¡Europa!, a pesar de todo. Una estrategia realista

Abstract

Europe resists against all odds.Although, in the not so distant past, a couple of referenda in France and the Netherlands succeeded in blocking the process of ratifying the draft European Constitution, this was then redirected to the subsequent Lisbon Treaty, in which the most significant aspects of the failed constitutional project were presented. The apocalyptic believe that the so called brexit is the prelude to the immediate dilution of the EU, unable to face the economic crisis and its social consequences, the challenges of the new global reality and the rising hegemony of big powers. The brexit event has awoken the consciousness of European citizens. What remains is a picture of the EU imbued with negative outlines: structural democratic deficit, haughty bureaucracy, blocked institutions, complex codecision processes and a rising tide of populisms of different political hues which solely seek the destruction of the European Union system. According to the strongest critics and the most apocalyptic, geostrategically Europe would be the major net loser of the hyperglobalisation ,as the French German axis ceased to function long ago. Along with this, the lack of democracy and transparency, and their inability to successfully face the main humanitarian catastrophe of recent times, the wave of Syrian refugees, would lead us to wonder whether we can still maintain that this is normal and foreseeable, as the European construction has always found an imaginative way out of successive and recurrent crises.After describing some of the elements of the current EU crisis, the editorial raises the following question: have the EU founding values changed? Our editorial comes within a reflection on Europe that was started years ago in this journal (the titles for the different editorials are shown in a table at the end). Five years ago, we spoke in favour of the development and deepening of the constitutional European system of a social market economy. We advocated the resocialisation of the European project with new energies, new clarity and new passion for Europe. In order to find out a way out of the current impasse, the EU should get away from that single model of neoliberal capitalism which is precisely at the origin of the crisis. Following the introduction, we examined the European institutions and their results, produced by their most of the times ignored or silenced ricultural and social cohesion policies. We do not omit, of course, the most problematic or negative issues, particularly the insufficient European response to the serious humanitarian crisis, which has exposed us to the whole world and to ourselves. If the capacity of governments to response to great crises is as limited as shown in these times,the EU is not an exception. Nevertheless, we will present in part four the challenges that the EU is facing, with some references to the Spanish policies developed on the basis of the acquis communautaire. Part five and conclusion enables us to state that the EU is a long, well established institutional reality, a highly competitive social market economy geared to solidarity, and with an acceptable capacity to insert itself from a democratic governance system into a hyperglobalised world. Europe can combine a moderate globalization, democracy as system and the permanence of the Member States. This is our firm belief: the EU is facing the only possible strategy and should opt fully for it. For this reason and against all odds, Europe!