paint a picture of untrammelled 'movement' in the area of defence and security policy, especially with the introduction of a so-called European Army - the Rapid Reaction Force - which would be equipped with aircraft carriers, Patriot cruise missiles, fighter aircraft and all the standard features of an aggressive military power bent on adventurism. The Government could not be trusted to protect neutrality and indeed was suspected of colluding with other EU member states in the 'creeping militarisation' of the EU.

From the beginning of the campaign, issues related to Ireland's place within the European and global economy featured strongly. The protection of Ireland's corporate tax regime assumed a central place in the campaign of those on the right of the political spectrum who placed the alleged threat to Ireland's corporate tax rate at the centre of their campaign. Asserting that the mainstream political parties could not be trusted on the tax issue, the right argued that Ireland's strategy should be to seek something stronger than the veto, namely a legally binding protocol which would guarantee absolute independence to set national tax policy. With fiscal autonomy constrained by Ireland's membership of the Eurozone, tax policy was presented as the key contemporary instrument of sovereign economic power. In an economy plunging into recession and amidst a growing popular consciousness of latent economic fragility, these arguments received a serious hearing. In marked contrast, the left critique of the European integration process focused on the alleged neoliberal bias of the European Commission and the ongoing attacks on 'Social Europe' by the European Commission, corporate Europe and the European Court of Justice (ECJ). A particular target of attack was the ECJ, which despite its record of robust interventionism on the side of workers rights, was routinely presented as a friend of the market rather than the worker: "the court's decisions are sustained attacks on the wages and working conditions of workers throughout the EU" according to Roger Cole of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance. The ECJ was continually interpreting the treaties in a way which favoured 'competition' over labour and local collective bargaining arrangements. In particular the Laval and Viking judgements featured strongly in No arguments, as 'evidence' of ECJ perfidy. Thus the Lisbon Treaty was the subject of attacks from both the left and right of the political spectrum, a phenomenon also clearly present in the 2005 referendums in France and the Netherlands.

The referendum result: Ireland votes No to Lisbon
On a turnout of 53.13% the proposed constitutional amendment was defeated by 53.4% to 46.6%. So what factors explain the outcome? The first striking behavioural aspect of the outcome was the turnout. Prior to Lisbon most commentators expected that the higher the turnout the more likely it was that the Yes side would prevail. But the Lisbon referendum, although producing a significantly high turnout, did not see this pattern repeated, as most additional voters seem to have voted against the Treaty. Turning to a more sociological approach to the profile of Yes and No voters, a number of issues arise. The Eurobarometer survey shows that the main supporters of the Treaty were indeed to be found in the higher occupational classes: senior managers (66%), the 'self-employed' (60%), professionals (58%), and those with higher levels of education (57%)². On the other hand blue collar voters were largely supportive of the No vote, especially those members of trade unions such as UNITE and the TEEU which urged their members to vote No. So a distinct social class cleavage was very much in evidence. Other factors such as age, gender and geography also help to explain some aspects of the vote.

If this data provides valuable information about electoral behaviour there are two substantive issues which help us to contextualise that behaviour. The first is the way in which Irish conceptions of identity may have influenced voters' perceptions of the Lisbon Treaty and Ireland's place in the integration process. Voters testified that a major reason for voting No was to 'keep Ireland's power and identity'. During the course of the campaign this impulse toward a 'sovereigntist' position increased, from 16 to 24%. John Coakley argues that, notwithstanding the strong currents of support for European integration, Ireland's enduring attachment to nationalist values should not be under-estimated: "a history of vigorous nationalist agitation, a tradition of suspecting powerful neighbours and a long-standing emphasis on national sovereignty have been outstandingly characteristic of Irish political culture"³. Fully 12% of respondents to the Eurobarometer survey voted No to "protect Irish identity" (the second most important reason for voting No), suggesting that the identity dimension emerges as crucial in explaining the outcome. At the very least this suggests that the 'European' layer of Irish identity is in reality so thin that the consistently high professions of support for the EU in opinion polls may now be considered highly suspect. Where that support has been tested at the ballot box, two out of the last three popular votes have produced anti-integrationist outcomes.

