News Archive – A Continental Manifesto – for a republic of Europe

DECEMBER 2017

BREAKING NEWS – December 7, 2017 – Martin Schulz tweeted: 1) I want a new constitutional treaty to establish the United States of Europe. A Europe that is no threat to its member states, but a beneficial addition. 2) A convention shall draft this treaty in close cooperation with the civil society and the people. Its results will then be submitted to all member states. Any state that won’t ratify this treaty will automatically leave the EU.

NEWS December 5, 2017 – We analysed the Commission proposal on the eurozone reform on our Facebook pages in the following Terms

the reform would kind of constitutionalize austerity and close the door to any counter-cyclical fiscal policy; it would be one-size-fits-all-forever; it would not provide the eurozone with a significant own budget, but create a line in the EU general one, similar to the special line for Greece and subject to a unanimous decision (if any) by the 27.

NEWS December 1, 2017 – Bernard Barthalay was invited to a working lunch of the Comité Bastille that allowed to deepen the consensus between our CADE partner about taxation of net assets and cross-participation to planned events.

NOVEMBER 2017

NEWS November 14, 2017 – Bernard Barthalay was invited by the Centre des Jeunes Dirigeants d’Entreprise, an old Paris-based association (1938) of young French entrepreneurs, to speak about the Continental Manifesto and our analysis of the current situation in the EU and the Eurozone.

The most striking impression to be drawn from several hours of debate, running for the most part on the completion of the euro, was a robust consensus about the need for a United States of Europe and the strategy to get from here to there.

OCTOBER 2017

NEWS October 20, 2017 – Closing a series of bilateral meetings with potential members and partners, a lunch brought together some high-ranking French personalities invited by Bernard Barthalay,

in presence of founders of the Action Committee for Democracy in Europe (CADE), so as to increase its membership, explore ways of funding our action and define a road map for months ahead. Michel Aglietta had the opportunity to present his concept of La Double Démocratie. Philippe Laurette, a member of our steering committee, was present.

SEPTEMBER 2017

NEWS from September 2017 to November 2017 – Attending several meetings in progressive circles and twin cities events, and meeting journalists and researches allowed Bernard Barthalay to form a local Paris-based transnational operational group to help him manage our continental Network.

AUGUST 2017

NEWS August 4, 2017 – As the original answer to the inescapable question „Why Europe?“, a new French edition of the Ventotene Manifesto is available since January, at jfbb_fr@yahoo.fr.

„A free and united Europe“ (as distinct from the current Union) is not just a matter of preventing wars, or dictatorships („plus jamais ça“). It was, from the start, in the minds of Spinelli and Rossi, about creating lasting societal, political and economic conditions for a multi-tier democracy, that is, civil peace, on a continental scale, as a means to roll back unfair concentrations of power and wealth, hostile and fatal to freedom. Read more here

JUNI 2017

EVENT On June 26, 2017, Bernard Barthalay and André Teissier du Cros presented the Committee Action-Democracy-Europe (CADE) to the Bastille Committee.

Puissance Europe/Weltmacht Europa (PE/WE) was represented by Federica Martiny (Pisa) et Jean-Mathieu Robine (Paris). The Agreement establishing the Action Committe for Democracy in Europe is available here in French and here in English.

EVENT Our friend Michel Aglietta was invited by the GRASPE review to deliver a lecture in Brussels on June 7, 2017: „Un projet européen pour la croissance“, in the presence of Georges Dassis, President of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC).

NEWS On June 4, 2017, the World Government Research Network published a paper by Bernard Barthalay about the French presidential elections: „What does the Macron Brand stand for?“. Read the paper here

APRIL 2017

EVENT On April 5, 2017, the GRASPE review and Georges Dassis, President of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) invited to look back on the European Union sixty years after the Rome Treaty.

The invitees were Bernard Barthalay (PE/WE), Philip Cordery, then still a member of the French National Assembly elected by French citizens living in the Benelux, and Eneko Landaburu, a former Commission Director General, now special advisor to Enrico Letta, President of „Notre Europe“. More information

EVENT A private meeting led to the attendees‘ decision to join efforts and to promote together a eurozone democracy as a prerequisite and as an optimal framework for any effective action to roll back financialisation and return to the Founders‘ plan for a federation.

The attendees of the meeting are Bernard Barthalay, President of Puissance Europe/Weltmacht Europa, André Teissier du Cros, President of the Bastille Committee and author of A Tax on Net Assets (TNA) or Progressive Tax on Inactive Wealth, 2016, François Morin, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Toulouse 1 University, author of L’économie politique du XXIe siècle, Paris, 2017.

NEWS Bernard Barthalay (PE/WE), Michel Crinetz, former supervisor, Gilles Raveaud, Institut d’Etudes européennes at Paris 8 University, and Stanislas Jourdan, Campaign Coordinator for „Quantitative Easing for people“ cosigned an op-ed in L’Obs on „helicopter money“. Find the op-ed here

MARCH 2017

EVENT „A European Unemployment Insurance: A Solution for Europe“.

