On April 1^st, 2012, Europe will break new ground: from then on one of the most important innovations in the EU, the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), will be in force and for the first time in history direct transnational democracy will become reality. Thinking about this breaking event, it is worth having a short look back at a long way full of stones.

A short look back: ECI, a child of the European Convention
Almost a decade has gone since the idea of ECI was developed within the European convention in 2002/2003. For me, as well as for the great majority of colleagues in the Convention, it was clear that the European Union needed a comprehensive reform, a reform that will ultimately overcome its democratic deficit. The debates were consequently focused on institutional reforms, especially on strengthening the power of the European Parliament as the direct representation of Europe’s citizens and on giving the national parliaments a better say in European politics. But, at the same time, it was clear that democracy in Europe needed more to bring the citizens onto the political centre stage.

Shortly after the opening of the Convention, a first meeting took place between some parliamentarians in the convention – such as Alain Lamassoure (EPP-ED, France), Johannes Voggenhuber (Greens/EFA, Austria), Josep Borell Fontelles (PES, Spain), Casper Einem (PES, Austria), Jürgen Meyer (PES, Germany) and me – and “IRI Europe Convention Network” (a network of activists engaged for direct democracy, brought together by the Initiative & Referendum Institute, IRI Europe). This meeting on March 20^th, 2002, marked the start of an intense debate between NGO-activists and members of the first constitutional assembly in the history of the EU to develop ideas and concepts as to how direct-democracy elements could be included into the forthcoming treaties. That was far from being easy. There was no existing prototype which could somehow be taken up as a basis of reference. And a closer look at the situation and experiences in Member states showed, on the one hand, that the existing national models were very different and, on the other hand, that a majority of Member states didn’t have any rules for any kind of direct democracy instruments and consequently no political culture in this respect at all.

In the beginning of 2003, an informal common working group of NGO-activists and convention members began to discuss detailed proposals, which were to be presented to the Constitutional Convention. At that time, within the convention as well as within civil society the debates strongly focused on the question whether the new treaties proposed by the convention should finally be adopted by referendum, by referendum in all Member states or by a Pan-European one. There was a growing public pressure in favour of the referendum idea from different parts of our societies, and more than 120 NGOs were intensively campaigning for it. So, different convention Members started to present individual proposals and on March 31^st, 2003, a contribution (CONV 658/03) in favour of a European-wide referendum on the EU Constitution was presented to the Presidium of the Convention. It was introduced by Alain Lamassoure and signed by 38 Convention members, alternate members and observers.

However, the idea of a European-wide referendum was confronted with strong opposition, coming especially from national governments and from the main political forces. They were against for principle reasons and based their arguments on legal difficulties and problems. So, in the end there was unfortunately no chance to convince the presidium of the convention to take up this proposal.

But our working group followed from the beginning a two-track approach. When it became clear that the referendum idea won’t be successful, we intensified our work on a different question: the idea to strengthen democracy and citizens rights by introducing a new tool into the treaties, the right of initiative for citizens. In spring 2003, the presidium of the convention published its first draft for a chapter on “democratic life in the European Union”, which contained also a draft-text for an article on the principle of participatory democracy. But there was a big disappointment: besides the formula of structural dialogues with the representative organisations and civil society, there was no mentioning of direct democracy at all.

After dramatic weeks with intense debates and lobbying, a proposal by Prof. Jürgen Meyer finally made it through. The proposal (CONV 724/03) entirely focused on the Citizens’ Initiative dimension, and was based on the approach of equalising the role of the citizens (when it comes to influencing the European Commission) with the initiative rights of the Parliament and the Council. About 70 members and alternate members of the Convention supported it. With common efforts from MEPs and national parliamentarians in the Convention, we managed to break down the last resistances in the Convention Presidium: on the eve of the last Convention session, the citizens’ initiative right was included in the draft constitutional treaty, giving citizens for the very first time in history a direct-democracy tool at the transnational level. With the adoption of a key demand by many people and NGOs, the Convention opened a window to transnational agenda-setting from below.

This proposal built the foundation for the final text in the draft constitutional treaty, presented by the Convention Chairman Valéry Giscard d’Estaing on June 13^th: “A significant number of citizens, not less than one million, coming from a significant number of Member States, may invite the Commission to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing this Constitution. A European law shall determine the provisions regarding the specific procedures and conditions required for such a citizens’ request” (Art. I-46, p. 4). As with a lot of other promising elements in the Convention’s draft constitutional treaty, such as the incorporation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the European Citizens’ Initiative right symbolised a departure from the old-style European Union.

