May 2019

Lacking any vision, Europhiles, though in the majority, abandon the field to the Europhobes by default. The European parliamentary election campaign is being derailed from its primary purpose which should be the confrontation of different visions of the Union’s future. It is being unfortunately limited to a binary opposition between parties labelled “pro-European” and those who advocate, more or less openly, reverting to “sovereign” Nation-States, their respective positions being largely based on domestic considerations overshadowing the interests of the Union. No one seems to have paid attention to Martin Selmayr’s warning in Berlin last September: “Make this election a competition for the best solutions for Europe, not a battle for or against Europe”! The nearly exclusive focus of the Europhile…

The self-satisfaction with which Martin Selmayr evaluates the record of the “Job” of the Juncker Commission lacks the modicum of restraint that the current “State of the Union” calls for. Let us acknowledge the volume of actions undertaken and completed by the Commission whose number deserves unequivocally to join countless other pointless statistics that adorn the Guinness Book of Records! On the eve of the European elections it is difficult to find an elector able to identify a single measure that he feels in conscious has actually affected his life over the last five years (with the possible exception of the end of roaming charges in 2017). On the positive side, one must mention the competence with which the Commission…