The second substantive issue with a bearing on the outcome concerns voters' knowledge about the Treaty and the EU more generally. A considerable body of data accumulated during previous referendums and from Eurobarometer tracking polls demonstrates that, although the Irish remain amongst the most enthusiastic about EU membership, there remains a significant knowledge vacuum, with a large majority of citizens professing to know little or nothing about how decisions are made at EU level and how the EU institutions function. Eurobarometer polls consistently demonstrate that support for the EU is related to relative levels of knowledge. Support for the Treaty dropped to 39% among those who were only vaguely aware of the issues and to a mere 10% amongst the two in five voters who said they did not know what the treaty was all about⁴. The post-referendum Eurobarometer survey confirmed that once again lack of knowledge constituted the most important reason for not voting (22%)⁵. Further data support this statistic: fully one fifth of No voters and one sixth of Yes voters did not know if the Lisbon Treaty would be good or bad for Ireland⁶.

The significance of the knowledge vacuum is particularly evident in the strategies adopted by the No side in particular. Two specific phenomena can be identified. First, the No campaign centred on short, sharp messages easily understood, which provided voters with easy to process (negative) images of the EU and the Lisbon Treaty, in contrast to the Yes messages which invariably came across as complex if not tortured (the EU as an abstract and variegated public good). Second, the No side demonstrated an ability and willingness to distort and misrepresent both the content of the Lisbon Treaty and the nature of the European integration process. There are multiple examples that can be offered in evidence. No campaigners argued that under Lisbon Ireland would lose a commissioner, without pointing out that every other EU state would also lose a commissioner for one term in three. They continually argued that Irish influence in Brussels would be reduced because of the changes to Ireland's voting weight in Council, without acknowledging the new rules on population size and majoritarian principles which favoured small states. A particularly egregious misrepresentation concerned Article 113 on taxation, which many components of the No side argued would mean that Ireland's veto on corporate taxation would be eliminated. In fact Article 113 applies only to indirect taxation, but this did not stop the lie being perpetrated on a wide-ranging basis. Finally, No campaigners repeatedly used an alleged quote from Giscard d'Estaing, the former French President and Chair of the Convention which paved the way for the European Constitution. Giscard was outrageously misquoted: "Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly... All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way... What was already difficult to understand will become utterly incomprehensible, but the substance has been retained"⁷. The quote was taken from an article penned by Giscard in Le Monde on 15 June 2007. In fact Giscard was arguing against any recycling of the Constitutional Treaty and specifically warning about the backlash that this would produce. And he was referring exclusively to France and not any other EU member states. He was emphatic in describing the use of the quotation out of context by Irish No campaigners as "extremely dishonest"⁸. It seems instructive that not a single Irish journalist or media outlet bothered to chase down and translate the Le Monde even after it began to be used extensively by No campaigners. Partly this might reflect the new prominence within the Irish media market of Eurosceptic British news organizations such as Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and the Mail Group. But it also reflects very poorly on the capacity and willingness of the Irish media to adequately scrutinise the claims made by prominent actors in the referendum campaign.

Conclusion
The rejection of the Lisbon Treaty plunged Ireland into a profound political crisis, not least because EU leaders indicated an unwillingness to re-negotiate any part of the Treaty: it would be up to Ireland to find an Irish solution to this European problem. Coinciding with this impasse in Irish-EU relations, an economic recession began to present serious difficulties as the public finances deteriorated to their worst state in 25 years, thus presenting Brian Cowen's government with the most challenging set of circumstances in which to think about moving forward. The Irish rejection of Lisbon also led directly to ratification problems in other member states, as procedures were set in motion by Euro-sceptic actors in the Czech Republic, Poland and other states to legally challenge domestic ratification processes. It also dealt a serious blow to the incoming French Presidency of the EU, and it was not long before President Nicholas Sarkozy was disabused of any notion that a specifically Irish solution (a second referendum) could be found to the ratification problem, at least in the short term⁹.

The outcome of the referendum may seem paradoxical to some, in that Eurobarometer opinion polls of attitudes to the EU continue to demonstrate that Irish people are strong supporters of the integration process. In June 2008, 78% of Irish people believed Irish membership of the European Union to be a good thing, 80% believed that Ireland has benefited from EU membership and 77% had a positive image of the EU (far more than the EU average of 48%). The problem is that these favourable attitudes vary considerably in intensity. It seems clear from the post-referendum data that the pro-European side manifestly failed to provide voters with either normative or utilitarian reasons to endorse the Treaty. The 'soft bloc' of support for European integration crumbled in the face of a vigorous No campaign and a lack of confidence among citizens in their ability to understand both the content of the Lisbon Treaty and the nature of EU decision-making processes.


