We are told that efficiency is on the Chinese side. This is being whispered and said more and more and, yes, it is absolutely true, because we have rarely seen a political power managing, in no time, to provoke a pandemic, to place half of humankind in confinement and, no doubt, soon to plunge the world economy into a crisis whose magnitude could be absolutely spectacular.

And best of all, this regime only had to resort to the simple and banal police technique of prohibiting free speech to anyone, for any purpose and under any circumstances. A young and noble doctor warns of the beginning of a strange epidemic? Others follow him in this observation and sound the alarm in their turn? Had they been heard, China and the world would have gained two months and probably have been able to contain the harm but – thank God! – the Chinese efficiency was there.

It was able to muzzle these whistle-blowers , let the virus run and when an entire region, an industrial pole directly connected to the rest of the planet, was contaminated, the damage was done. Chinese efficiency had triumphed, and it is the merits of this dictatorship that are being acclaimed today, so much greater than that those of the democracies where speech is abominably free.

I do not quite understand.

I must have missed an episode, but we also hear, and just as loudly, perhaps even louder, that the one who really, irrefutably proved its ineffectiveness is the European Union. Do you see what is happening? Where are the masks? Where is the solidarity between member states? And about this virus: why wasn’t “Brussels” ready to fight it?

“Ah, your Europe is really worthy!”, says a background noise magnificently orchestrated by all the extreme-right and by this new Europhobic intelligentsia, nationalist and so deliciously backward-looking, but… Wait!

At this stage, I understand even less, because what do you blame this hag, this mangy bitch? For not existing enough or for encroaching too much on the prerogatives of the States? One ought to know, because it is indeed in the name of national sovereignty, the ineffectiveness of the Brussels bureaucracy and the sacrosanct right to at least still be able to be treated within its own borders as one is used to, that public health is not the responsibility of the European institutions but of the Member States.

The Commission was not armed but totally disarmed in the face of this pandemic, but whose fault is it? The “Europeanists’” or the Europhobes’? And if it was so good – really good, isn’t it? – that public health has been spared by the liberticidal appetite of the European ogre, what are we complaining about?

That the European Central Bank has been wise enough and, above all, powerful enough to calm the panic in the markets by putting on the table amounts of money that have never been seen before and that no central bank of any nation-state could have mobilised on its own? That the Commission immediately suspended the common fiscal rules to allow national governments to cope with such an increase in their expenditure? That no capital city opposed, not for a second, this measure, which nevertheless violates the whole spirit of the treaties and the most fundamental of the conditions laid down for the creation of the single currency when liberalism had been “set in stone”, as it was told with such horror at the time?

I must have missed an episode.

No, I must have skipped the whole first season, but I understand less and less here because, last of all, these Community loans that the Netherlands, Germany and a few others, one or two of lesser importance, have once again refused to let the Union launch, why do they provoke so much emotion? Why is the division that they cause among the 27 countries being blamed so widely ?

I, the European federalist, understand only too well the anger that I share with all those in favour of deepening the Union. We would have wanted, and still want, because this cause is far from being lost, for those obsessed with balancing the budget to forget their dogmas for a moment and understand that, in such a drama, it is no longer a question of spendthrift and virtuous states but of an indispensable and vital solidarity between Europeans.

Our disappointment and our fury are logical, but why do you, Europhobes, not dance with joy and congratulate Berlin and The Hague for thinking of their vaults and their citizens rather than thinking to those frog-eaters or tortilla eaters and other pizza-eaters? For at last, there you have nationalism, some good, real nationalism! The Dutch think of themselves before thinking of those of the “Med Club”, of Southern Europe, just as Mr Trump claims “America first!” and just as the French government should do better in thinking of other French people rather than of the solidarity with Spaniards and other Romanians.

This loans issue? This is not a disgrace. It is the triumph of Reason against this “no borders” and outmoded ideology which is the basis of this European utopia. That is what we should be hearing rather than this long scream against Europe which is not there to help. This is what would at least be logical, but coherence is apparently not the first quality of Europhobes. Since I do not understand their reasoning, I am therefore going to continue to think and to say, without fear of upsetting the rising Europhobia, that we would weaken ourselves by dividing, that this crisis does not demonstrate the urgency of a divorce but the need for a European public power and that if Mr Xi, Mr Trump and Mr Putin love Europe so much that they would prefer there be 27, it is not for our own sake but for the sake of their power interests.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Français Deutsch Magyar Polski