But after the adoption of the “Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe” by the Heads of State and Government in Rome on October 29th, 2004, the ratification-process failed after the No-Votes in France and in the Netherlands in 2005. Extraordinary efforts were necessary to rescue the substance of the Constitutional Treaty and it took another three years until the ECI – now Article 11-4 TEU – came into the focus of political debates again. It was – by no surprise – the Committee on Constitutional Affairs of the European Parliament (AFCO) which took the lead in summer 2008. Although being confronted with the still ongoing ratification-process of the Lisbon-Treaty, it insisted on an early start of a broad and detailed debate on the implementation of the ECI. It was the main intention for a majority of parliamentarians to give a political signal to the citizens before the European elections in June 2009, namely that it is the Parliament the institution paving the way for a simple and user-friendly ECI-regulation and which in the interest of the people strives to put it into practice as soon as possible.

With the adoption of my report on ECI in May 2009, the Parliament has indeed managed to prepare the ground in that respect. So, it defined the Lisbon-Treaty formula of “a significant number of Member States” to be ¼, or seven Member States; it called on the Commission to receive the organizers of an ECI in order to allow them to explain in detail the matters raised by a successful ECI with more than one million signatures, and it demanded public hearings with the organizers of a successful ECI. In 2010 – thanks to the excellent work of co-rapporteurs Zita Gurmai (S&D, Hungary) and Alain Lamassoure (EPP, France) –, it was possible to embody these essential points in the regulation and to drop, for example, the original bureaucratic proposal by the Commission to check the admissibility of an ECI only after 300,000 signatures have been collected. So, it was the Parliament again which provided proof of being the guarantor of the intentions of the Constitutional Convention.

Looking ahead: Let’s make the ECI a success story
With the approval of the ECI-regulation by the Parliament and the Council at the beginning of 2011, there is now about one year of time left for citizens and for organized civil society to discuss and consider how to use this new instrument. As we all know, within a lot of different political forces and NGOs the debate started already. And who else if not us, the European federalists, should examine whether to launch a European Citizens’ Initiative too or to be prepared, at least, to support one.

From my point of view, the European federalists do have a high responsibility for the ECI becoming a success story. We as federalists have to do our utmost in order that people in Europe feel and see that their wishes and ideas are taken seriously by the European institutions; that Europe is not a project of the elites, and that there is the political will to build up Europe together with its citizens. One thing is sure: if the first ECI projects won’t succeed, it will mean an extraordinary damage to democracy.

The steady decline in participation in European elections and the extremely low participation in the 2009 elections were already alarming. But having a look at the figures of recent opinion polls in Germany, for example, one should be even more alarmed. The figures of a representative opinion poll issued on January 26th, 2011, by the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” show that in Germany the support towards the EU is declining dramatically. To the question “Do you think Europe is our future?” only 41% of Germans answered with a Yes. The answers to the question: “How quick should the development towards a united Europe proceed? Quicker or more slowly?” showed that since the 1990s the percentage of those in favour of a quicker move towards a united Europe is constantly going down. At the beginning of 2011 only 12% of the consulted persons were in favour of quicker integration. The same negative trend was reflected by the answers to the question “How much do you trust the European Union?”. In the last five years, about 50% of Germans said that they have little or almost no trust in the EU, while 1/3 of the people said that their trust in the EU is high. But at the beginning of this year the figures were even worse – there were only 26% of the people left saying “I trust in the EU”.

So, thinking at how to make the ECI a success story, federalists should take these wide-spread public opinions in our Member states very seriously. But it is not only this background which must be taken into close consideration. Two other elements will have a great importance: which topic and the time-table. Concerning the topic that the UEF and its national branches shall choose to be engaged in, it is sure that only a pro-European issue aiming at deepening European integration and taking up a widespread need or common public interest in our different member-states should have all our support. Concerning the time-table, one should keep in mind the times required. With the ECI starting on 1^st April, 2012, it will take more than one and half years – from the submission to the Commission, the collecting of the minimum one million signatures in seven Member states, the process of verification of the collected signatures, until the date of the Commission's decision on how it will proceed with the ECI –, it will be actually on the table around November 2013. Only then will we know what the Commission intends to do, whether it wants to pick up the citizens request or reject it. That will be just on the eve of the next European election!