1 In the 2007 General Election in the Republic Fianna Fáil emerged with the largest number of seats in the Dáil with 77 seats (41.6% of the vote), a loss of 4 from the 2002 election. Fine Gael won 51 seats (27.3% of the vote), an increase of 20 seats, and Labour won 20 seats (10.1% of the vote), unchanged from 2002. The Progressive Democrats were decimated at the polls winning just 2 seats (2.7% of the vote) for a loss of 6 seats from 2002
2 Eurobarometer 245, p.6
3 'J. Coakely, "Irish public opinion and the new Europe", in M. Holmes (Ed.), Ireland and the European Union Post-Nice, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2005, p. 107
4 R. Sinnott, The Irish Times, 20 May 2008
5 Eurobarometer 245, p.3
6 Ibid.
7 See, for example, P. McKenna, "Lisbon Treaty should not be given the Green light", The Irish Times, 17 January 2008; T. Allwright, "Don't sign an EU contract you don't understand", The Irish Times, 27 February 2008
8 L. Marlowe, "Lisbon No campaign was dishonest in misusing his quote, says Giscard", The Irish Times, 26 June 2008
9 "Sarkozy accepts there is no quick fix to Lisbon crisis", The Irish Times, 22 July 2008

The individual who has lost his place in the political community risks to drop out of the boundaries of humanity. (H. Arendt)

Foreword
"Boundaries" are to Etienne Balibar "anti-democratic premises of democracy": on the basis of "frontiers", in fact, the fifty-year-long Pax Europea developed, a single market, a currency, in-embryo elements of a public power of a federal type were built, a European Bill of Rights was drafted, an efficient multi-level protection of fundamental rights developed, and a parliamentarian Union created; moreover, many countries were taken from a pre-modern economic state to an active (and often very successful) participation in the greatest integrated system of trading exchanges in the world.

But it is beyond doubt that there have always been very unstable, mobile and elastic barriers, constantly brought into question; the majority of European citizens does not belong to the six founding countries, but to peoples once considered not involved in the original project of limiting national sovereignties. The very fact that negotiations are under way for the entrance of other Balkan countries or Turkey (and perhaps Ukraine too), that the French President has successfully launched the "Euro-Mediterranean" project, that we talk of the future State of Palestine and Israel as privileged partners of the Union, strongly conveys the feeling of "provisionality" of the territorial configuration of this unprecedented institutional body formed in 1957. Without mentioning the tight ties that presently hold together the Council of Europe (comprising as many as 47 States, many of them with strong "Asian" traits) and the EU.

For many of them the secret of Europe's success has been precisely the always-open and unaccomplished character of its integration project, a premise and anticipation for finally putting an end all over the planet to the stale and ever more problematic division in national States. The so-called globalization phenomenon makes the barriers separating the different countries ever more permeable and inconsistent, and shows how powerful the creolization and mixed-blood-generating processes are at a universal level. That is why people everywhere look at the supra-national and post-State public power being consolidated in the old continent as a model for world governance; other areas in the world are willing to group together, establishing common bodies that emulate the "communitarian quadrilateral". No one, however, can deny the "emergencies" that the immigration waves generate, the tensions they cause in the economic and institutional balances in the States that are flooded by them, the difficulty that integration policies have in mediating between the universal nature of rights and the peculiarities to be protected or to be just taken into consideration. Immigration shall no doubt be governed and checked, and the heroic spirit of the "no borders" movements (even though they have solid arguments on their side) or the good intentions alone of "candid souls" (unfortunately quite rare in this case), heirs of the European Enlightenment tradition are not sufficient to face up to the challenge. Policies by all 27 states are needed, making use in a rational and efficient fashion, even in such a thorny field, of those competences the Union is already endowed with and have long been "communitized" due to their intimate connection with the oldest tenets of the "European juridical order". In 2005 we certainly saw in the Netherlands and maybe in France also, with regard to the "no" to the old Constitutional Treaty, how big an alarm the idea (often unproven) of "mass" immigration processes out of control and not checked can produce in the public opinion. There is not only the risk of arousing ancestral fears, breeding ground of xenophobic and nationalist movements, but also a terrible "security-claiming" competition among States to drive those who Hannah Arendt called "denizens" (non-citizens, deprived of rights) to look for other places.

However, it looks certain that the Union cannot adopt whatever type of policy, even in contrast not only to its best traditions of tolerance, to the ratio essendi of the European construction as the answer to the Nazi catastrophe of the years 1930-1940¹, but also to those juridical principles embedded in our common constitutional traditions and in the two European Courts' decisions, in some cases even inherited from the ancient "ius gentium" of Greek-Roman origin.

