Conference - debate "Which Europe"?
After Maastricht, abandoning Monnet’s functionalism and the start that the founders gave to a progressive political integration, the European management of the post-war generation caused a setback to the growth that from the Community had led to the Union, by imposing the method of inter-governative conferences: from horizontality to verticality of the unification mechanism. Resorting frequently to the referendum, some governments appealed to the moderate Europeanism of the voters and to their growing scepticism, sometimes degenerated into populist Europhobia, to reject any further renunciation of sovereignty in three fundamental fields: foreign policy, defence and taxation. The Treaty of Lisbon, a bearish restoration of the Constitutional Treaty, introduced some reforms, more superficial than real, thus increasing the paradoxes paralyzing the political union and transforming Europe into a confederation image, a kind of abnormal regional association based on the free movement of people, capitals and labour force: Delor’s unidentified object. The fallow spaces were filled with a network of bilateral agreements among the main member States in an Anglo-Franco-German directorate featuring the anachronistic profile of a revived European concert, in the general framework of an Anglo-Atlantic Europe. The regression started with the accession of the United Kingdom in 1973 is now well-established to Americans’ some disappointment, but with understandable satisfaction of London, which once again was able to stop the creation of a continental group suspected of federalism or at least of united agglomeration. At this point, it is urgent and unavoidable to wonder: “Which Europe?” If not among 27, at least within a limited group of founders determined to go on along the path of Europe at a differentiated speed or at a variable geography. To underline the seriousness of the paralysis that led to a real hemiplegia of the Union, the question “Which Europe?” should be accompanied by an admonishing one: “Or maybe none?” The choice is up to our generation and to the European responsibility of each of us, to young people and, in particular, to the University and entrepreneurial world. Many years ago, Albert Camus affirmed that governments have no conscience by definition. But citizens do have it. The event is organized by the University of Florence – Faculty of Political Science “Cesare Alfieri”, Teacher-Training degree course in International Relations and European Studies, the European Centre of Excellence Jean Monnet, the European Documentation Centre (EDC), the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna of Pisa, Meridiani-Relazioni Internazionali and Europe Direct-Firenze.
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