Therefore, an ECI that we as UEF may decide to be in favour of should be considered in view of the European elections of 2014. It must be successful – to encourage people to get involved in European affairs and to encourage them to take part in the EP elections. European unification will only last if a Europe of the citizens is built up. The new instrument, the European Citizens Initiative, gives us the chance to go ahead in this direction and to follow the spirit of Jean Monnet, who said that the aim is not to unify States, but peoples.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has described the wider implications of the UN’s involvement in Libya in the following terms: “Security Council Resolution 1973 affirms, clearly and unequivocally, the international community’s determination to fulfill its responsibility to protect civilians from violence perpetrated upon them by their own government”.

Determined advocacy of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has been a hallmark of Ban’s first term as Secretary-General. Nevertheless, since 2005 when R2P was formally affirmed as part of a package of measures at the UN Reform World Summit, wider acceptance of the new political norm has been slow in coming. Clearly, Secretary-General Ban hopes that resolution 1973 will change the terms of debate.

The Responsibility to Protect doctrine rests on three pillars: (1) the primary responsibility of states to protect their own populations from the four crimes of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity; (2) the international community’s responsibility to assist a state to fulfill its protection obligations; and (3) the international community’s responsibility to take timely and decisive action, in accordance with the UN Charter, in cases where the state has manifestly failed to protect its population from one or more of the four crimes.

Prior to Libya, the international community had taken a few limited “R2P actions”, in response to other instances of mass atrocity crimes, for example, economic sanctions such as those imposed on the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe; or referring the Darfur situation to the International Criminal Court. However, Libya and resolution 1973 marks the first time that the Council has authorized coercive military force to protect civilians. It’s a new benchmark for utilizing R2P doctrine.

The transformative significance of R2P is its impact on traditional notions of national sovereignty. The ability of sovereign governments to take whatever actions they like, up to and including committing mass atrocity crimes on their own citizens, is constrained under R2P doctrine. The “international community” takes on new responsibility to assist states in preventing these crimes, and to protect civilians when protection measures fail.

A decade ago, the Canadian-sponsored International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty that elaborated the idea of a global responsibility to protect spelled out six criteria for deciding whether military action is justified: right authority, just cause, right intention, last resort, proportional means and reasonable prospects. The latter, “reasonable prospects”, is perhaps the most difficult to assess.

Even with these criteria, there can be differing interpretations of just how this doctrine should be applied. In the case of Libya, there are those who would have invoked an “R2P analysis”, and yet prescribed a different course of action. For some, diplomacy should have been given more time. For others, the extent of the alleged crimes against humanity prior to resolution 1973 had not yet risen to a level that warranted military intervention. In Libya it was the imminent threat of slaughter in Benghazi that led to such swift action by the Security Council.

If resolution 1973 brings renewed attention to the Responsibility to Protect, a great deal of the credit should also be given to President Obama. The U.S. administration has elevated R2P as a policy framework, incorporating it in the new National Security Strategy and developing a whole-of-government approach to implementation across the range of agencies and departments of their government. In Libya, protecting civilians trumped traditional geo-strategic analysis. While this is a promising development, UN-sanctioned civilian protection operations such as we are seeing in Libya are still the exception, not the rule.

In Cote D’Ivoire a political crisis is degenerating into armed ethnic conflict. On March 25 ECOWAS, the relevant regional organization, appealed to the Security Council to take “all necessary measures” to assist UNOCI, the UN’s peacekeeping force in the country, in order to protect civilians and prevent a renewed civil war. So far, the Security Council has authorized a slight increase in the size of UNOCI, but this has not been sufficient to prevent a widening civil war.

Military intervention (for humanitarian purposes or otherwise) is always selective, depending on a range of factors including political will, military ability, international legitimacy and practical constraints on the ground.

The international community’s failure to intervene effectively in all instances should not lead us to condemn intervention in those circumstances when it is possible. The task ahead is twofold:
- to ensure that the resolution is not distorted or used for purposes other than the civilian protection objectives for which it was created. Avoid “mission creep”.
- to build on the consensus that Libya and Resolution 1973 represents. Now that R2P has demonstrable consequences, governments must do much more to develop the R2P toolbox, as well as learn from previous mistakes. The debate must become more deeply engaged.

