But are we like them? Is there any other continent with such a commitment to freedom, democracy and the social balances that hold us together, to this reconciliation of justice and freedom which are at last combined? I know regions where they like the economy and development, but where political authority prevails over freedom, in Asia. I know great powers that love freedom and have succeeded in capitalism, but which do not have the same commitment we have to equality and social justice, on the other side of the Atlantic.
But nowhere else is there such a political and social space where collective preferences – our preferences – are defended as such. That is what European sovereignty is about! If we give it up, the result is simple: we will be subject to the rules of one side or another.
Yes, our choice is to overhaul Europe without repeating the mistakes of the past.
In the early years of the eurozone, we made many mistakes, sometimes based on lies. Here, we need to say that too with humility and determination. Sometimes we have lied to the people, suggesting that life in Athens could be like that in Berlin without reform, and that was not true. But who paid for that? The political leaders who lied? No, the people who believed those lies.
It was the Greek people who paid, after all these years, when the crisis broke out – the financial crisis that became a sovereign debt crisis. The Greek people, after years during which we sought to correct all those mistakes through policies which, born of distrust, created, in one fell swoop, it has to be said, injustices and incomprehension. We lost the zest for social cohesion, which held us together. We lost it because we lost ourselves in a civil war, within Europe, between powers that had lost confidence in one another.
That is the history of the decade that is coming to an end: a form of internal civil war where we have sought out our differences, our little betrayals, and where we have somehow forgotten the world in which we live. A civil war where we have preferred to correct these little differences and betrayals, forgetting that, opposite, there are radically different powers and that the only relevant question was how to make the eurozone an economic power that could stand up to China and the United States. How to make our Europe a diplomatic and military power capable of defending our values and interests in the face of authoritarian regimes that emerge from deep crises that can shake our societies. That is our only challenge, not another.
So yes, I want us to rediscover the strength of a sovereignty that is not national but European, by reconciling a Europe capable once more of combining responsibility and solidarity.
That will require common goals and a will to defend what made us what we are through essential institutional reforms. In the coming weeks, I will come back in detail with a roadmap that I will propose to all our European partners. But yes, we will need a Europe in which we once again dare to defend social and fiscal convergence, because that is what holds us together and avoids the divergences that split us asunder. We need to rediscover the zest of this eurozone and invent strong governance that will ensure our sovereignty, with a eurozone budget, and a genuine executive responsible for that eurozone, and a eurozone parliament he will have to report to.
