Sovereignty in the service of Europe

The principles of effective and proactive leadership are based on a series of assumptions: anyone who undertakes to lead an organisation, from the most modest to the most complex – such as a state – must first and foremost have a vision of the objectives to be achieved and must then select a suitable team of capable and courageous colleagues who are not afraid to speak up when they disagree. A leader must not pay attention to daily opinion polls, so as to avoid being guided by fleeting trends, and must make every effort to extend their time horizon beyond the immediate present. These principles appear largely absent from our government, especially in the current chaotic international context. For all their flaws, European democratic systems have enabled our peoples to live, on the whole, much better than is the case in the rest of the world, and now this prosperity is being jeopardised by the predatory ambitions of other actors, whether they are powerful or merely believe themselves to be so. In the name of an illusory national sovereignty, certain demagogues oppose the only viable solution: that of sharing the remaining shreds of sovereignty left to each European country, in order to rebuild a concrete and indisputable reclamation of our shared destiny. This vision has been entirely absent from this government throughout its four years in office, which has been held hostage by petty and short-sighted electoral self-interest. Only by pursuing such a vision can a less precarious future for our country emerge.