What a celebration
Christian Bulzomi
April 5, 2007
The celebration of the 50th anniversary of the conclusion of the Rome Treaties and the announcement of the therewith connected Berlin Declaration reminded me of the immense distance between our beloved European Union and the European citizens. There are many ways to try to involve the European citizens into a celebration of this unique organization whose activity pervades their daily life; the celebration of March 25 is not one of them.
Enthusiastic meetings ending with inspired declarations are definitely not an appropriate way to close the gap between Europe and its citizens. Indeed, although, we are profiting day by day from the farsightedness of a few European leaders and their persistence in pursuing a dream for more than fifty years, most of us ignore that these rights, freedoms, the peace and prosperity we enjoy are, at least partially, an achievement of the so distant European institutions.
I would have suggested Ms. Wallström to propose the celebration of a non EU-day thereby allowing Member States just for one day to:
- reintroduce the original checks at their borders;
- prohibit foreign engineers, architects, medical doctors, nurses, translators,… to work on that day as they are not in possession of a diploma expedited by a national university;
- take foreign products from the shelves;
- allow the discrimination of Europeans working in another Member State and discriminate women independently from their nationality with regard to working conditions;
- close the infrastructures constructed with cohesion funds;
- revoke every aid or subsidy which origins from the budget of the European Community;
- increase prizes in the air transport market and in the telecom sector as if national monopolies still existed
- permit banks to charge extremely high fees for an intra-community bank transfer
- disrespect the legal personality of companies not incorporated under its national laws;
- oblige non Italian-EU-citizens to pay during their visit to the Sistine Chapel while Italians have not to, and apply the same mutatis mutandis to the Louvre, the British Museum, Muzeum Historyczne Miasta Warszawy, …
That might be a good way to show to the vast majority of Europeans what Europe has done for us. Nonetheless, the aim of this very special day was probably not at all the one I figured. Apparently the European Council and the other Institutions of the European Union had (once more) the objective to brilliantly solve the actual institutional problem of the European institutions. And the Heads of State and Government actually did pursue their objective by bravely declaring the solution of the institutional problem by 2009.
However, I recall having read a document adopted and signed by all the actual Member States, and ratified by 18 Member States -out of 20 who tried- which solves all the institutional problems and, among other things depillarizes and therefore improves immensely the potential of the European Union, reduces its democratic deficit and improves the judicial protection of individuals.
From my point of view, the remaining 7 Member States have the obligation to comply with their international law obligation and must therefore try to ratify the Treaty in accordance with their constitutional requirements. Afterwards, our political leaders have the responsibility to adopt as many Protocols as necessary to define the different level of participation of the Member States whose citizens or governments do not want the deep integration the European Constitution creates.
Of course, there is always somebody who recalls the undesirability of a European Union “a plusieurs vitesses” and I definitely agree. Nonetheless, I think that a European Union with different levels of integration but functioning institutions – as would be the picture after the entry into force of the Constitution – is more desirable than a European Union with different levels of integration but institutions not able to function. Indeed, it will be very difficult to create a European Union with even more different levels of integration than the existing EU.
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