Italian Council of European Movement Declaration on the State of the Union Rome, 14th October 2014 INTRODUCTION The Italian Council of the European Movement has discussed the European situation on the eve of the vote of confidence to be expressed on 22 October by the European Parliament on the Commission Juncker and the perspectives of the federalist action in 2015. The debate within the Italian Council has initially focused on the dramatic events occurring these weeks in the neighboring countries of the Union and in particular on the Middle East and Ukraine situations, that produce consequences not only in military and security terms but also on geopolitical issues, weighting on the political and economic state of the Union. In this context, the European Movement believes that on the one hand, the question of European defense as a method of both peace-keeping and peace-building should be opened urgently; that on the other hand, an intervention of the United Nations should be strongly supported and that the European Commission and the High Representative should launch a common foreign and neighborhood policy aiming to build a Mediterranean Region of peace, coexistence, cooperation and mobility of people in the perspective of a Euro-Mediterranean Community. The electing procedure of the President of the Commission has strengthened the political dimension of the Union, given the fact that the European Council had to take into account the outcome of the 22-25 May vote , and the choices made by the European parties. However, the democracy in the Union has not yet moved the necessary and significant steps forward: - The composition of the Commission has flown from the choices made by national governments; the latter have been only partially coherent with the coalition agreements built in the European Parliament and have left unsolved disagreements on political issues and strategic priorities that will weigh on the work of the new Commission and its relations with the Assembly. To this is to be added the concern for the fragmentation of the portfolios and the risks brought in by a structure that relies on a supervisory role of vice-presidents that is substantially limited to a right of veto without assigning them relevant areas of the European administration; - European parties have shown their inability to contribute to “forming European political awareness and to expressing the will of citizens of the Union (art. 10.4 TEU); - The European Council has shown its willingness to impose not only to the Commission but also to the European Parliament its strategic agenda for the entire new legislature. EUROPEAN AND NATIONAL DEMOCRACY The embryonic – and by definition inadequate – level of European democracy, results however primarily from the inability of governments, leaders and national parliaments to put in place a shared strategy for Europe, its process of further integration and the necessary transfer of sovereignty. Month after month, decision after decision, in these years of crisis the European awareness has disappeared; without it, it will be possible to correct only a small amount of the distortions of the policies adopted in the majority of cases by the Heads of State and Government within the European Council with the support of their own national Parliaments. What appears more and more clearly – and not just within the Parliaments of the Countries where Euro-hostile movements won the European elections – is the complaining over the loss of sovereignty and the centrality of the troika, together with the need of national responses: everything clearly prevails on the awareness that, on the contrary, the real cause of the crisis is the lack of Europe. What is missing is the governments’ will to achieve together the targets set by the Treaties and this circumstance brings to breach the constitutional principle of fair cooperation, in a situation in which the European Parliament could bring the Council in front of the Court of Justice on some essential matters, presenting a series of proceedings for failure to act using the legal precedent of the transport policy. What is mostly missing is a European project capable to meet the challenges of the 21st century and to represent a synthesis – as it happened at the beginning of the integration process - of common values and shared interests. No national government has been able to propose the essential elements of this project nor it had started a dialogue between the governments whose political majorities should be conveyers of a perspective of further integration. CITIZENS AND INSTITUTIONS The messages expressed by the ballot boxes through an abstention rate of 57%, the growth of Euro-hostile movements and the high level of distrust of citizens towards national and European institutions have not been understood by governments and political parties in the Member States and the protest of the youngsters whom massively deserted the European elections remained unheeded. In absence of swift and appropriate responses, contrasts between member States will increase and citizens will tend to refuge in the illusion that their problems could be more easily solved with a backward jump in the Europe of nationalisms. In these circumstances, the consequences will be extremely heavy for both the Countries whose economy is now apparently more solid and for those suffering the effects of the economic and social crisis: the European project may well fail! The European Movement believes