The so-called "Return" Directive approved in Brussels on June 18 after an agreement, defined as "a compromise", between the European Parliament and the Council, on "returning illegally staying third-country nationals", does not look consistent with such traditions and, despite some lukewarm improvements wrought by the Parliament, it has rightly been named "the directive of shame". The Parliament, in the premise to the deliberation emending its text², states that "this Directive respects the fundamental rights and observes the principles recognized in particular by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union" (better known as the Nice Charter), but - as we will say - it is reasonable to have doubts about that statement, and one may hope that the Court of Justice, that has already made reference to the Nice Treaty in eight sentences, will use precisely the European Bill of Rights - independently of the final ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, Art. 6 of the Treaty on European Union that imposes the formal, compulsory validity of the Charter - in order to cancel the most questionable norms of the directive in question.

Dignity trampled on
In official statements, after the issue of the directive, the officials wanted to stress the least disturbing aspect of the new norm; great emphasis was given to the so-called "promotion" of "voluntary departure". In fact, the European law provides that the illegal immigrant is given the chance to leave voluntarily the country within an "appropriate" period ranging between 7 and 30 days, and that this possibility must be made known once the repatriation decision has been taken. But this is not at all a right: in case of risk of absconding or dangerous behavior of the subject, this kind concession may be omitted or anyway revoked at any moment, or be subject to precautionary measures, among which the incredible payment of caution money. The term is so drastic that one may think that in actual fact it will be just a theoretical case, as we cannot believe that somebody will get to the point of requiring from a "boat people" survivor on the Sicilian coast a payment at the Post Office while awaiting to start his journey back (with which means?).

After the edifying Art. 6, the following Art. 7 takes care to go back to the "aim" of the initiative that the Union's popular-suffrage body ended up voting: the use of coercive measures is authorized for expelling the third-country citizen who "resists removal" (having added "as a last resort" is deprived of any special meaning because the only practicable alternative is the voluntary departure that was mentioned above). The word "resistance" is clearly used in a different sense than normally understood, that seems to imply an active behavior of opposition, while in the great majority of cases those measures will be applied to individuals who are not in a position to take the first jet and go back to the countries they have been driven to leave to survive. European legislators, very kind of them, found it suitable to add that "the coercive measures shall be proportional and shall not exceed reasonable force. Measures shall be implemented as provided for in the national legislation, in accordance with fundamental rights and with due respect for the dignity and physical integrity of the third-country national concerned". Opportunities are offered to eventual interventions by the Court of Justice (and perhaps by that of Strasbourg), but for sure they could have done better; the States' discretion in the use of force remains too large, no criteria are given but the very general ones of the respect of dignity and personal safety³. The expression "in accordance with fundamental rights" is highly inappropriate (fundamental rights are observed or are not infringed). Art. 8 takes care of offering some more precautions for the removal of minors, including that they "will be returned to a member of his/her family" or "adequate reception facilities in the state of return", on the functioning of which - in countries where State structures are almost non-existent - one can have strong reservations. The return decision (Art.9) is an act in written form and motivated in fact and in law, but information may be restricted "in order to safeguard national security, defence, public security and the prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution of criminal offences"; against the decision "effective remedies" are allowed (Art.13) "before a competent judicial or administrative authority or a competent body composed of members who are impartial" [sic], which can temporarily suspend its enforcement. Moreover, the concerned person can obtain legal advice, free of charge on request. During the period for voluntary departure granted in accordance with Article 7, family unity with family members present in the territory is maintained; minors are granted access to the basic education system, and emergency health care and essential treatment of illness is provided; this last sinister provision seems intended to avoid that a "full" treatment of illness be an obstacle to a speedy repatriation.