At the UN, there is much that can be done to broaden the organization’s capacity to operationalize and implement this emerging norm. There is a range of legal, administrative and political measures that would provide the UN with a more robust R2P toolkit in the years ahead. These include:
- developing the UN’s information management and early warning capacities;
- developing the ability to deploy peacekeepers rapidly, particularly in the early stages of conflict;
- expanding and strengthening the UN’s corps of mediators;
- diminishing the recourse of the Security Council’s permanent members to use their veto to block action when mass atrocity crimes are being committed.

In short, the UN’s resolution 1973 represents a crucial measure to save lives and help the Libyan people transform their country from an authoritarian to a democratic state. And in doing so, it reinforces a standard that can and should evolve to responsibly protect the human security of citizens elsewhere, when mass atrocities threaten.

In January 2011 a report on the “Reform of the International Monetary System: a Cooperative Approach for the Twenty-First Century” was published by the Palais-Royal Initiative, a group convened by Michel Camdessus, Alexandre Lamfalussy and Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa¹, and also comprising many other experts².

This report is ideally in line with the Initiative Triffin 21 and comes after the lecture given by Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa in February 2010 at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve on “The ghost of bancor: the economic crisis and global monetary disorder” and the international Colloquium “Towards a World Reserve Currency” held in Turin in May 2010 and organized by the Triffin International Foundation in co-operation with the Compagnia di San Paolo.

The report was presented by Michel Camdessus to the French President Nicolas Sarkozy as a contribution to the debate on the reform of the international monetary system, which constituted a priority of the French presidency of the G20, prior to the ministerial meeting of the G20 Finances in February 2011. The report approaches the global crisis, but it focuses its attention on the monetary factors and in particular on the international monetary reform. The report outlines the diagnosis of the authors and some avenues of reform toward a more cooperative governance of the global monetary system.

The need for reform is investigated by analysing the persistent dangers and weaknesses of our international monetary arrangements and pointing at the lack of effective global governance. Amongst the weaknesses, the report underlines the lack of a global adjustment process, the presence of financial excesses and destabilizing capital flows, the excessive exchange rate fluctuations and deviations from fundamentals and the excessive expansion of international reserves. While many of these factors are not new, an ever more integrated world economy is likely to exacerbate their consequences, making the world economy more and more vulnerable.

The avenues for reform presented move from the assumption that national economic and financial policies have global spillovers, especially in terms of exchange rate and liquidity, and that therefore a stronger surveillance system (including the possibility of both incentives and sanctions) is required with multilateral obligations. To this end, a consultation is necessary on the best way to have countries that conduct economic and financial policies having in mind the need to foster exchange rates broadly in line with fundamentals and with global balance.

As far as global liquidity is concerned, a reinforced cooperation among central banks and authorities should lead to a shared measurement and surveillance of the state of liquidity, with the final objective of developing agreed guidelines in this area, covering both issues of disruptive inflows and outflows. Furthermore, considering the recent run to the accumulation of reserves, further steps should be taken to make the IMF more akin to a global lender of last resort.

The report also tackles the issue of the role of SDRs (Special Drawing Rights). Considering their usefulness demonstrated during the recent crisis when an exceptional allocation was made, it suggests to re-explore its potential role in serving the public common good of monetary and financial stability in the context of today’s globalized and increasingly multi-polar world. An auspicated role as “principal reserve asset in the international monetary system” was already envisaged in the Articles of Agreement³ and efforts in this direction would simply tackle effectively the issue, until now disregarded. As a last point, the report makes suggestions about a desirable governance of the International Monetary System (IMS) which should be based on a three-level integrated architecture:
- the Heads of Government, meeting sparingly;
- a Council taking strategic decisions related to the functioning of the IMS, composed by the Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors;
- Executive Directors overseeing the work of the IMF and its Managing Director.
On top of that, a Global Advisory Committee, made up of eminent independent personalities, could provide public advice to the IMF in the fields of surveillance and the management of international liquidity and reserves.

The same issue, the reform of the international monetary system, was also at the centre of a high level seminar in Nanjing at the end of March 2011, which gathered the G20 Heads of Government and Finance Ministers. During the meeting Nicolas Sarkozy, French President and current Head of the G-20, urged not to lose “the impetus built up in the midst of the crisis” and instigated a discussion on the future role and composition of the SDRs. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, IMF President, underlined four main pressing issues (imbalances across and within countries, no framework to oversee capital flows, inadequate global liquidity and too few options for safe global assets to meet the demand), compatible with those identified in the Palais Royal document, and put forward the option of a greater role for the SDR itself. Even though a pressure for change was put forward by some participants, other actors adopted a more cautionary stance, pointing at the difficulties of changing the current arrangements and at the need to see some pre-conditions respected: the path for a real reform of the monetary system is winding and disseminated by obstacles, but it is under the spotlight and from the debate many options are emerging.



