we head straight for Bucharest. In the Romanian capital I meet my friend Dacian Cioloș, now Prime Minister of this great country, set to become the sixth largest economy in the EU once the UK has left.
A longstanding relationship has bound us together since the time when, as a young civil servant in the Romanian Ministry of Agriculture, Dacian was in charge of monitoring the decentralized development cooperation project in the Argeș region, which I had launched in 1996 as President of the General Council of Savoie.
In 2007, we both ended up, as agriculture ministers for our respective countries, tasked with securing a reform of the Common Agricultural Policy which would only be concluded in the early hours of a lengthy night of negotiations which the British were trying their best to derail.
Naturally, after this I closely followed Dacian’s candidacy for the post of European Commissioner, and his eventual appointment to the strategic post of agriculture.
Throughout those five years in the Barroso II Commission, our friendship and solidarity remained unwavering. As it did when I, along with Antonio Tajani and others, needed the support of the College to pass regulatory texts that offended the liberal or ultra-liberal sensibilities of certain colleagues and senior officials – which was the case with my proposal to establish access for all to a basic bank account in every country. And indeed, when he himself came up against the same ideological resistance to his 2010 proposal for a mechanism to enable farmers to finally come together to negotiate their prices with industrialists!
Mr Cioloș has invited us to dinner at a Romanian government residence, a former dacha away from the city centre. The ‘technical’ ministers he has gathered around him are politically astute and have good instincts.
The Romanian Minister of Labour, Dragoș Pîslaru, tells me: ‘We will be stronger in this negotiation if we’re really united. And this unity, this coherence, cannot be cemented by reactions or defensiveness alone. The twenty-seven must stand together, with a positive and proactive agenda, moving forward together and regaining the confidence of our citizens.’ At the end of these initial visits, the key elements we need for our negotiations are already falling into place.
Thursday, 6 October 2016: ‘Our enemy is the Commission’
‘We have allies among the twenty-seven, and we must make use of them. Our enemy is the Commission, which wants to be forgiven for making Cameron lose. Many of the twenty-seven need us.’
I am told that these remarks, which have been reported to me, were made yesterday in private before a group of businessmen in London by UK Trade Minister Liam Fox. This Scottish MP, a former defence minister for David Cameron and a former candidate for the Conservative leadership, losing to Theresa May, is obviously at the forefront when it comes to imagining the future of trade relations between the UK and the EU. But first of all, Brexit must be achieved, and he is in favour of a fast-track agenda. That, however, is no reason to propagate such untruths.
So it was the Commission that lost David Cameron the election? This is to pass over in silence, just a little too quickly, the ‘new settlement’ agreed with him at the European Council on 18–19 February 2016, in the midst of the migrant crisis – a settlement that further strengthened the UK’s special status within the Union. In the end it wasn’t enough to prevent Brexit, but not for lack of trying…
It is also to forget that, if all European leaders voluntarily kept silent throughout the referendum campaign, they did so at the express request of the British Prime Minister. According to him, any intervention by ‘Brussels technocrats’ or foreign leaders would have been immediately exploited by the ‘Brexiteers’…
In any case, Liam Fox’s statement only strengthens my determination: we must secure and consolidate the unity of the twenty-seven as rapidly as possible.
Friday, 7 October 2016: Notre Europe
The foundation created by Jacques Delors celebrates its twentieth anniversary today! And so it is time for us to speak about ‘Notre Europe’ – an institute chaired by my friend Enrico Letta, former Prime Minister of Italy, and managed with great determination by a young Savoyard, Yves Bertoncini.
In his speech, Jean-Claude Juncker acknowledges that ‘the European Union must be ambitious on big projects and more modest on small matters’. Which is another way of saying that the lessons of Brexit are not just there for British citizens to draw from. And to be sure, Europe and Brussels have produced too many laws and regulations over the past thirty years, constraining citizens, consumers and businesses, and placing onerous obligations on their daily lives.
Yesterday, President François Hollande had also referred to the British decision, but in a rather more prickly tone: ‘There must be a threat, there must be a risk, and there must be a price’ for leaving the EU, he warned.
That same evening, in Savoie, in the pretty village of Domessin where my assistant Barthélemy is a town councillor, I honour a very old promise made to the mayor Gilbert Guigue to lead a public debate on Europe. The room is packed: three hundred people have sacrificed their evening to discuss Europe – and they say that no one is interested! I will most definitely make sure to take the time to talk with citizens, however heavy the workload of my new mission.
Saturday, 8 October 2016: Theresa May among her own
In Birmingham, Conservative party officials are meeting, as they do every year at this time. Naturally, this year’s conference is particularly focused on Brexit, with party leaders set to discuss the reasons why their fellow citizens voted Leave. In her speech, Theresa May asserts her desire to build a ‘Global Britain’ following Brexit, and to forge a new role for the UK on the world stage.
There is a not insignificant element of ideology and nostalgia for an exalted past in her proclamations, as in those of other party officials. For example, describing to party activists the bright future he predicts for the country when it leaves the EU, David Davis declared that, by leaving Europe, the UK would achieve flexibility at a time when adaptation is crucial. He claimed that the UK had already created a language and a legal system for the whole world and that, in order to grow, the country would soon embrace the whole world, and trade with the whole planet.
One of the reasons for the Leave vote was a rejection of the free movement of persons. But British politicians pretend they don’t know that it was the UK itself which, at the time of EU enlargement, chose not to activate the clause that would have allowed limits to be imposed upon the free movement of workers from the new member countries.
Another reason, as correctly identified by Theresa May, was a yearning for protection: as she says, ‘the referendum was not just a vote to withdraw from the EU. […] It was about a sense – deep, profound and, let’s face it, often justified – that many people have today, that the world works well for a privileged few, but not for them.’
The Prime Minister is quite right to raise this point. But in the face of globalization, in the face of great continental states such as China and the US, can a single country – even the UK – really be better placed to protect its citizens than twenty-eight countries acting as one? Isn’t it better to stick together, in solidarity, rather than go it alone?
Monday, 10 October 2016: Warsaw
Our fourth capital in ten days. It’s raining in Warsaw, but it doesn’t make much difference to us!
The new Polish government is led
