It would be misleading to assert that the final debates and the campaign itself entirely clarified what is at stake in the European Elections of May 25, even if major economic, political, moral, and cultural issues have been addressed by the candidates.
Ambiguities are still there on both sides. Partisans of a federalist ‘great leap forward’, involving stronger common institutions with greater powers, are indiscriminately presenting “populism” as the main enemy of Europe. This is true especially when they belong to liberal circles but even when, from the left, they are critical of European technocracy and the economic orthodoxy of the Brussels Commission and the Central Bank.
They seem to believe that a mere ‘rationalization’ of the current institutions will suffice to overcome the structural crisis into which the EU has plunged since the outbreak of the speculative bubble in 2008, without a change of the political principles or the internal relations of forces.
On the other hand, those who are critical of the European construction as such, because they see it as a ‘war machine’ used by neo-liberal globalization to dismantle social welfare and public policies in the Old Continent, are also frequently contaminated by nationalist discourses on sovereignty, which foster the illusion of a possible return to obsolete “border protections” and, moreover, feed various degrees of xenophobia.
In this situation, the idea of a genuine new foundation of Europe, on revolutionary bases, aiming at solidarity and an economic and political development of all its peoples, with a capacity to change the trajectory of globalization, is at pains to emerge as a way forward with any credibility. This concerns the specifics of its programme as well as the new relations of forces which could implement it in today’s Europe.