1 Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, who was one of the conveners of the Palais-Royal Initiative, passed away on December 18, 2010, a few days after the penultimate meeting of the Group.
2 Sergey Aleksashenko (Former Deputy Governor, Central Bank of Russia), Hamad Al Sayari (Former Governor, Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency), Jack T. Boorman (Former Director, Policy Development and Review Department, and Special Advisor to the managing Director, IMF), Andrew Crockett (Former General Manager, BIS), Guillermo de la Dehesa (Former State Secretary of Economy and Finance, Spain), Arminio Fraga (Former Governor, Central Bank of Brasil), Toyoo Gyohten (Former Vice Minister of Finance, Japan), Xiaolian Hu (Vice President of China Society of Finance and Banking), André Icard (Former Deputy General Manager, BIS), Horst Koehler (Former Managing Director, IMF), Guillermo Ortiz (Former Governor, Banco del México), Maria Ramos (Former Director General, National Treasury, South Africa), Y.Venugopal Reddy (Former Governor, Reserve Bank of India), Edwin M. Truman (Former Assistant Secretary for International Affairs of the U.S. Treasury), and Paul A. Volcker (Former Chairman, Federal Reserve Board).
3 Art. VIII, Section 7:“Each member undertakes to collaborate with the Fund and with other members in order to ensure that the policies of the member with respect to reserve assets shall be consistent with the objectives of promoting better international surveillance of international liquidity and making the special drawing right the principal reserve asset in the international monetary system”.

European integration and the creation of supranational structures of governance in Europe in the years following World War II without any doubt represent the most advanced case of postmodern and postnational politics.

Many theorists have written about the postmodern nature of European integration and the functioning of the European Union (EU). Among them was Robert Cooper, who distinguished between pre-modern, modern, and postmodern states¹. According to Cooper, there are several factors that distinguish postmodern states from all others: first, the blurring of the distinction between foreign and domestic politics; second, voluntary mutual intrusiveness and mutual verification; third, a complete repudiation of the use of force in settling disputes; and fourth, security is built on transparency, mutual openness and interdependence.

Political and sociological discourse on postmodernism is not new. Postmodernism developed over the 20^th century, mainly in Europe, in large part as a reaction to two world wars and out-of-control nationalism that led to mass atrocities not only in Europe but across the world. One of the most important features related to postmodernism has been the weakening of central forms of social organization that have been the hallmarks of the modern age, such as nationalism, the nation state, sovereignty and national markets.

Many trace the origins of the modern international order to the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648. Foreign policy in the Westphalian modern age was characterized by states as main actors, by a clear distinction between foreign and domestic politics, by the protection of sovereignty and by the pursuit of national interest and power using mainly “hard power” instruments.

Postmodern foreign policy represents an historical shift, in the context of which nationalism and the national markets become increasingly replaced by cosmopolitanism (or, as a counter-reaction to globalization and cosmopolitanism – focus on local identities) and the globalized economy; national interest is complemented by humanitarian and environmental concerns; Realpolitik, as an underpinning political logic, is complemented (to an extent even superseded) by ideational/ normative considerations.

More generally, in a post-Westphalian order foreign policy transcends the state-centric view of international relations and there is a wider spectre of foreign policy actors, ranging from nation states of contingent sovereignty to international (or supranational) organizations to non-governmental actors. Postmodern foreign policy players prefer to build their security relationships on cooperative grounds and focus on soft and structural power. They seek to promote strong multilateral institutions and are willing to be bound by international legal norms².

EU as a postmodern foreign policy actor
Contrary to what some foreign policy thinkers in Europe have wished for and advocated³, the EU has to a large extent projected its postmodern identity in its external dealings as well. Because of the limited scope of this paper, I will only focus on a few key developments related to EU’s external action.

