At a moment when France chooses as a Prime minister a former European Commissioner, the discontent against Brussels has never been so strong on the continent. It already occurred after the referendum in the United Kingdom the Brexit. The country is today paying the heavy consequences and the Labor new government tries to reopen discussions, if not to come back into the Union, at least to erase the most negative effects of this divorce. But the lesson has not been heard and in many countries the political formations openly criticizing the action of the European institutions have realized scores which, sometimes as in Hungary, have allowed them to coming into power.
In Italy, the appointment of Georgia Maloni, belonging to a party proclaiming its anti-European far-right convictions, as a Prime minister has been a second strong message, even if Italy, after that, has adopted a more conciliatory position, probably to still benefit from the Community financial supports. The situation has not been very different in France with an unprecedent score at the elections to the European Parliament of the National Rassemblement, an heir of the National Front which was in favor of an exit from Europe and from the euro. As in Italy, its leaders have adopted a more cautious position but their program included measures in total contradiction with the Brussels rules.
Social movements, notably in the agricultural world had invited to a revolt against the application of European decisions. Inside the far-right as in the far-left, the denunciation of the sovereignty loss in essential domains as immigration had obtained a strong support of the electors. What has just happened in Germany with the regional elections in Saxony and in Thuringia is even more revealing.
Against what it appears in many comments, it is not the come back to the nazi past which has motivated the electors but the communist past of the former Eastern Germany. Christian democrats, usually in first position in these regions, have been overpassed by the AFD in Thuringia. A new far-left party, BSW managed by Sahra Wagenknecht was third, as in Saxony. The abandon of the nuclear energy to protect the jobs of the local coal and brown coal mines and the recourse to the Russian natural gas have not been enough and their electorate criticizes the European position of a total support to Ukraine against the Russian invasion.
Above the local contexts, the poor achievement of the main European economies for ten years has given arguments to anti-European movements. At a time when India and China have growth rates at least equal to 5% and the United States between 2 and 3%, Germany was near recession and France and Italy are in a near-stagnation, despite policies in these two countries supporting enterprises and household, finances by the increase of the public indebtedness. There are still three million jobseekers in France and the full employment in Germany comes from the use of part-time jobs and from a very low demography. The recourse to immigration to close the workforce deficit is, there too, the purpose of tough critics.
Europe is definitely behind in the new technologies and has not been able to make world giants emerging, able to vie with their competitors American and Chinese. Its traditional strong positions are swaying. The Brussels decision to stop the production of cars with thermal engines in 2035, if the date is not postponed, could have catastrophic consequences on employment and foreign trades because the carmakers don’t have at their disposal the raw materials to produce the batteries and have a big backwardness compared to the Chinese industry. The German groups occupied a strong position in the Middle Empire. They are losing it due to two reasons: the models of their local competitors have got a better quality and they are not able to answer the demand of electric vehicles. The Chinese carmakers, to the opposite, are conquering market shares in Europe, despite the tariffs decided by Brussels.
Another discontentment reason, immigration whose rules are decided at the European level. The States so have lost the tool in order to adopt the restrictive policies demanded by the majority of their electors. The issue has been decisive in France where we have seen the workers world, traditionally in favor of the left, to shift toward the far-right which promised to put into question this abandon of sovereignty.
The fundamentals principles of the European construction come from the Nineties and are obsolete. The competences transfer has leaded to the emergence of an invading bureaucracy which weights on the enterprises production and on agriculture. The Think-Tank “Confrontations Europe” in its proposals to (re) build a democratic Europe has registered that between 2017 and 2022, the enterprises have been obliged to respect 850 new rules, representing 5422 pages of regulations.
Budget criteria regarding deficit and indebtedness became quite also unappropriated in presence of the today challenges. The fact of not taking into account the nature of the public expenditures is a deep mistake. A State with low military expenses and which protects the use of polluting fossil fuels as coal would-it be more virtuous because due to that it has a low budget deficit than a State which devote the necessary amounts to the European military safety and which would invest to produce a de-carboned electricity? Is a heavily indebted State a threat for the financial stability when in the same time household accumulate financial assets and so have the capacity to ensure the charge and the reimbursement of the debt? The answer of these two questions is obviously no. The next generations will inherit the debt but also the money to reimburse it.
The ”free and not biased “ competition principle has weakened the industry when mergers between enterprises have been blocked when they were necessary to cope with the international competition. The prohibition of State aids and of the recourse to public orders to support a sector has been a deep mistake when we see today the United States launching hundreds of billion dollars programs to support their enterprises in strategic sectors like chips or artificial intelligence.
The opening to competition of major public services like transportation or energy supply which was justified by that ideology of competition has in no way profited to consumers because it has generated in these enterprises heavy commercial expenditures to attract customers to the detriment of their productivity and of their investment capacity.
Europe is indispensable but is not perfect. The major challenge it is confronted with and which at every election in a growing number of countries is revealed by an hostile vote, is to take conscience of the causes of that new unpopularity. Instead of trying to keep treaties like Maastricht of Lisbon, which gave necessary answers, as it was thought at that time, the new Commission which will come into function after the last elections must question itself on the causes of this discontent and admit that the principles coming from the past treaties must be reconsidered.
It will be difficult, if not impossible, that everybody finds an agreement. It is why it is in the application of the past rules, through the introduction of more flexibility, that the European Union functionning can evolute to the greatest profit of the enterprises and of the European people. We must hope that the choice as a Prime minister of a former European Commissioner will allow France to efficiently contribute to this indispensable turnaround.