An avant-garde to preserve and enhance European sovereignty
in "Pour une Europe européenne - une Avant-garde pour sortir de l impasse" ed. Henri de Grossouvre, 2007, pp 22-34
Language of the original publication: French
“The European avant-garde has a sense and a legitimacy only if it is inspired by a strategic vision, aiming to the reinforcement of all the aspects of European sovereignty. Only such a project will be able to contribute to the safeguarding of a "certain idea of Europe": that of a fully-fledged geopolitical actor able to guarantee our security, to promote our values and our interests and to defend our economic, social, environmental and cultural model. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to dissociate ourselves clearly from any alternative scenario and to take care not to yield to easier ways and false mermaids.
As General de Gaulle had already observed in 1964: “But which Europe? That is the question. Indeed, the established conveniences, the accepted renunciations, the deep-rooted reservations do not fade away easily. According to us French, it is a question of Europe's being made in order for it to be European. A European Europe means that it exists by itself for itself, in other words in the midst of the world – it has its own policy. But that is precisely what is rejected consciously or unconsciously by some who claim, however, to want it to be established. In reality, the fact that Europe, not having a policy, would be subject to the policy that came to it from the other side of the Atlantic appears to them, even today, normal and satisfactory.”
The French version offers rough translation possibility into English at the bottom of the page.
(Hajnalka Vincze, An avant-garde to preserve and enhance European sovereignty, in "Pour une Europe européenne - une Avant-garde pour sortir de l impasse" ed. Henri de Grossouvre, 2007, pp 22-34, 30,199 characters)
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