of the power of the financial markets and the new giants of the digital economy. We owe all of this to the generations to come. What we ourselves do not do for Europe, no one else will do for us.
Some time ago, on a train, I met Mark, a British professor who works in Amsterdam on European space policy. He summed up his misgivings about Brexit in a single sentence, eight words full of dreams and regrets: ‘Only together can we explore the Solar System.’
What is true for the Solar System is also true for other challenges. In the coming world, a world of increasingly powerful and uprooted continent-states and multinationals, no country in the European Union, whether the smallest or the largest, stands the slightest chance of safeguarding its sovereignty without combining it with that of its neighbours.
It is our duty to be clearsighted about this. Today, in the twenty-first century, where do the risks of servitude lie and how can we protect ourselves from them? The great illusion consists in the idea that we can face alone the often brutal transformations our world is going through. That we can stand alone against new political, economic and financial giants. And in believing in the promise of solitary identities and sovereignties, rather than in solidarity.
On the other hand, though, we can never meet these challenges if the European Union insists on conducting its business from Brussels, at odds with the identities and the sovereignty of the peoples that make it up.
We are not a European people. We do not want to be a European nation. Right now, we are twenty-seven separate populations, speaking twenty-four official languages. We are twenty-seven nations and we have twenty-seven states, each of which holds on to its differences, its traditions, and its culture.
People have their reasons, no doubt. And the feelings they express must be listened to and respected. I have never confused popular sentiment with populism.
I understand and I share every person’s special attachment to their country, to their homeland. But this rootedness can and must go hand-in-hand with a commitment to Europe.
Throughout my life I have had a certain idea of Europe. This idea has never replaced or weakened my pride in being French, or diminished the strength of my patriotism. ‘A patriot and a European’ – this is the best summary of my political position and my fundamental convictions.
We all have our regrets and our dreams. What I am certain of is that every citizen is needed. Each and every one of us has a role to play in maintaining the European dream alongside our national dream.
At the end of this long negotiation, it was this same message I chose to convey when, at the beginning of 2021, I was invited to speak by European Movement Ireland: ‘Ní neart go cur le chéile.’*
The European Union will never be a panacea for all ills. It cannot and must not be. Indeed, it is quite right for it to take a back seat when the burden of its standards threatens to stifle local initiative or inflame national resentments.
But by working together at all levels, we can build a Europe that protects and inspires us. A Europe that Europeans will not want to leave. A Europe that allows us once more to be stronger together in the world. We have to approach this world with our eyes open, without nostalgia for past glories. It is a world which will only become safer if it becomes fairer.
It’s very late in the day. But it’s not too late.
My vote is cast!
A referendum was being held – a different referendum – and this was my very first vote as a young French citizen… Early in the morning of 23 April 1972, in a town hall in Val des Roses, Albertville, a place so familiar to me.
Once a church, the hall had now been claimed for more republican purposes: it frequently hosted public meetings and, on election days, this was where the polling station was set up.
On that particular day, the question submitted to the French people by President of the Republic Georges Pompidou was a simple one: ‘Do you agree with the new opportunities opening up in Europe, the draft law submitted to the French people by the President of the Republic, and authorizing the ratification of the Treaty concerning the accession of the United Kingdom, Denmark, Ireland and Norway to the European Communities?’
For the Gaullist party, the answer to this question was not so obvious. Some years earlier, in 1963 and then again in 1967, General de Gaulle had vetoed the accession of the United Kingdom. But times had changed and so had the French president, and a young Gaullist activist like myself had no qualms about answering ‘yes’ to the question.
Moreover, this was the first time citizens of my country had been directly consulted on the European project. I remember well how the question divided socialist leaders, and in particular how Georges Pompidou, who had established a constructive relationship with Edward Heath, the British Prime Minister at the time, was able to use the referendum as a way to gracefully move on from his illustrious predecessor’s double veto.
I have never regretted the vote I cast that day.
Notes
1 * Le Monde, 17 August 2018, ‘Sir Donald McCullin en son pays’.
2 * In Gaelic: ‘No strength without unity.’
Origins of the Referendum
Wednesday, 23 January 2013. David Cameron, aged 46, had been the UK’s Conservative Prime Minister since 2010. His party had formed the country’s first post-war coalition government together with the Liberal Democrats. Their policy of austerity, implemented with great zeal, had succeeded in easing pressure on public finances. Growth was gradually returning. But the government now found itself faced with the rise of the anti-immigration and Eurosceptic UK Independence Party (UKIP).
It was on this day, in a speech given at the financial news agency Bloomberg, that the Prime Minister chose to talk about his country’s future within the European Union. He began by recalling the very particular position of the British within the Union:
We have the character of an island nation: independent, outspoken, passionate in defending our sovereignty.
We can no more change that British sensibility than we can drain the English Channel.
And because of that sensibility, we come to the European Union with a frame of mind that is more practical than emotional.
For us, the European Union is a means to an end – prosperity, stability, the anchor of freedom and democracy both within Europe and beyond her shores – not an end in itself.*
Cameron went on to enumerate three major challenges facing the EU: the Eurozone crisis, the competitiveness challenge and the gap between the EU and its citizens. ‘If we don’t address these challenges’, he warned, ‘the danger is that Europe will fail and the British people will drift towards the exit.’
The Prime Minister maintained that he did not want this to happen, and set out the way forward for a competitive, flexible and fair Europe in which power would flow back to member states and the Union would be accountable to the people. He then proposed a referendum on his country’s membership of the Union – to be held not immediately, but once an attempt had been