One such development has been the gradual, yet consistent integration in the area of security and defence. If one analyzes the nature of European overseas operations and the goals that have been set, one will see that these operations have been very different from the traditional military actions of modern great powers. The EU has rather become a pioneer in developing non-violent forms of conflict management. At the early stages of the creation of EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), four types of civilian intervention areas were identified: the police, the rule-of-law, civilian administration and civilian protection – core areas of the civilian crisis management capability. The concept of civilian crisis management – with the rule-of-law or police-like ‘rapid reaction forces’ – is a very innovative crisis management phenomenon on the world stage.

Since the first CSDP mission abroad, which was a police mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2003, the EU has conducted in total 24 missions (including the completed and the ongoing ones)⁴. All of these missions had a strong international backing and were mandated by the UN. Out of the 24, more than half (14 missions) were purely civilian; others were either military or civilian/military missions. The military operations were mainly mandated for such tasks as peace-keeping, maintaining corridors for humanitarian assistance or training.

A document that can be largely seen as outlining the “grand strategy” of EU’s external action is the European Security Strategy (ESS), adopted by the European Council in 2003⁵. It is not hard to spot the underlying postmodern foreign policy logic in this document:
- The document clearly outlines that the EU is committed to upholding and developing International Law, calls the United Nations Charter a fundamental framework for international relations and expresses its commitment to the International Criminal Court;
- It stresses the importance of acting through the UN system and states that strengthening the United Nations, as well as equipping it to fulfil its responsibilities and to act effectively, is a European priority;
- It points out that the EU should strive for an international system based on effective multilateralism and indicates that at a global level Europe must lead a renewal of the multilateral order⁶;
- Among key foreign and security policy goals, the ESS mentions the building of human security, reducing poverty and inequality, promoting good governance and human rights, assisting development and addressing the root causes of conflict and insecurity⁷;
- It also talks about the need for the EU to export its own experience of increasing security through confidence building and arms control regimes – instruments that can make an important contribution to security and stability in EU's neighbourhood and beyond.

Another very important feature of EU’s influence abroad has been its transformative, structural power. This power has manifested itself most clearly in the context of the EU’s enlargement process. During the 1990s and early 2000s, the EU exerted an overwhelming transformative and stabilizing influence in Central and Eastern Europe. It has a similar potential now in the Balkans and has already contributed to the process of modernization in Turkey (even if no end to the accession negotiations process is in sight). Other policies of similar nature are the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), reinforced by the Union for the Mediterranean and the Eastern Partnership, and development aid (the EU, together with its Member States, provides around 55% of the overall development aid in the world), which is almost always conditional on standards of, inter alia, good-governance, democracy and human rights.

On the other hand, as much as the EU has acted in a postmodern way abroad, some of its Member States have not. Examples in this case are not hard to find; the decision of a number of EU Member States to start a war against Iraq in 2003, based on questionable motives and not mandated by the UN, being the most controversial one. Even in the case of the most recent conflict in Libya all military actions were taken by individual Member States and later under NATO’s command. The EU has been only considering a humanitarian mission, and employed its traditional “civilian” power in the form of economic sanctions and pledges to provide post-conflict development and reconstruction support.

In a way, the EU acts as an umbrella, placing EU Member States under a postmodern framework. When EU countries want to act in a “modern” way, they go on their own. In other words, in those areas where the EU is acting as a single actor, EU's action is postmodern. The emphasis on the single actor is not accidental, since the issue with EU's foreign policy is not so much with its postmodernism as with its actorness. Even though one could argue that the actorness problem is decreasing with passing years and updated EU treaties, the reality is that the EU remains divided on so many foreign policy issues, and this has limited EU's ability to be a force for good in international politics.

There are certainly more issues on which the EU cannot find a common position than those on which it can. And quite certainly EU Member States have not managed to agree on those issues that are most urgent and politically most controversial – as in the case of policy vis-à-vis Russia, the Middle East process or the most recent divergence of views on whether to intervene militarily in Libya or not. The EU manages to come up with a single position only on essentially non-controversial issues, those that do not require much effort and carry little, if any, political cost.

The European External Action Service (EEAS), created after the Treaty of Lisbon, has not been a game changer on the foreign policy scene. The choice of a rather inexperienced figure to the post of the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy can also be seen as a deliberate move to reduce the effectiveness of this position. In a certain way, the EEAS can even be seen as a step backwards, as it has an even stronger intergovernmental dimension than in the previous structures governing EU’s external action.

