Margaret Thatcher: The European Future

Margaret Thatcher: The European future

On September 20, 1988, in the Belgian city of Bruges, the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher, exclaimEffectiveness of the supranational organization.

The British leader said: "We have not lifted the borders of the British state successfully only to see them re taxed at a continental level with a European super-state exercising dominance from Brussels". In other words, the president said that in her opinion, the borders were opened to the rest of Europe so that from outside the country it is made to a greater or lesser extent what London did on her own before 1973. Even if Thatcher’s speech advocated a more strengthened community, the Eurosceptic background of his words would strengthen the idea of abandoning the union on the island, installed to a greater or lesser extent from the United Kingdom itself.

We advanced thirty years and we were in the same crisis of legitimacy of the union that the iron lady showed: the European Union was not fulfilling a role beyond the same that could be fulfilling a state alone. The cost-benefit analysis of Thatcher that was still in force in the head of the Eurosceptics was simple: we are opening the country to immigration in exchange for the benefits that the State would grant outside the EU.

From that 1988 speech to the crack of 2008 Europe, it was seen in a stage of relative economic prosperity and political stability throughout the union that however they failed to reverse the skeptical vision of many British.

On the contrary, the economic crisis that was unleashed in multiple countries in Europe after it has allowed the ideas reflected in Thatcher’s words have expanded to citizens of other Member States such as Hungary, Greece or Poland, where discontent towardsThe union is generalized in the population.

Poland is one of the case that most claims that of Thatcher’s sayings in 88. The Polish people have been submitted to different denominations over the last centuries: the Tsarist Russia, the Nazi regime and ultimately the Soviet Union. The Poles, who after getting rid of their communist regime, received with open arms the idea of the United Europe, today they have moved away from these ideals and see Brussels as they saw before they saw Berlin and Moscow. As a result, the parties that embody the values of the "solidarity" movement, that group that fought against the socialist regime for a democracy, are being defeated again and again in the elections in front of a new right reactionary right anti-EU.

As we can see, a crisis of legitimacy in the Union has been generated as a result of increasingly generalized discontent. A system created with both social and economic freedom today is seen by many of its citizens as the opposite.

However, the complications that the exit process of the United Kingdom of the Union is generating will be what nobody wants to leave, at least in the near future. Brexit is being solved in such a complicated way that it would be naive for any other member to try to repeat this story with its own output referendum.

What is the future for the supranational organization when the discontent is combined in growing with the impossibility of abandoning the same? The reform of its institutions. The restructuring of the European Union must take a step forward in integration, or one backward. The current integration situation between members represents a midpoint between a real supraestatal integration and a common market.

One of the main problems that current structuring has is that a common monetary policy, the implementation of the euro and a unique compún bank for Europe, without a common fiscal policy, without a common fiscal policy, without a common fiscal policy, without a common fiscal policy, without a common fiscal policy, without a common fiscal policy. The result of this inequality of policies is the example of Greece, where fiscal irresponsibility combined with monetary and loan freedoms granted by the EU led the economy of the Mediterranean country to the ruins. This disconnection between a unified monetary policy and various policies on state spending leads to failure those economies that waste their reserves, once again, as is the case of Greece.

However, an economic unification of such size would require an equivalent political unification, which in my opinion translates into a continental government. Many times the European Council is accused of being not very democratic, since their representatives are not elected by voters but not by the governments members of the Union. If this council became the hypothetical executive power in the Union, I think it is necessary to democratization of the election of its members. After all, they would be the new rulers of Europe. The idea of a European army is always shuffled, more if we consider the various threats that exist for Europe’s sovereignty: a real and tangible threat, terrorism, and a rather hypothetical, Russia. Although it is true as Nigel Farage stood out, that a European army is more an unproven reality than anything else if we take into account the various security forces already existing under the orbit of supranational control.

The other reform idea, probably even more complicated than increasing the level of integration, could be reduced. Disarm the European Central Bank, remove the euro from circulation but maintain the Schengen area, allowing free trade and circulation of people, goods and capital. Logically, the absence of a common currency would make international transactions difficult, but the reality is that practically a third of EU members have not implemented the euro, so the increase in commercial complications would be relative.

Whatever the path that Europeans take for their future as a united contine. Dialogue and agreement are essential aspects that must characterize the debate about how to continue union. Today we could say that the states are divided between a few rule-makers and a large majority rule-takers, where it will be necessaryThe result of the European experiment.

The new elected president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, declared that he is among his objectives to integrate his country into the European Union by 2024. The reality is that the situation that Europe is going through requires a prior reform of the Union institutions before a possible accession of new members occurs, which is further accentuated when we consider the challenge that would represent defending European sovereignty in Ukraine in front of the Threat that Russia represents for kyiv’s stability and sovereignty since mid -2014.

There are many solutions, mine may not be successful, but Europeans will only solve their legitimacy crisis with the same fundamental value that took them to the mid -twentieth century to leave aside their differences in pursuit of the common good: consensus.