The recent entry into office of the new Italian government was received, in media and financial circles, as well as by most European leaders, with a mixture of indignation and concern. How could Italy—one of the founding members of the Union and its birthplace due to the Treaty of Rome—bring to power Eurosceptic, anti-establishment forces likely to jeopardize the stability of the euro and to create unprecedented tensions within the EU? The alliance between the far-right League and the Five Star Movement (M5S) stemming from a leftist, anti-globalization ideology, is regarded by many as the unfortunate confirmation of the rise of all kinds of “populisms” and therefore as a reversal of the virtuous pro-European momentum generated by last year’s election of French President Emmanuel Macron.

With the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the decision to transfer the U.S. embassy there, U.S. President Donald Trump has made a first step to break one of Europe’s most deeply anchored reflexes. As former European Commissioner Chris Patten noted, “The main determinant Europe’s political behavior” is, on the Israel-Palestine issue in particular, “the Pavlovian rejection of any course of action that might distance Europe from the Americans.”

The turbulences in the European and transatlantic skies over the course of the past year obviously have not been without impact on the coexistence between the Atlantic Alliance and the European Union's (EU) Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP). Long-time taboos have been lifted, initiatives are multiplying, new perspectives seem to open up, and immediately generate powerful backlashes. The outcome will depend largely, once again, on the choices made, and determination displayed, by France.

At the mid-October EU summit, President Macron joined the so-called Declaration No. 52, ten years after the Lisbon Treaty was adopted and France decided not to sign the annexed Declaration on EU symbols.[1] If the new French president chose to reverse policy at this particular moment, it is primarily as a response to far-left leader Mélenchon’s recent call to ban the European flag from the Assemblée nationale (the Lower House of the Parliament). Whereas the Declaration is legally non-binding, the move is intended, in Emmanuel Macron’s words, to “assert the attachment” of France to the symbols of Europe. One point that seems to have been largely overlooked, is that the meaning of those symbols can be very different, depending on whether one refers to the French or English version of the text.

"For the next five years, on the domestic front, the main challenge will be the feeling of alienation of a large majority of the French population. This comes both from the divide between globalization’s winners and losers, and from what is widely perceived as an increasingly assertive presence of Islam. On the European front, there is an unprecedented window of opportunity for the protective, strategic, autonomous EU project France has always advocated, but the key to achieve this still resides in the implementation of the multispeed model."

 “One only comes out of ambiguity to their own detriment,” this maxim often repeated by former President François Mitterrand sounds like a premonitory warning in the aftermath of Emmanuel Macron’s election in France.

In 1975, at the time of the first British referendum on whether the United Kingdom should leave or remain in what was then the European Communities, a caricature of the Canard enchaîné depicted Prime Minister Harold Wilson in bed on a voluptuous, but visibly bored Europa who pleads: “In or out, my dear Wilson, but stop this ridiculous back and forth.”[1] It was more than forty years ago ... Four decades during which the UK has carefully kept their notoriously “semi-detached position” vis-a-vis Europe.

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.

The present paper offers a brief overview of the terminological-historical, theoretical and political aspects of “differentiated integration” scenarios. It argues that although “flexibility” is the only way to consolidate the acquis and pursue the integration project, differentiation does not automatically lead to a more ambitious, more powerful and more European Europe. In order to ensure this outcome, the flexibility pioneers must pay particular attention to two paramount criteria.

The process of European integration is, without any doubt, the most significant political innovation of the last half-century. Born out of the feeling of necessity, it has been guided by the hope that the construction of a community between European countries may eventually pave the way for the organization of tomorrow’s world. However, our subject here is not to dwell on how brilliant, necessary and promising the project is. In fact, the credibility and legitimacy of the European process today are weakened both inside and outside, in particular by the gulf between rhetoric and reality.

When we examine the relationship between civilizations, one should first of all make a clear distinction between State actors, which do have the right and the capacity for political action, and cultural spheres of variable scale and cohesion, which do not. As the excellent American analyst, William Pfaff observed: "None of these civilizations, rather arbitrarily defined, is or ever was, as such, a political actor or a political entity. Nations act. Governments wage wars. But civilizations are not political units and there is no hint that they will ever become one". This does not mean, far from it, as one will see it hereafter, an underestimation of cultural and identity-related factors.

According to Eurobarometer, it is in the new Member States - with their governments carefully aligned on American positions - that public opinion seems to be most favourable to the “Europe of Defence”. The surveys knock over the stereotypes... For the full text in English, please contact the author.

Europe today is characterized by a strategic and identity-related vagueness: she is without geographical and political outlines. Her geographical borders are still imprecise towards the East and South, as well as towards the West. As for European sovereignty, it is in a sort of no man’s land: the Member States abandon entire sectors of their national sovereignty without there being anything, at a European level, resembling a political entity ready and able to defend Europeans’ capacity to decide and to act autonomously.

The enlargement of the European Union in 2004 was a mistake. It was plainly obvious since old Member States appeared unable to seize the opportunity which arised with François Mitterrand’s European confederation project, and did not have the political will to start any other form of ambition-based political differentiation during the decade which followed.

There is only one question worth asking in all this chaos surrounding the constitutional treaty. It is to know whether this crisis is finally "the" crisis. The answer depends on the political will of the Member States’ leaders, that of France and Germany in the first place. The suffering is the result of not merely the last, but of all past enlargements. The Heads of State and government of the Six, in 1969 in the Hague, only gave their assent for the opening of the accession negotiations "insofar as the candidate States accept the treaties and their political finalities".

There is no doubt that France has always constituted the cornerstone of the whole European construction: in its capacity as the guardian of the temple: the one who watches the project being kept on its original political track and who reminds the others to bear in mind the pursuit of those strategic purposes.

The theses on the (alleged) powerlessness of Europe and on the (supposedly) benevolent (self-proclaimed) omnipotence of the United States reveal a profound ignorance.

The paper starts by defining the main criteria of what can be called the European Security Model, and then examines the role qnd pertinence of this latter in the fight against terrorism.

From the French point of view enlargement cannot relegate to the second plan the aspiration to European independence and prosperity. On the contrary: the CEE countries’ accession must be carried out in a way to serve the cause of the preservation of the European model and of Europe's sovereignty.

The area of security and defence policy is the one registering the most noticeable positive shifts within the new EU Treaty (referred to as the constitution). These novelties - along with all finally adopted arrangements - are crucial regardless of the "constitution's" immediate fate: they demonstrate the delicate equilibrium between the minimum requirement for effective functioning and the maximum degree of political willingness at the level of the Twenty-Five.

The mixed report of the EU Commission on Turkey’s accession marked the end of a double deceit. The one which made Ankara believe in the mirage of fully-fledged membership (obviously already as a candidate Turkey does not have the same rights as others). And the other one intended for the European public opinion and pretending that successive enlargements do not basically alter the Union’s very nature. Because it is precisely what they do.

By pure coincidence, it was in Madrid, in December 1995, that the EU summit took place, where on the matter of terrorism the heads of state and government of the Fifteen stated for the first time what they could not but repeat eight years later – following the terrorist attacks on 11 March 2004 in the Spanish capital.

Specificities of the EU’s situation and reaction Responses by sphere of activity Justice and Home Affairs Diplomacy and common foreign, security and defence policy Humanitarian assistance Air traffic safety Economic and financial measures Civil protection Long-term tendencies Collective defence Institutional flexibility Inter-pillars fusion Widening and deepening Mediterranean dimension Sustainable globalisation