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Edmond Alphandery
Giuliano Amato
Enrique Barón Crespo
Laurens Jan Brinkhorst
John Bruton
Franz Fischler
Jean-Luc Dehaene
Elisabeth Guigou
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Jean-Pierre Jouyet
Sandra Kalniete
Mario Monti
Alojz Peterle
Michel Rocard
Jacek Saryusz-Wolski
Frank Vandenbroucke
Guy Verhofstadt
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Europe isn’t in a good place these days. The drive towards closer integration is losing momentum and appears in great danger of slipping backwards. The eurozone sovereign debt crisis looms larger than ever, but also European leaders must craft a credible new domestic agenda and a forceful foreign policy or risk the EU becoming a marginal player in a globalised world whose rapid change is clearly not to Europe’s advantage.
We therefore urge the following initiatives as a concerted strategy by EU leaders:
Herman Van Rompuy, the EU Council President, and José Manuel Barroso, European Commission President, should not allow the current policy focus on the eurozone economy to be at the expense of other key European and global challenges. Europe must remain essential in the 21st Century.
European leaders must develop a powerful new pro-European narrative with arguments that underline the reasons we are together, EU countries’ common aspirations and goals and a timetable for realising them. Europe must urgently demonstrate to the world its common purpose and common interests.
President Barroso should craft a new vision to re-establish Europe’s credibility with European citizens, focusing on key social and economic concerns, especially job creation. The gap between Europe and its citizens is widening; Europeans are anxious and uneasy about the delays in securing agreement on EU institutional reform, the eurozone crisis and ever-faster globalization. They need much greater reassurance on Europe’s future than has been the case for several years.
The European Parliament, with its new powers under the Lisbon treaty, should help the European Commission to regain fully its monopoly of initiative, halting the trend in which Europe’s national governments rather than the EU are increasingly in the driving seat on foreign and security policy. This is especially true in the economic domain where there is a global perception that Germany matters more than the EU and on security issues where France and the UK eclipse the rest of Europe.
President Barroso and his fellow Commissioners must play a more public role in promoting European integration and setting out a new agenda for the future. Michel Barnier’s forward-looking Berlin speech in May at Humboldt University remains an exception to the rule. Members of the Commission need to engage more actively in public discussions to outline their views on Europe.
The EU institutions together with EU member governments must challenge populist parties more forcefully, not pander to them. Instead of implicitly accepting the far-right rhetoric against immigrants and multiculturalism, EU political leaders at all levels must develop a convincing counter-narrative to the deceptively simple anti-European rhetoric of the far right, and place closer integration far higher on the political agenda. Europe must continue to be a place which welcomes immigrants who are needed to ensure the sustainability of our welfare systems, and the dynamism of our economies.
Catherine Ashton, the EU High Representative for foreign and security policy, must forge a more ambitious trade, aid and investment agenda to sustain the Arab spring. She must work more closely with the region’s new leaders to make sure that democracy, human rights and the rule of law are respected and there is no discrimination against women and minorities. Learning from the past failures, Ashton must make sure that the EU focus will be on working with pro-reformist leaders and the Arab world’s civil society representatives.
Ashton must enhance Europe’s global role by engaging and partnering more actively with emerging countries to tackle today’s array of non-traditional, non-military challenges, including climate change, faster population growth in developing countries, food insecurity and access to resources. Europe must build on its worldwide reputation as the champion of climate change policies now that global warming is a reality with rising sea levels and accelerating drought. The demographic challenge is equally daunting. As the global population rises above 9 billion over the next 40 years, from 6.9 billion today, Europe should be prepared for increasing competition for food and energy resources. Even though the world has seen unheard of growth and prosperity in recent years, more than 1.4 billion people still live in extreme poverty, many of them in Asia.
Our world is clearly entering a new era of change and transformation. Events are speeding up in the Middle East and North Africa and emerging countries everywhere are impatient for more power, and a more authoritative voice – in short a new world order. And here in Europe, citizens need to believe once again in the common European enterprise.
The stakes are high. We can either move with the times, meeting the challenge of a new vision for Europe and new partnerships with the super–powers of the future to improve global living conditions, fight poverty and create hope and jobs for young people. Or we can watch the changing world as passive bystanders. The effort must be Europe-wide, but the first rallying calls have to come from Brussels.
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