Saturday, September 30, 2017

Macron's Sorbonne speech for a sovereign, united and democratic Europe

French President Emmannuel Macron gave an important speech on September 26th at Sorbonne University. He proposed to refound the European Project on the basis of a more sovereign Euro-zone, with a stronger budget, a finance minister and a parliamentary control. His project includes some important key aspects in the form of much stronger common policies:
-A common Security and Defence policy that puts together information and resources to fight terrorism.
-A common Foreign policy and development, especially in the Mediterranean and Africa, to better deal with immigration in a human and forward looking way.
-A common policy of ecologic transition, to protect the environment and promote a common and integrated energy system.
-The digital revolution will require a common approach to regulate the digital economy, to protect intellectual property and to train workers in the skills of new technologies and artificial intelligence.
-The European Union and the euro-zone should commit to joint industrial and economic development and to fighting umployment, especially among the youth, in a context of fiscal and social harmonization.
My only problem with the speech is that somehow paradoxically with the objective of an integrated an multilingual Europe, it has been very difficult to me (in fact, so far impossible) to find the English version.
The speech gives more emphasis to objectives than to instruments. But he proposes at least one instrument to achieve this higher integration: the creation of pan-European lists in the next European election, starting with the seats that the UK abandons, but expanding the number of pan-European seats in the next two European Parliament election.
Macron condemns all forms of nationalism and hate, and expresses clearly his ambition to fight them with concrete and strong proposals to accelerate the transfer of sovereignty of all member states to the European level.

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