David Cayla is an economist, lecturer at the University of Angers and a member of the animation collective of terrified economists. He is the author, with Coralie Delaume, of
The End of the European Union
(Michalon, 2017) and of
10 + 1 Questions on the European Union
(Michalon, 2019).
His latest work is
Populism and Neoliberalism
(De Boeck Supérieur 2020).
FIGAROVOX. - During the pandemic, Emmanuel Macron adopted sovereignist accents. Today, to fight against immigration, a large part of the right wants national law to take precedence over European law (Michel Barnier speaks of “legal sovereignty”). Are we witnessing a return to favor of sovereignty?
David CAYLA. -
You should always be wary of buzzwords and the way you use them.
Politicians love to triangulate, that is, to appropriate the concepts of their opponents by altering their meaning.
As such, it is quite amusing to see how sovereignty, previously relegated to the rank of outdated concepts by the advent of "happy globalization", has returned in force in the speeches.
In his posthumous work
Necessary Sovereignty
, Coralie Delaume is amused by the way in which the pandemic crisis will have pushed Emmanuel Macron to put sovereignty, in particular industrial, in all sauces. It must be said that after having sold off part of Alstom to the Americans, sold Toulouse airport to a Chinese investment fund, proposed to sell the Chantiers de l'Atlantique to the Italians and the other part of Alstom to the Germans (these last two projects having finally collapsed), the industrial policy of Emmanuel Macron was not very marked by the imperative of sovereignty. For this, France had to realize that in the midst of the pandemic it had become incapable of manufacturing masks, respirators and drugs for the industrial question to reappear, and with it that of thesupply and dependence on third countries.
It is clear that the sovereignist accents with which Emmanuel Macron is adorned today mainly have the function of hiding the great lack of foresight of his previous decisions.
David Cayla
It is clear that the sovereignist accents with which Emmanuel Macron is adorned today mainly have the function of hiding the great lack of foresight of his previous decisions.
But the sovereignty of Emmanuel Macron has in reality little to do with that of Rousseau.
Indeed, his way of speaking of sovereignty stems from two semantic shifts.
First of all, Macron speaks above all of “European sovereignty” by seeking to promote the old French idea of building a powerful and independent Europe.
However, European sovereignty is a chimera in the sense that it comes from the assembly of two contradictory ideas.
Sovereignty indeed supposes the control of a territory determined by a single sovereign.
However, the European Union is built on the principle of shared sovereignty.
Therefore, promoting European sovereignty would mean removing national sovereignties, which is obviously unthinkable in the current context.
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The second pitfall of the Macronian discourse is that it completely ignores the democratic dimension. However, in a democracy, the sovereign is the people. Therefore, European sovereignty raises questions because there is no European people nor a real space for discussion on a European scale, nor even a sufficiently powerful feeling of belonging among Europeans. Thus, “European sovereignty” runs the risk of transforming itself into the sovereignty of the community institutions or that of the obscure agreements negotiated in the early morning within the European Council.
On the right, it is true, sovereignty is included in its national acceptance, but there too without really questioning the democratic aspect that this implies. To hear Michel Barnier, former member of the Commission, declare that he wants to leave European law to better control migratory flows is almost comical. Not only would this imply a constitutional change, but above all it would open a crisis with the European authorities on the model of what is currently happening with Poland.
And why should we limit ourselves to migration issues when what weighs the most in the daily life of the French are the economic shackles that the treaties impose?
If we go that way, we might as well go to the end and assume the dismantling of the European legal order in the name of popular sovereignty.
But is Michel Barnier really the right man for such a project?
Everyone is playing with Europe against the background.
The Europeanists castigate her to convince of their attachment to France, while those who have defended sovereignist theses avoid being too vindictive.
David Cayla
Conversely, the parties formerly considered "sovereignist" (RN, LFI) no longer campaign primarily on this theme. How do you explain that ?
That does not surprise me. The health crisis has created great stress in the population. When Emmanuel Macron or Michel Barnier talk about sovereignty, no one really believes them. On the contrary, it is reassuring to say that they are not dogmatic pro-Europeans and that they can be pragmatic in defending French interests. Conversely, when the National Rally or rebellious France propose a sovereignist discourse, it is scary because everyone is aware that their arrival in power could open an institutional crisis with the European authorities. Consequently, abandoning the sovereignist theses, and in particular the exit from the euro, is also a way of reassuring for them.
In short, even if many French people do not particularly hold the European Union in their hearts (and in truth it is a question which is very far from their concerns) the leap into the unknown that a break with the Union would represent. European scares them.
Therefore, everyone is playing with Europe against the job.
The Europeanists castigate her to convince of their attachment to France, while those who have defended sovereignist theses avoid being too vindictive.
It's still triangulation.
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For you, will there be a truly sovereignist offer in the presidential election? What would be the main lines of an ideal sovereignist program?
A sovereignist offer would suppose that we clearly defend a project aimed at a profound overhaul of our institutions, a questioning of our international relations and of the European Union, and a transformation of our economic system.
The accomplishment of a real sovereignist project today comes up against three constraints. The first is the external constraint. Supranational Europe, our membership in NATO, the role of certain international organizations limit France's ability to govern itself as it sees fit. If we can understand that on certain specific questions, such as, for example, the fight against global warming, it is natural to go through international treaties and that it may be necessary to give up part of its sovereignty, it is is only problematic on purely national issues, such as the organization of public services, the management of hydroelectric dams or budgetary policies,France has lost the right to decide on its own because of treaties signed decades ago.
Without good democratic institutions, popular sovereignty will always be bypassed.
David Cayla
The second constraint is democratic. It appears more and more clearly, in the eyes of our fellow citizens, that democracy works badly in the sense that the elections, and more particularly the presidential election, reflect more and more with difficulty the popular will. The fragmentation of traditional parties and the presence of the far right in the second round means that a person who obtained a little over 20% of the votes in the first round can end up elected with a massive score, have a large majority. in the National Assembly and conduct a policy without ever taking public opinion into account. This is a real problem and largely explains the disinterest in politics and the growing level of abstention. Without good democratic institutions,popular sovereignty will always be bypassed.
The third constraint on sovereignty is economic.
The globalized and deregulated capitalism that we know no longer allows political action to break out of the neoliberal straitjacket.
Consequently, it is the sovereignty of the markets which is imposed to the detriment of the popular will.
It is not only a question here of correcting inequalities or of organizing economic planning according to leftist software.
It is above all a matter of rediscovering the capacity to give those in charge the power to carry out real economic policies of transformation.
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A truly sovereignist candidate should offer a clear discourse on these three elements of sovereignty. However, most of the time, candidates wear only one or two; above all, they rarely articulate them among themselves. For example, if Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2017 did indeed evoke the questioning of the European Union, the overhaul of our democratic institutions and an exit from neoliberalism, he made them separate subjects without clearly explaining that a constitutional reform is the a condition for calling into question the European legal order and that calling into question the treaties is itself a condition for exiting neoliberalism. It is symptomatic that in the project he presented in 2017, the “Europe” booklet was missing. Consequently, all the sovereignist coherence of the project thathe presented was shaken.
For the moment, I don't know if a truly sovereignist candidate will manage to be heard and to emerge.
For that to be possible, it would still be necessary that fundamental questions on the future of France, its economic model and its democracy be posed clearly.
This is unfortunately not the case today.
Sovereignist voices are lost in the hubbub of identity controversies and societal issues.