On March 22, 2017, Bernard Barthalay, economist, and Olivier Bontout (DG EMPL) were invited at the Borschette Center by the UEF Europe Group to discuss this idea as both an asymmetric shock absorber and a contribution to reconnecting citizens to the Union. Find the paper here

EVENT „Nothing to fear but fear itself?“

On March 20, 2017, Puissance Europe/Weltmacht Europa (PE/WE) attended the DEMOS briefing on Social, Economic and Political Fears and Insecurities, at La Maison de l’Europe of Paris. The DEMOS pan-European research has sought to capture how fear is manifesting in EU member states, through the rise of far-right populist movements, the collapse of the social contract between citizens and political institutions, and the proliferation of authoritarian and exclusionary rhetoric. Significantly, DEMOS preconizations (promote safety and security, restore the social contract, make the case for openness and democracy, counter post-truth narratives) do concur with the politics of hope our Continental Manifesto champions.

FEBRUARY 2017

NEWS February 26, 2017: Puissance Europe/Weltmacht Europa took part in the first public appearance of #pulseofeurope in Paris.

#pulseofeurope is a citizens’ initiative that started from Frankfurt and aims at gathering as many people as possible, who stand for a united and democratic Europe, convinced that a majority of citizens all over our continent are only yearning for a more perfect Union. We citizens are in charge, in the first place, of the success or failure of Europe. Puissance Europe/Weltmacht Europa urges all citizens in Paris and Ile-de-France to take an active part on next Sundays from 15:00 to 16:00, 141 rue Rambuteau, in front of St. Eustache, and to visit #pulseofeurope website to stay tuned about the initiative’s progress in Germany, The Netherlands, France and beyond.

OBITUARY: Jean-Pierre Gouzy passed away on February 17. He was our memory of European post-war history.

He left us, deeply dissatisfied with the present state of the Union. His commitment to European unity dated back to four years before the The Hague Congress (1948). Close in various ways to the great founders of the European Union of Federalists, Henri Brugmans, Alexandre Marc, Denis de Rougemont and Altiero Spinelli, and a relentless activist and champion of United States of Europe, he kept the French federalist house over several decades. He supported Puissance Europe/Weltmacht Europa from the start and followed with great attention the writing of our Continental Manifesto.

JANUARY 2017

OBITUARY: Jacques Moreau passed away on Jan. 24. A former S&D MEP, and secretary-general of the European Economic and Social Committee, he will be reminded for his contributions to the Single Market, the EMU and the European Charter of Fundamental Social Rights. Puissance Europe/Weltmacht Europa has lost a faithful friend and a shrewd critique. He fought for a more social Europe to the very end.

NEWS January 17, 2017 – Bernard Barthalay published an op-ed in the Huffington Post on Jan. 17 to welcome the commitment of Emmanuel Macron, a candidate to the French presidential election, to give Germany, after seventeen years from Joschka Fischer’s speech at the Humboldt University Berlin, the appropriate positive answer that it deserved.

NEWS January 5, 2017 – La double démocratie (Democracy Twice), a new book by Michel Aglietta and Nicolas Leron (Editions du Seuil, Paris), was released on Jan. 5.

The recommendation is to give the eurozone a capacity to act, that is a budget, as both the embodiment of a new political order, encompassing two fully fledged democracies, the one national, the other European, and a last resort public investment agent, aimed at triggering a new regime of sustainable growth. A new juxtanational sovereign public power is enough to avoid the false dilemma federalism vs. the death of Europe, and break the present stalemate.

SEPTEMBER 2016

NEWS September 21, 2016 – To any one who doubts that peace requires a limitation of national sovereignty, this book, just released, may be of great help. It brings together several texts (and their English references) by one the greatest British federalists in the Interwar, Lord Lothian.

Le pacifisme ne suffit pas. Le patriotisme non plus – Philipp H. Kerr (Lord Lothian). Available at jfbb_fr@yahoo.fr

Luigi Vittorio Maiocchi wrote the forword. By and large, it is a major contribution by both compilators, J. F. Billion and J. L. Prevel, to address the French unawareness of this major school of thought, that inspired Spinelli and federalist works as published in The Federalist review.

NEWS September 2, 2016 – A new article in French has been published yesterday by one of our members, Aude Faravelli, evaluating potential future arrangements of EU-UK-relationships: Le Brexit, c’est le Brexit.

AUGUST 2016

NEWS August 22, 2016 – Two Op-Eds by Bernard Barthalay featured by the Huffington Post (France) and L’Opinion internationale (Paris) have been published.

JULY 2016

NEWS July 27, 2016 – A new tab has been created to host texts already published on other websites or on our facebook pages, and which are still of interest for our next initiatives. The first one is a draft manifesto Bernard Barthalay wrote in 2006 about a bottom-up participative constituent process. Time is ripe to start such a process now.

NEWS July 26, 2016 – The Forum is alive. We have received a first comment.

While the European Commission is planning a vertical communication campaign, top down, our Forum will host horizontal debate, among citizens, to answer the „what to do?“ question, bottom up. A German friend, Marc Saxer, opened a general thread. His comment addresses lots of issues raised by our Manifesto and deserved an in-depth answer to highlight convergences and to open new paths for further debate. His text, short but of great interest, has been published as a contribution; it will be followed by our own input.

NEWS July 14, 2016 – Barthalay answers French souvereignists in the Huffington Post (France).

MAY 2016

NEWS May 23, 2016 – The same op-ed has been published today on L’Espresso (Italy).

NEWS May 23, 2016 – Spinelli died on May 23rd 1986. „A Continental Manifesto“ (click on the above tab) is all about the fight he initiated before the end of WWII on behalf of the citizens of European states for the constitution of „a free and united Europe“. To commemorate, Bernard Barthalay, Robert Müller and Michele Ballerin published an op-ed this morning in the Huffington Post (France).