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Published on 2025-02-17 08:00:00 | words: 1348
This is the last article of the planned article series that started in March 2024, about the European Parliament elections, their preparation activities, the whole process, and the immediate routine aftermath.
Anyway, I should say "the latest" article about EU affairs, as this is certainly not going to be the last.
As an experiment, I let it scheduled and go online a couple of times empty, to see if there were readers.
There were- but this time will really go live, and starting again from zero readers.
The title is an obvious mis-quote of a Churchill speech and a sci-fi movie closing titles roll.
By the end of this short article, you will see that probably both options are equally valid.
On this website there are, as of today, 40 articles (41 if you count this one) referencing Monnet- specifically, the application to evolutions of the European organizational architecture.
I shared repeatedly also when I was a teenager and in active European politics my criticism: yes, it is useful to push reforms through, but it is a blatant distortion of the rules, to push forward something just to bypass endless discussions, knowing that anyway all the others will:
_ first, grudgingly follow
_ then, even trying to claim that it was a joint choice.
From a cultural and organizational change perspective, there is another issue within using this approach way too often: it de facto alters the rules and expectations.
So, we used it once in a while, but since VDL1 and VDL2 it was used not by a group of countries trying to overcome the need to have unanimous approval from all the Member States, but directly from the European Commission.
Seen from outside the buildings, it looked as a "fait accompli" approach to reforms.
I remember how on a European news website a journalist wrote that it was almost an absolute monarchy approach- true or false, history will discuss.
What matters to me is that, while in past applications of the "Monnet" anyway there were proactive elements who built a coalition after deliberations and attempts to co-opt the others, i.e. there was some soul searching and at least drafted long-term strategy (I would not dare to utter "grand strategy"- I liked Luttwak and Kissinger books about that perspective, but we are still far from there, albeit our American friends, both under President Biden and the first steps of President Trump II are showing signs of it).
As I wrote in previous articles in this series, instead within the European Union increasingly it seems as if we Italians exported our "tinkering supreme" approach to politics to Brussels.
Look at how many times we tinkered in Italy with our Constitution since at least the early 1990s, and you will see tell-tale signs of attempts at social engineering gone badly wrong.
There was an interesting book describing fascism in Italy as a British attempt at social engineering- I do not know how much of that is just correlation or causation, or even mere conjecture, even after reading it, but I would like to remember (as I do with my Italian friends and foes) that, within the "official" history of MI5 it duly noted that a certain journalist Mussolini was paid to inform our ally on his own country- and how much.
Let's be frank: since 2019, events (e.g. COVID, war in Ukraine) blended the "Monnet from the top" with a reactive leadership that has been committed vast amounts of future money to plans that were mere concepts or ideas.
While the Recovery and Resilience Facility (the Italian PNRR derives from that) had anyway a deliberative process that at least attempted to make a coherent whole (I do not really like that much the "mission-based" approach to reforms: too often it is structured tinkering without a strategic design), most of the other "reactive" presented as "proactive" policies (e.g. the "green deal") showed their superficiality way too soon.
And were way too soon tinkered with, reversed, etc- ignoring that even the best designed mission has to be then have contacts with reality- and result in deployment of changes.
If you can reverse a grandly announced initiative only for short-term political convenience (altering majority to pass a vote), then there is something amiss- either in the initial design, or in the approach.
There is a further element with our continous shortening of the "Monnet moments" cycle over the last few years: it is the "boiled frog" approach.
The more it is used, the more disposes with the need to build long-term strategic convergence, as anyway it is faster to have a quick fix if and when needed.
Let's be frank: first President Zelensky, and now the new President Trump administration are pulling "Monnet moments" on the European Union.
For all our pretense of being former colonial powers and therefore having a real Weltanschauung and understanding of global affairs, since at least the President Bush wars we keep being dragged into quagmires more to avoid being out than because we consider that our shared interest.
NATO "interoperability" turned into a "buy US weapons", as even Foreign Affairs had to note here and there in the latest few issues.
By shuttling what we had in stock to Ukraine, apparently without even a say on how efficiently were used (as I said to friends in Italy, at times it sounded as a WWI approach augmented with drones), we Europeans actually weakened (as admitted even on newspapers by some of our Prime Ministers) our own defensive posture.
Even more so, if now we were to expand to 2, 3, 5% our defense budget- and then, not consider it within our usual constraints: we would be doing what South Korea did post-WWII, but in business, not just for military purposes- build a war economy, with its centrally allocated resources, plans, oversight, etc.
It has a been a while since I said to others (and sometimes wrote) that, if really we are contracting our automotive "industry of industries", it might make sense to convert some of those facilities into at last an integrated European Union set of production facilities.
The two industries were I worked most (automotive and banking) are soul-searching and in for a massive restructuring and repositioning.
Easier done than said for banking, easier said than done for automotive.
It is curious that we attempt not to displease our American partner while actually a string of changes being pushed to are not a shared interest, but a national interest.
And not just by this administration: as I wrote long ago, when was proposed a kind of "Dardanelles" approach for Ukraine, presenting as "umpires" USA and UK plus other non-EU States, it was a kind of double (and some) punch to the EU belly:
_ first, physically were removed direct accesses to external energy resources
_ then, we had to build infrastructure to buy overpriced USA liquified gas
_ then, just to avoid potential changes and reopening of the local infrastructure, Ukraine was to become a protectorate.
The end of the beginning is therefore both a political reality (Churchill) and a potential strategic repositioning (the sci-fi movie).
It is still to be seen if, in our urge to avoid displeasing anyone, the European Union will just turn into a rich yet fading market, or will live up to its own announces and pretensions to have "a seat the table".
We are back to Yalta.
And, at Yalta, the European Union was not present.
Have a nice week!