that it is still possible to stop this decline by re-launching the perspective of a genuine political unity built on federal basis without which it will be impossible to progress irreversibly on the path of economic integration and monetary union. ECONOMIC OUTLOOK The Union, in order to complete the economic and monetary integration, in the first place needs an investment plan for a sustainable and harmonious growth, in respect of the quality of life and of the environment, that aims at reducing inequalities, poverty and structural unemployment especially for youngsters and women. The project of a 300 billion Euros plan in three years placed at the core of Jean-Claude Juncker’s program has to be radically revised. New European investments could not be financed by resources already included in the 2014-2020 multiannual perspectives that stem in large part from national contributions, and coincide with the very limited amount of resources already dedicated to existing policies, nor principally by private interventions but from genuine own resources and from an extensive use of the instrument of loans and mortgages guaranteed by the European budget. The investment plan should therefore be amended regarding the quality of its resources and expenditures accordingly to these priorities but also regarding the quantity of its amount, that is far below the needs of the Union and of the possibilities offered by financial markets. On this field the European Movement in Italy has already sent to Jean-Claude Juncker a precise proposal (EFIGE) and strongly supports the European Citizens Initiative New Deal 4 Europe. The occasion of the multiannual financial perspective’s mid-term review will have to be grasped by the European Parliament and the Commission to introduce permanently in the European budget new own resources, guaranteeing loans and mortgages (project bonds) and the European policy of public investment for sustainable growth and for fighting unemployment. In the event it will be impossible to reach a unanimous agreement in the Council, the plan should represent the first step for an authentic budget of the Eurozone. FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND SOCIAL PERSPECTIVES Second, the Union must restart from the promotion and protection of individual and collectives human rights. This means to accelerate the accession of the Union to the European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, to open a procedure for accession to the Revised Social Charter of Turin, to lead rapidly to conclude the creation of a European Public Prosecutor independent from national judiciary systems, to re-launch the Stockholm Program in the framework of an effective communitarization of the space of freedom, security and justice, to create a European Civil Service, to reform the instrument of the European Citizens Initiative, to adopt stronger measures to support Youth but also to adopt solidarity and inclusion policies for citizens coming from third Countries, in respect with the rights enshrined in the Charter avoiding operations that appear counterproductive and discriminatory (about this, the European Movement in Italy adopted a declaration on the Council initiative Mos Maiorum). CONSTITUTIONAL PERSPECTIVES The European Movement in Italy has received with strong concern the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the EP decision to start the development of an initiative report on the potentialities of the Treaty referring to a later moment the drafting of a report on the review of the Lisbon Treaty and the future of the Union. The European Movement in Italy considers this decision inconsistent, inefficient and non-transparent. The two reports should be parallel and complementary and lead the EP to develop and adopt an ambitious project to replace within a precise deadline the Treaty on European Union with a new Constitutional Pact. In this spirit, the European Movement in Italy reiterates its conviction that, in the absence of an initiative of the governments, the European Parliament should assume the role that was exercised by the first direct universal suffrage elected Assembly under the initiative of Altiero Spinelli. PROPOSALS AND COMMITMENTS To achieve this result, however, it is necessary a great popular mobilization to explain to the citizens the real reasons why we are not able to exit the crisis, being aware that it is the institutional crisis that sharpens the economic and social crisis and not vice versa, and that only a stronger political and economic integration may restart the engines of growth. On the basis of these considerations, the European Movement in Italy has decided to launch an own initiative and to propose to the Federal Assembly of the European Movement International - which will meet in the Campidoglio in Rome from the 28 to the 29 November 2014 - the start of a campaign for a federal, united and democratic Europe. The European Movement in Italy suggests to end this campaign on Sunday, 28 June 2015 (during the close up of the 70th anniversary of the Second World War end anniversary and in the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the great demonstration organized in Milan by European federalists, local powers and trade unions) with the organization of popular initiatives in one hundred significant sites of the European history.
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 11:33:49 +0000
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