Le sommet europ\u00e9en de Bruxelles fut instructif \u00e0 plus d’un point de vue. William Pfaff, le chroniqueur, donne le point de vue de l’historien qu’il est \u00e9galement, et d’un historien parfaitement instruit des r\u00e9alit\u00e9s europ\u00e9ennes \u00e0 la lumi\u00e8re de quelques pens\u00e9es puissantes. (Celle de De Gaulle particuli\u00e8rement, car Pfaff ne cache pas son admiration pour de Gaulle et se qualifie lui-m\u00eame de gaulliste am\u00e9ricain.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tLe chroniqueur trace donc avec sa plume d’historien les conclusions qu’on peut tirer du sommet de Bruxelles, o\u00f9 l’on vit les nations se d\u00e9chirer, o\u00f9 il y eut tant de lamentations sur le sort malheureux de l’esprit europ\u00e9en. Pour Pfaff l’UE existe et rien ne la d\u00e9fera, notamment pas ces sommets \u00e0 r\u00e9p\u00e9tition qui chaque fois sont l’occasion d’envol\u00e9es lyriques et plaintives. Mais rien, non plus, ne la transformera en ce qu’elle ne peut \u00eatre. Le sommet de Bruxelles confirme que l’UE est un bloc \u00e9conomique, une association int\u00e9gr\u00e9e de l’\u00e9conomie de diverses nations, mais elle n’a pas chang\u00e9 et ne changera pas la diversit\u00e9 et la souverainet\u00e9 des nations europ\u00e9ennes. Rien de nouveau finalement, sauf, une fois de plus, pour les utopistes et les r\u00eaveurs. Et rien de mauvais, non plus, bien entendu<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\t\u00abHowever the subordination of the European great powers to federal EU authority is the illusion that has never seriously been challenged, except by DeGaulle. I say great powers advisedly. England, France, Spain, Germany-Austria (legatees of the Holy Roman Empire), and the city-states of Italy are the principal makers of western civilization. They have always been autonomous powers.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbI find it very hard to imagine Britain or France really subordinating itself to a true European federal union. Economic integration has been no serious problem. It already exists, and works, whatever the quarrels over agricultural policy or free and undistorted competition.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbFrance has never needed to make an issue of political sovereignty because as the EU’s founder it has effectively been its leader until now, considering the EU a convenient extension (when needed) of French global influence.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbGermany has not presented a problem because German international sovereignty has for obvious reasons been considered by everyone, Germans included, to be limited. However it has been a half century since the war, and this slowly is beginning to change.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbSovereignty has not been an issue in the EU since DeGaulle because federal union has remained an abstraction, not a serious possibility. DeGaulle vetoed Britain’ first attempt to join the EU in 1967 because he understood that there was no room in the EU for two (or more) fully sovereign great powers. And of course since Britain’s entry, its resistance to EU claims have been a constant irritant. Last weekend there was still another British opt-out from a European agreement, one on fundamental human rights that included a right to labor organization (an odd thing for a Labour government to object to, one might think).<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThe ambition of the failed constitution, still a faint presence in the new treaty, to create a sovereign Europe conducting an independent foreign policy, is simply impossible to achieve, as the constitution’s rejection has demonstrated. It should be abandoned.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThe EU is a global economic power, as the world already recognizes. Its economic power can be put behind certain political goals, provided that 27 nations can agree on those goals. The existence of those 27 EU members guarantees that any controversial policy will be vetoed or blocked by majority vote.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThe only way Europe will exercise global political influence in the future will be in the way that it exercised such influence in the past, by individual or coalition action by sovereign European great powers. This happened in the Iraq case. It would happen again if there were an attack on Iran. It could happen in the Palestine-Israel case if some European governments wished to break with American policies. It is likely eventually to happen with respect to NATO in Afghanistan and some U.S. African interventions. But it is the only way.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \tMis en ligne le 28 juin 2007 \u00e0 05H34<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Le sommet europ\u00e9en de Bruxelles fut instructif \u00e0 plus d’un point de vue. William Pfaff, le chroniqueur, donne le point de vue de l’historien qu’il est \u00e9galement, et d’un historien parfaitement instruit des r\u00e9alit\u00e9s europ\u00e9ennes \u00e0 la lumi\u00e8re de quelques pens\u00e9es puissantes. (Celle de De Gaulle particuli\u00e8rement, car Pfaff ne cache pas son admiration pour… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2631,4889,398,2685,4807,6697,1131],"class_list":["post-68946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-de","tag-etats","tag-europe","tag-gaulle","tag-integration","tag-nations","tag-pfaff"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68946\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}