But the core of the new discipline is no doubt the regime of "detention... in order to prepare return" (Art.14 and following): the third-country national for whom there is the risk of absconding or who "avoids or hampers the preparation of return or the removal process" may be kept in detention by administrative or judicial order for a period which may not exceed six months. When detention has been ordered by administrative authorities, a judicial review is possible. But that already abnormal period may be extended by national legislation to as many as 18 months "in cases where regardless of all their reasonable efforts the removal operation is likely to last longer due to a lack of co-operation by the third-country national concerned, or due to delays in obtaining necessary documentation from third countries". In sum, one year and a half of privation of personal freedom which is carried out "as a rule" in specialized temporary-detention facilities but, if not possible, even in penitentiaries tout court. To put a limit to a prison-type detention, it is foreseen that illegal immigrants shall be separated from ordinary prisoners, and families shall be provided with separate accommodation (but this provision too may be derogated from in emergency situations). Competent NGOs and international bodies shall have the possibility to visit detention facilities, but visits may be subject to authorization; nothing is added on the subject of penitentiaries. Those are the norms that most visibly violate the principles of personal dignity and respect of private and family life, that the directive asserts not to trample on. It is indeed a regime of absolute privation of freedom, resembling in all aspects a state of detention, and in fact it can be carried out in penitentiaries for an abnormal and unreasonable period of time. The directive does not give any indication about the treatment regime, therefore leaves total discretion to the States, a very questionable choice because, while pleno iure prisoners are generally protected by well-defined norms (subject also to the screening of the Court of Strasbourg), for immigrants there looks to be no rule whatsoever. Thus, there is the risk of putting in jeopardy the fundamental principles of modern right, like that of the non-punishability of objectively non-offensive behaviors (offensive are those behaviors that willfully or culpably impair interests and goods of juridical third parties) or of situations of mere personal status. The immigrant is detained up to one year and a half together with individuals for whom the commission of a crime has been ascertained or is being ascertained, with no indication about his treatment as a citizen of States not belonging to the Union (one could add: with a judgment of presumed dangerousness), in the fallacious hope that the threat of such a long state of detention (with no rules) will act as a deterrent for the many guiltless, distressed people arriving at the Union's borders. In fact, even before being a violation of several articles of the European Charter of human rights, of the Nice Charter⁴ and of many decisions passed on this matter by the two supra-national Courts, the regression we are witnessing seems to put at stake the "sacred" right to (and its related duty of) hospitality that constituted the core of the ancient "right of the peoples (ius gentium)", asserting that a stranger shall not be considered and treated as a criminal, as a "presumed enemy", with reference only to his status as non-citizen of the State where he happens to be. Precisely the same European Union that for decades has been promoting in the field of cooperation-to-development policies the respect of human rights, requiring the third-world countries asking for subsidies to underwrite the so-called human rights clauses, goes as far as considering the citizens of those countries (once they have crossed the EU frontiers) the same as dangerous criminals, only for the fact that they tried to flee from the very conditions that the EU proclaims it wants to combat to their roots. On the other hand, many member States have, because of their shameful colonial past, a "special responsibility", to quote Habermas, towards the citizens of their former possessions, a responsibility they cannot shake off by simply enclosing themselves into the entrenched territory of a "fortress Europe".

In conclusion, this is a very sad page in continental history, of which the Strasbourg Parliament has made itself an accomplice too easily, wringing only some marginal norms on legal advice for individuals subject to a return decision and detained as criminals⁵. The "living" European constitutional system has contemplated for a long time "a judge in Berlin": but in order for a significant amendment to this text from a jurisprudential point of view to really be in a position to impose itself, it looks absolutely necessary that beforehand there be a clear critical stand taken by all the liberal, democratic and guarantee-friendly forces of the old continent, which brings forward once again the fundamental values of the European project.


1 On these roots, see the double special issue of German law journal vol. 2 and 3/2005: Confronting memories: European "bitter experiences" and the constitutional process (C. Joerges, P. Blocker and C. Engert eds.), and European integration in the shadow of Europe's darker pasts (D. Augenstein ed.); in a nice Adornian style, see C. Joerges, Working through bitter experiences towards constitutionalism. A critique of the disregard for history in European constitutional theory, WP EUI, n.15/2005, and also Dario Castiglione's reply: Comment on Joerges: are those who forget the past doomed to repeat its mistakes?, both in Law and democracy in the post-national Union, Arena report, n.1/2006, E. O.Eriksen, C. Joerges and F. Rödl eds.
2 Consideration n. 20.
3 The principle of non refoulment is confirmed in the case of refugees, albeit in general the norms on the right of asylum and on refugee rights are out of the directive's application domain.
4 In the first place there is to mention Art. 1 of the Charter: the protection of personal dignity.
5 Those improvements are not sufficient at all to overturn the directive's sense, that for illegal immigrants contemplates in essence repatriation decisions only, keeping them in a semi-detention state and expulsion with the use of force. Defence guarantees find unfortunately a very limited application space, although certainly their inclusion in the text has made a little more guarantee-friendly the Council's original proposal.

