These last months saw the forceful return of the good old debate on “protectionism” versus liberalism. In other words, on the respective roles of the politics and the economic, or face to face between the logic of power and the logic of the market. With the implicit question about the need for a “European preference”, and the immediate spotlight this directs on the inherent contradictions of the liberal-Atlantic credo.

The party was launched at the EU summit in June by the new French president who, following an election campaign where he committed himself to the idea of the “protection” Europe would be supposed to guarantee to her peoples, obtained the withdrawal from the future treaty of the reference to “free and undistorted competition”. The polemic around his gesture should, however, have been moderated by the fact that in the model country of liberal orthodoxy the Congress (with a Democrat majority) not only had just refused President Bush the “fast track” authorization that facilitates the conclusion of free-trade agreements, but also made him sign, end of July, a law stipulating an (even more) strict and (even more) extensive control over foreign investments. Confused, the “right-thinking” elite circles in Europe are all the more so that with the energy sector or the rise of sovereign funds their beautiful theories no longer play only into America’s hands, but eventually into that of China, Russia and the Gulf States.

Full text in French.

share: