Sofa Europeanism
Italics by Teo Dalavecuras
“I am the first woman to have been appointed President of the European Commission. I am the President of the European Commission and as such I expected to be treated on the occasion of my visit to Turkey two weeks ago. But it didn't happen that way. In the European Treaties, I cannot find any justification for the way I was treated. Therefore, I must deduce that it happened because I am a woman . If I had worn a suit and tie would it have happened? ”.
Let it be forgotten that the answer to this falsely rhetorical question is “yes”: in fact, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu in his suit and tie sat right in front of Ursula von der Leyen's sofa . Let's also forget that Jean-Claude Juncker himself, a healthy tie wearer, said he found himself in similar situations (what he did not add, because he is also a gentleman, is that he did not make a drama out of it, much less a kind of diplomatic incident).
It is – a lawyer would say – of palpable evidence that the sex of Mrs. von der Leyen in this story that the ever obliging and less and less gifted press has baptized sofagate, has less to do with anything, it is only an attempt, particularly clumsy, to ennoble a miserable and embarrassing episode, ridden in the illusion that the very fresh denunciation of the Istanbul Convention by Ankara would make it credible and allow it to be blamed on the landlord. Illusion that can only be explained by a singular lack of discernment: Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a dictator but he is certainly not the character who dedicates a nanosecond of his life to plot mischief, so much so that the Turkish authorities have liquidated the "case" and the related controversies with shrugged his shoulders, merely pointing out that the setting for the meeting of the Presidents of the European Council and of the Commission with the President of Turkey had been agreed with the respective protocols.
However, it remains an objectively historical episode. In front of the European Parliament, in fact, the words of von der Leyen have carved in marble the unpronounceable yet evident truth: Europe, as a political subject, does not exist, the President of the Commission is not a head of government like that of the European Council he is not a head of state.
Europe has never wanted to be a sovereign political entity, even if it mimics the rites of sovereign states and demands diplomatic treatment. Jean Monnet's "Machiavellian" idea was to gradually empty the national states of their competences to create a single market regulated by a central bureaucracy, until the need for political unity was imposed by force of things. A rigidly elitist but not senseless project on paper; pity that a new sovereign political entity cannot be founded on paper without the shock force of that curious protagonist called "people" (which is not only made up of lobbyists who populate Brussels).
When Monnet began to press for the European parliament to be elected by universal suffrage, the national "political classes" turned a deaf ear. Not even with Brexit they took it for granted: when Emmanuel Macron proposed that at least the seats in the EU parliament liberated by the United Kingdom be assigned by a single European college, the proposal was rejected by a very large majority by the same parliament, which is not denied however, repeated surveys on the "approval" of Europe (not even a brand of toothpaste).
The national political classes are happy to leave the government of the economy and many other things to a common bureaucracy (of all, therefore of no one), as long as this bureaucracy remains so; they are enthusiastic to have at their disposal, in addition to their own, a large common, “European” parliament, devoid of powers worthy of the name, where to place a certain number of their own high-ranking followers. Provided, however, that sovereignty remains with each "Member State", because it is sovereignty that guarantees the laurels of power and if others, without legitimacy and therefore political responsibility, provide for the disposal of tears and blood, so much the better. Up to now, this has been the "European dream" that the national political classes have made in their name, an arrangement that is reflected in the Treaties, which perhaps Mrs von der Leyen has not read with sufficient attention.
Under these conditions, it is inevitable that people will be appointed to the top of the Union who do not bother any of the member states, that is, without any requirement of leadership and consequent human depth. This has always been the case, perhaps with the sole exception of Juncker, who in fact immediately had to deal with the "scandal" of the Luxembourg tax paradise: a "scandal" that everyone had always known about (except the journalists, of course). just to put Juncker in his place.
However, the spectacle of the two presidents who jostle in front of public opinion around the world for the front row seat at Erdogan's court is an unprecedented one, especially when one of the "protagonists" raises the issue two weeks later, with unhappy words and poor topics in the European Parliament room.
In the meantime, Matteo Salvini's index of Europeanism is measured every other day as well, while the "cow" that no one sees continues to graze in the meadows of the single European market: it is called "Europeanism" and translates as "Europe never sovereign ".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/europeismo-da-sofa/ on Wed, 28 Apr 2021 06:37:28 +0000.