"Within a decade, no child will go hungry, no family will fear for its next day's bread, and no human being's future and capacity will be stunted by malnutrition". Then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to the World Food Conference, Rome, November 1974

At the 3-5 June 2008 World Food Security Conference in Rome called by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), we saw that there is a growing consensus that radical measures are needed to deal with the current world food crisis. These measures will have to be taken in a holistic way with actions going from the local level of the individual farmer to the national level with new government policies, to the multi-State regional level, embodied, for instance, by the European Union or the African Union, and the world level with better coordinated actions through the United Nations system.

Today, cooperation is needed among the UN family of agencies, national governments, non-governmental organizations, and the millions of food producers to respond to the food crisis which has already led to destabilizing food riots. There is a need for swift, short-term measures to help people now suffering from lack of food and malnutrition due to high food prices, inadequate distribution, and situations of violence. Such short-term action requires additional funding for the UN World Food Programme and the release of national food stocks. However, it is the longer-range and structural issues on which we must focus our attention. The world requires a World Food Policy and a clear Plan of Action.

The June 2008 FAO World Food Security Conference had been prepared by a number of meetings of national agricultural specialists since January. Their main aim had been to look at the longer-range consequences of climate change on agricultural production. It was to be a conference of specialists with a handful of Ministers of Agriculture present to show that climate change was being taken seriously. However, food riots in different parts of the world with resulting political instability changed the nature and the make up of the conference.

Food riots in Haiti brought the issue of hunger to the front gates of Haiti's presidential palace and death to a UN peacekeeper from Nigeria who was shot by the crowd surging from a slum area of Port-au-Prince. The Prime Minister, Jacques-Edouard Alexis, was forced to resign for having failed to act despite sharp increases in the price of food over the past several months, pushing people who are already poor into deeper poverty. The President of Haiti, René Préval, who was trained as an agronomist and should have recognized the consequences of food shortages earlier, nevertheless, promised to use foreign funds originally destined for development projects to lower the price of rice.

Rising food prices are a global concern and have led to riots against high food prices in a growing number of countries such as Egypt, Senegal and Cameroon. Using government funds to lower prices can only be a short-term policy. Egypt already spends more on subsidies, including gasoline and bread, than on education and health combined. The United Nations food specialists indicate serious food shortages in many countries of Africa, such as Lesotho, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Mozambique, and Eritrea in East and Southern Africa; Mauritania, Senegal, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, and Cameroon in West Africa.

In Rome there were, thus, 43 heads of government, and the Ministers of Agriculture headed the other delegations. The world's funding agencies were all there pledging increased funds. There were representatives from inter-governmental organizations and international institutions such as the European Union as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and a larger-than-usual press corps.

However, the agreements reached during the preparatory phase on longer-range planning in the light of climate change were largely put aside and attention given to the current crisis. As these crisis issues had not been at the center of the preparatory phase, no important agreements could be reached. It is impossible to negotiate with over 180 delegations present, often headed by political leaders who want to make a speech useful for domestic reasons and then leave. The political speeches, however, give a good indication of what issues are central and where agreements may be reached later. Thus Spain proposed to host a follow-up conference in Madrid in December. Between now and then, government specialists will work on formulating policies on which agreements can be made.

Thus, the period to November 2008 is crucial for NGOs interested in a world food policy. It is impossible for NGOs to modify the policies of governments during a conference. It is during the preparatory phase that governments are willing to consider new ideas. Many of these ideas are, in fact, not new. They have been lying around for some time but not put into practice and not structured in a holistic way. As the US economist Milton Friedman wrote "Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When the crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, and to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable".

During the Special Session devoted to the food crisis of the Human Rights Council on 21 May, I presented for the Citizens of the World the following five considerations for a world food policy: "For the formulation of a dynamic world food policy, world economic trends and structures need to be analysed, policy goals made clear. There are at least five areas that should be of special concern: climate change, energy costs, ethanol, the food production and export policy of major agricultural production states and the role of speculation in commodities.

1) There is a need to intensify action on climate change. This year (2007-2008) there has been bad weather in key growing areas. Australia, normally the world's second-largest wheat exporter, has been suffering from an epic drought. This may be a result of particular weather conditions this year or may be a sign of climate change. It is necessary to analyse the impact of climate change on long-term food production and see alternative strategies.

2) Higher prices for food are in part a reflection of the higher price of oil and energy costs. Much modern farming is energy-intensive for producing fertilizers, running tractors, and transporting farm products to consumers, often at long distances. Oil prices are influenced by the violence and social breakdown in Iraq and heavy speculation on the oil markets. There is need both for short term measures to bring oil prices down to a reasonable level based on production costs and transportation as well as longer-range energy policies to free countries from oil dependence.

