By the time this issue of Futuribles is printed, the European elections will be over. We won’t go back over the results here — they have already been amply commented on elsewhere — nor over the potential coalitions which, as Jean-François Drevet clearly stressed in his last Chronicle (Futuribles 460, May-June 2024) will be crucial in determining the make-up of the European Parliament. Yet, over the next five years, given its now substantial powers, this new Parliament will have to take a position on the future of a Union that many criticize for being excessively naïve in not having realized sooner how drastically the global geopolitical scene had changed and how bitter was the economic competition between the world’s main regions.
Faced with his new state of affairs, a number of major actors have been at pains recently to stress the need for an EU re-think and change of course: Enrico Letta is one such, whose report published in April is analysed in these columns by Pierre Papon, and Mario Draghi is another, asserting that a ‘radical change is necessary’, with Emmanuel Macron a third, who — most likely taking a lead from Paul Valéry’s famous 1919 remark that “We civilizations now know ourselves to be mortal” — called in a speech at the Sorbonne on 25 April 2024 for a “power Europe”. In this ‘Forum’, which is intended to feed into the debate on Europe’s ambitions, we publish two points of view: that of Jean Marsia who, in order to restore peace in Europe, argues clearly for a federal Europe; and the position expressed by Mario Draghi in his speech at the High Level Conference on the European Pillar of Social Rights in Brussels on 16 April 2024. We should acknowledge that this forum contains little in the way of contrary opinions; these would however be welcome, potentially for our next issue.
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