Why do we need a strong postmodern European foreign policy?
Consider that by the middle of this century the Western world will represent only 12 percent of the world’s population, with Europeans reduced to 6 percent. Economically, the West will account for around 30 percent of global output – a level that corresponds to Europe’s share in the eighteenth century and down from 68 percent in 1950⁸.

New rising powers are set to take over the leading economic and political positions. Some predict China will be the world’s number one economy by the middle of the century, while others say it might happen even sooner. According to a study by the Carnegie Endowment, China will become the world’s largest economy in 2032, and grow to be 20 percent larger than the United States by 2050⁹. The BRIC+M economies¹⁰ will grow at an average rate of 6.1 percent per year, raising their share of G20 GDP from 18.7 percent in 2009 to 49.2 percent in 2050. Economic development will inevitably change the patterns of military spending as well. Over the next decades, Europe will see its relative voice in international relations even more diminished. At the same time, the voices of countries like China, India, Brazil, and Mexico will be heard louder.

The choice Europe faces in the 21^st century is very simple: either Europe remains fragmented and therefore increasingly irrelevant (at least from the (geo)political point of view) in world affairs, or it must solve its external actorness problem and advance a coherent and effective foreign policy, which would defend European interests in every region of the world and would employ all necessary means available – ranging from the military to economic to soft power ones. If it fails to do so, it will simply be left on the margins of the big decisions made in the world by the great powers of the 21^st century.

And yet, EU’s foreign policy must be a very special one, i.e. one that maintains a truly distinctive postmodern foreign policy identity. This type of foreign policy should not only be pursued as a matter of conviction but also for pragmatic reasons.

One reason is that many of today’s rising powers espouse a vision of the world that clashes with Western liberal ideals. Countries like China or Russia have in many ways adopted an extremely realist perspective on international relations, that respects sovereignty in the absolute, to the detriment of common causes like addressing climate change or international financial cooperation. Some of these rising powers have crushed democracy at home and developed strong authoritarian, yet partly capitalist systems, as in the case of Russia and China. These countries are now spreading undemocratic models of governance outside their borders.

But the world of the 21^st century is a very different place compared to that of 19^th or 20^th century. One of the most obvious and arguably most important macro-trends is globalization. The increasing interconnectedness and interdependence of the world has transformed the way international politics is being conducted and has changed the nature of global challenges we all face. Just consider some of these challenges – such as climate change, increasing economic interdependence and financial volatility, the spread of WMDs or terrorism. Tackling them requires unprecedented levels of international and transnational cooperation. And these challenges will not be overcome if power arrangements of past centuries persist. Another thing is clear – EU’s security and prosperity in the 21^st century is directly linked to the positive resolution of these global problems.

The EU needs to shape the international system in the 21st century, so that it would be beneficial to it and not the other way round. Europeans need to strive for a postmodern international system based on the postmodern principles outlined in this paper. The more "modern" the international system is, the less chances there are for the EU to exert its international clout. The more postmodern it becomes, the easier it will be for the EU to have an influence in the world.

But for this to happen, European leaders must solve the problem of EU’s actorness. The EU needs to increase its cohesiveness and to retain its postmodern foreign policy characteristics. This would provide the EU with a distinctive foreign policy identity and would create the conditions for Europe to shape international politics in the 21^st century.




1 Robert Cooper, The Postmodern State and the World Order, Demos, London, 2002
2 For a more thorough discussion on the differences between modern and postmodern foreign policy see Rokas Grajauskas and Laurynas Kasciunas, “Modern versus Postmodern Actor of International Relations: Explaining EU-Russia Negotiations on the New Partnership Agreement”, Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review, 2009 (22): http://www.lfpr.lt/index.php?id=120
3 When it comes to EU’s foreign policy, Robert Cooper himself has advocated for the need to apply double standards. Hence his famous dictum: “among ourselves, we keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle, we also must use the laws of the jungle” , Cooper 2000, p.38
4 All CSDP missions can be found on the website of the EU Council: http://www.consilium.europa.eu/showPage.aspx?id=268&lang=en
5 European Security Strategy, A Secure Europe in a Better World, Brussels, 12 December 2003: http://www.consilium.europa.eu/showpage.aspx?id=266&lang=EN
6 Report on the Implementation of the European Security Strategy, Providing Security In A Changing World, Brussels, 12 December 2008: http://www.consilium. europa.eu/showpage.aspx?id=266&lang=EN
7 Ibid.
8 Dominique Moisi, "The Final Decline of the West", Project Syndicate, 15 February 2010: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/moisi51/English
9 Uri Dadush, Bennett Stancil, "The G20 in 2050", International Economic Bulletin, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, November 2009: http://www. carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=24195
10 Brazil, China, India, Mexico and Russia