3) Higher prices for oil have encouraged a greater use of ethanol and other biofuels, often without consideration of the impact of the production of biofuels on land use and food production. While biofuels are likely to be useful, their use should be limited at present so that its consequences can be studied and biofuels developed from non-food sources.

4) Governmental food and agriculture policies need to be analysed and reviewed carefully in a world food policy perspective. The agricultural policies of the European Union and the larger food-exporting countries - USA, Canada, Brazil, Australia - need to be reviewed along with the impact of agricultural subsidies and export encouragement.

5) There needs to be a detailed analysis of the role of speculation in the rise of commodity prices. Banks and hedge funds, having lost money in the real estate mortgage packages, are now investing massively in commodities. At present, there is little government regulation of this speculation. There needs to be an analysis of these financial flows and their impact on the price of grains.

A world food policy for the welfare of all requires a close look at world institutions and patterns of production and trade. As Stringfellow Barr wrote in his 1952 book Citizens of the World "Since the hungry billion in the world community believe that we can all eat if we set our common house in order, they believe also that it is unjust that some men die because it is too much trouble to arrange for them to live".

The proposal of a League of Democracies, put forward most recently by the US presidential candidate McCain and also by some staff members of his opponent, Barack Obama, does not look compatible with either reality and the logic of the present international system (for the purpose of peace and development) or the reasons and the logic of the federalist political culture.

From the first viewpoint, the creation of such a League of "Willing" Democracies, which surfaced already to some extent in the Clinton era and later became one of the favorite themes of the Bush Administration, would cause unforeseeable and for sure dangerous consequences for both the real interests of the Western world, and for the USA itself, and for pursuing the goal of world peace.

First of all, it would push two emerging big powers like Russia and China, currently pursuing two different strategies, to form an alliance in opposition to the League, as it would seem to them (in fact, not a completely wrong impression: the USA, unable to control the United Nations, gives birth to an alternative international institution) essentially as a new instrument of the American hegemonic foreign policy. Considering the objective weight that Russia (energy resources) and China (the owner of most of America's foreign debt, and the main planetary "factory") have today in the world, the difficulties and dangers of such a perspective are obvious. Faced with the risk of breaking off with those powers, many Western democracies (the EU countries) and others (think of India), including the USA itself, will probably turn out to be not so "willing" at all, therefore the new instrument will prove very inefficient. In any case, it is likely that the fears for their own security coming from the birth of a new instrument led by the US will drive the Russian and Chinese governments to toughen up their illiberal and authoritarian domestic policies. As well-known, even the western democracies themselves after September 11 (terrorism, wars in the Middle East) have experienced counterblows (limitations on civil rights, increase of forms of authoritarian populism, etc.) coming from fears over security. The same will occur to a higher degree in countries of limited or absent liberal tradition like Russia and China. The world, then, instead of marching towards more democracy would risk a further authoritarian degeneration.

The creation of a League of "willing" Democracies, in addition, would have a second serious consequence: the delegitimation and weakening (explicitly pursued, as well-known, by the American neo-cons inspiring Bush's foreign policy, most of all after the UN failed to authorize the pre-emptive war on Iraq) of the existing international institutions, the UN in the first place. As it is a good thing not to be naïve, it is necessary to ask ourselves what relation there is between the fact that in 2001 the UN Security Council did not authorize the American pre-emptive war on Iraq (which later proved to be not only a formally and substantially illegitimate war, but also a completely inefficient one) and the proposal (American again) to create an institution as a matter of fact alternative to the UN. The UN's limits and contradictions are well-known and real, but the road to follow is to reform and strengthen it, both in its legitimation (for example, the proposal of a UN Parliamentary Assembly) and in its efficiency. Anyway, the universality of its membership is essential (and the UN does have it in principle, whereas the League will not, due precisely to its constitutive choice), as the disastrous historical experience of the Society of Nations between the two World Wars demonstrates. From this first viewpoint (the international system and its evolution) there is still to note that the proposal of a League of Democracies suggests the prospect of a vertical split that looks very ideological and very little realistic. As reality is not just "black and white" but also "grey", it will not be easy to decide who is to include and who is not, and, as historical experience demonstrates, it is probable that in those choices a great role will be played by the logic of reliability of alliances and strategic interests of the League's leading country or countries. It is probable then (here too we must not be naïve) that who will be considered more democratic, hence better deserving inclusion, is the more friendly country, and vice versa. All this will have a negative influence on the degree of legitimation, hence of efficiency, of the League in its action for peace and against genocide. The League will be neither more legitimated nor more efficient than the United Nations in pursuing world peace and human development.

