The European Union is in bad way. It is not the first time. We remember the crisis which had affected the European Monetary System with the several readjustments and the return journey of the Sterling. But that had not impeached the creation of the euro and the successful conversion of the national currencies into the single one. We have not anymore forgotten the consequences of the sub-prime crisis, of the excessive Greek indebtedness and of the weakness of the Irish financial system. Even the Brexit with all its complications on the trade exchanges and on the role of London as a financial center has not hurt the European project.

There are first the poor economic achievements of the main countries, the France stagnation and the German recession, in an international environment much less unfavorable than it is frequently claimed because the United States have a growth rate above 2% and China around 5%. Even if this level is inferior to what has been observed in the past, it remains a significant supporting factor for European exports. India is a new country among the world growth engines, Japan, which is familiar with stagnation, is not doing worse than in the past and the South-East Asia countries are still developing thanks to the large foreign investments which have  found there a qualified and cheap workforce.

These poor European performances are going along with major social crisis whose France has not the monopoly. Transportation public services in Germany, for instance, endure successive strike periods. Everywhere, in the Union, we see farmer movements which are unsatisfied by the evolution of their life level and by the administrative complications imposed by the new regulations without being protected from the unfair competition coming from these which are not submitted to them. The Common Agricultural Policy, which was these last decades one of the major successes, along with the euro, of the European project is now criticized. The degradation of the social climate in the State-members is so attributed to Europe which favors extremist political parties.

The States belonging to the eurozone have delegated to European Central Bank to manage the monetary policy and have imposed to themselves deficit and indebtedness criteria for the budgetary policy. But the thinking modes as the defined rules are coming from the Eighties and have become obsolete if not anachronic. The monetary policy has no influence on the temporary inflationist phenomenon like the energy price increases provoked by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Through the increase of the credit costs, that policy has little influence on consumption, curbed by the purchasing power diminution but it provokes a fall of the investments in housing and has weakened small and medium enterprises already affected by their markets stagnation, through an increase of their financial charges.

The central banks action mainly has effect on financial markets. The interest rates evolution has immediate repercussions on currencies rates and the anticipation of their decisions has consequences on the stocks prices. The current situation when indexes are beating records after records when unemployment is rebounding as in France and when household have difficulties to pay their food at the end of each month is not without link with the social unrest. Worry increases when it is left to hear that it must wait for an enough pressure on wages to decide to reduce interest rates. But their evolution has been for nothing in the inflation rebound in 2022.

Budgetary policy was, since Keynes, the favored tool to support growth and employment. The return to the compliance with the criteria adopted at the Maastricht Treaty period and suspended during the Covid-19 crisis, will impose budget restrictions in countries in stagnation or in recession, which will make even worse their situation. Risk is high that the ambitious objectives regarding the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, will not be reached because they need huge investments, which is in contradiction with a diminution of the public expenditures.

The second major mistake has been the choice to make competition a general and constraining principle. The rejection of the European constitution project which included the instauration of a free and non-biased competition did not make it to disappear. If the creation of the large European market has been a success and has allowed in the same time to fighting against the inflationist tensions and to offering to consumers a much larger choice of goods and services, the extension to the public services has been a heavy mistake which is not without link with their degradation, with the many current social movements and with the inflationist crisis in the energy sector.

The States would have been authorized to keep monopolies along with a regulation of their prices. The artificial apparition of the competition in many cases has neither improved the quality of these services nor made their prices falling, even to the opposite. The example of electricity in France is full of lessons. First, power transportation and distribution remained as monopolies. The new operators have poorly contributed to the power plants capacity increase. In most of the cases, they limited their action to a commercial one. During that time, EDF, worry about seeing its growth affected on its national market, launched a foreign investment policy which frequently leaded to heavy losses. The indebtedness which has resulted from it has worsened its financial situation and weakened its capacity to invest to modernize and to extend its production apparel.

Under Brussels pressure, the State has imposed to the company to resell to its competitors a share of its nuclear production at a price inferior to market one, making even worse its financial situation. When occurred in the same time the technical problems affecting several nuclear power plants and the consequences on the energy markets of the sanctions adopted against Russia, France suffered a double punishment: the State had to intervene to slow the power prices increase and the household as the enterprises will have to cope in the future with much higher bills. New public expenditures diminutions so will be necessary to offset these supports but the household purchasing power as the costs for the enterprises and farm exploitations will remain heavier for a long period.

In the past, all governments have had, at a time or at another one, to cope with a social unrest. Anti-European political forces did not precisely attribute to Brussels these difficulties and were just keeping ideological positions about independence and sovereignty. The new point, it is that these discontents are frequently the result of European decisions about which concerned governments have not been able to assess the hurting consequences for their countries.

The indisputable advantages offered by the European project so risk to be pushed into the background in face of the current difficulties and the people support will be affected by that. The governments, with the coming Parliament election must take the opportunity to convince that the reforms so frequently demanded by Brussels must, in the future, as a priority, concern the European economic model. It is indisputable if we want to avoid that its current rejection by the people leads to the putting into question of the huge progresses realized until now and to a major weakening in the future of the European countries.