Marcel Rouby (Ed.)
Le pari d'un gouvernement mondial (The Challenge of a World Government)
A2C Medias, Paris, 2010

In recent times, the world financial and economic crisis and the growing difficulties in creating an effective governance for global problems have raised the question of world’s governability. A globalized world, and at the same time not governed: this is the situation in which we find ourselves, a situation that could produce (and in a way already produces) uncontrollable catastrophes. This situation is visible to everyone, but many people persist in refusing to believe it or in underestimating it. It is significant, from this point of view, that now also statesmen, representatives of the national political ruling class, intellectuals close to the centres of power, recognize the reality and the urgency of the problem of world’s governability. 

An evidence of this is represented by the book edited by Marcel Rouby, which collects about ten essays by French or French-speaking esteemed authors (among them a minister of the Sarkozy’s government), with the preface by Mikhail Gorbatchev. This is a twofold evidence: on the one hand it highlights a growing attention also among national political leaders; on the other hand, it highlights at the same time a significant degree of confusion, uncertainty and “shyness” about the perspectives and possible solutions. A first and relevant example: governance or government, and which relation between them? In the book the two words swing frequently: the title talks about government, but in the essays the word governance is more often present. And, what is more important, nowhere in the book there is an attempt to explain these concepts, their identity, their differences, the scientific and political debate regarding them. Often the terms are used as if they could have the same meaning, while, as it is known, they refer to institutional constructions, procedures of decision and political experiences significantly different. A second important example: the fact that a world government presupposes explicit and relevant transfers of sovereignty from the states to the supranational institutions is never mentioned in an explicit and adequately articulated way. The very concept of sovereignty is almost absent. Only Gorbatchev in the preface (perhaps because he has not been a man in power or a political leader for a long time now?) says explicitly and without diplomatic prudence that «the States must give a piece of their sovereignty to international organizations and, more precisely, to international juridical systems».

But, apart from these critical considerations, the book presents also some interesting inputs and suggestions for those who want to develop the perspective, by now inevitable in order to really avoid catastrophes, of the world’s government. First of all, there emerges, in all of the essays, the acknowledgement of the decisive role that the European Union, if it manages to complete its process of political federal unification, is called upon to exert for the creation of a world system of government. More generally, in the essay of the Canadian intellectual and former ambassador Vlaskakis is outlined the perspective of world regional unions, and among them the EU in the first place, called by the author OGRs (Optimum Geographical Regions), as a necessary and intermediate step towards the creation of a world government. Another interesting point to be signaled is the proposal of a world parliamentary assembly, on the model of the first European Parliament (not yet elected), made by the Action Committee for a World Parliament (COPAM) already in 1993 on the initiative of Olivier Giscard d’Estaing, and backed by several important people in the world (from Boutros-Ghali to Delors to Mandela to Valérie Giscard d’Estaing to Amartya Sen). In a perspective of governance, which forecasts and prepares a system of government, finds a place the proposal by Olivier Giscard d’Estaing himself, about a «multinational sectional governance» in the sectors of public activities, already globalized, in which national governments are by now (and they acknowledge it more and more) powerless in reacting efficiently. In other words, it would be a functional way to proceed towards a world government, as it was done throughout the 1960s with the European integration. It should be remembered that the specialized agencies of the United Nations (FAO, WHO, ILO etc.), if adequately legitimated and provided with decisional and financial instruments, could become the fundamental actors of this process of functional governance. 

Finally, it should be underlined that among the essays published in the book some of them are of a cultural nature and, specifically, of an ethic-religious one. In fact, it could not be imagined to create a system of government for the world without also imagining to create a moral public ethic, to which the religious thought could surely give a decisive contribution (for its elaboration but also, on the contrary, for stopping its advancement: the ambivalence and the risks of religions are well known by historians). In this direction, there is an interesting debate among a Catholic priest, a Rabbi, an Imam and a Buddhist monk: different experiences and religious positions, linked though by a common conviction on the necessity of a cultural dialogue and of a quest for a shared “world ethos”. The perspective of a world government needs rules, institutions, power architectures: but also new soul visions.