Finally, the proposal of a League of "willing" Democracies looks to be in contradiction with some essential points of the federalist political culture. For the federalist thought, the reasons and the roots of war and organized violence do not lie in the nature of domestic political systems (more or less democratic or authoritarian) but in the (anarchical) nature of the international system. As historical experience, both old and contemporary, demonstrates, the fact that a country has a democratic domestic political system does not assure at all that that country carries out a peaceful foreign policy, that it operates for protecting human rights in the world, that it is available to subject itself to international laws, common and equal for all. There have been (Athens in ancient Greece) and there are democracies (the United States, the greatest democracy in the world, but well before it the liberal England, the republican France, etc.) that carry out imperialist policies, that waged and wage wars for hegemony, that refuse to subject themselves to international laws, common and equal for all. When their strategic interests, their own power in international relations, their own external and today also internal (with globalization the confines between internal and external have become uncertain) security (real or more and more often just perceived) are involved, also democracies may become "rogue States": they use force in a unilateral fashion, they carry out the policy of "two different yardsticks" in their relations with other countries, they restrict the freedom of their citizens, they manipulate domestic and international public opinion according to their strategic convenience. Given the anarchical character of the present international system, where there is no law and everybody "takes the law into his own hands", even democracies run the risk to be "rogue States" in their external relations (and in some case also in their relations with their citizens). If existing democracies are not to regress, and autocracies are to gradually become, in turn, democracies, the main problem is how to eliminate the fear of an external enemy, the real midwife of rogue policies: therefore, we should promote shared cessions of sovereignty to supra-national institutions, promote the birth of a global law and jurisdiction, foster the development of policies aiming to produce the "global public goods" that mankind needs and no State, democratic or not, is in a position today to produce alone.

The proposal of the League of "willing" Democracies, also due to the context it originated from (the hegemony problems of a declining big power), does not seem to go in any of these directions, which the federalists support and pursue. It does not contribute to overcome international anarchy, it does not help the world to pass from the "state of nature" to a "civil state" ruled by law. It does not help therefore to develop democracy in the world, as we all desire.

After 43 years of separate existence, Federal Union, the UK section of the UEF, finally reunited with its world federalist equivalent, the Association of World Federalists. The AWF had been founded by members of Federal Union back in 1965.

Negotiations over the reunification had been going on all summer, and their culmination was a meeting held in London on Saturday 6 September at which the reunification was agreed (with only one dissenting voice).

The case for reunification was partly practical and partly political. The practical argument was simple: neither Federal Union nor the AWF was a large and strong organisation so there would be benefits in joint activities in the future. The political argument rested on the realisation that many global problems could not be solved without a coherent European involvement, and conversely that many European problems could only be solved at the global level.

For example, the world financial crisis must lead somehow to a decline in the value of the US dollar. This can either be achieved by a crash, or alternatively by a global agreement: at present, the eurozone would find it very hard to take part in such a global agreement because the institutional arrangements for its external representation are still undefined. If they cannot be defined properly, the risk of a catastrophic crash grows much stronger.

Climate change is another example, where the establishment of workable institutions depends crucially on the European experience of federalism. The Europeans will only get the serious efforts to deal with the threat that they seek if they can persuade America, China and India to join them, which means in turn that they must propose a scheme that ensures effectiveness and accountability (and we all know what that means).

The argument against reunification was that European and world federalism were conceptually very different: the former was treading a known path whereas the latter was a step into the unknown. It is certainly true that federalism in Europe now appears solid and reliable, in contrast to much of what is discussed for the global level, but most Federal Union and AWF members present agreed that what their ideas had in common was much stronger than what divided them. (It might also be added that Federal Union itself has never confined itself only to European federalist issues, in any case).

The political debate was followed by a business session in which the terms of the reunification were agreed. The statutes of the new organisation are based on the former statutes of Federal Union, although with specific posts for Deputy Chairs to make sure that neither European nor world federalism is neglected in the future workplan. Elections for a new committee will be held at an AGM in March 2009: until then, the organisation will be led by a committee composed of all the existing members of the two previous committees. The organisation will preserve the name Federal Union, which it first adopted in 1938, and will be a member organisation of both the UEF and the WFM.