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Towards World Democracy Pascal Lamy T O W A R D S W O R L D D E M O C R A C Y P A S C A L L A M Y In Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, I am often questioned about the future of Europe. In the past, I would respond with assurance, with the conviction of the observer of a work Towards World taking shape. Although the difficulties are evident, the European project has never been so pertinent - for Europeans ourselves, but also for the rest of the world. What has been created over more than 50 years is also what the world needs today: a democratic system Democracy to tackle the enormous challenges that our societies face, and that states alone can no longer tackle. This European experience, with its successes and its setbacks, must be – I am convinced - our point of departure in search of a new global governance that combines the effectiveness that states have lost with the legitimacy that international organisations have yet to acquire. This new governance is what I call alternational democracy. Pascal Lamy Pascal Lamy is the former EU Commissioner for Trade and President of Notre Europe, a European think tank based in Paris. From September 2005, he becomes the Director General of the World Trade Organisation. He is the author of l’Europe en première ligne, (Paris, Le Seuil, 2002). P O L I Copyright © 2005 Policy Network C Y N All rights reserved E T W ISBN 1-903805-05-8 Paperback O R RRP £5 K PASCAL LAMY TOWARDS WORLD DEMOCRACY Translated by David Macey Published in 2005 by Policy Network Policy Network, 3rd Floor, 11 Tufton Street London, SW1P 3QB, United Kingdom Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7340 2200 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7340 2211 [email protected] www.policy-network.net Copyright © 2005 Policy Network. The English version is based on: Pascal Lamy, La démocratie-monde. Pour une autre gouvernance globale, Paris, La République des idées, 2004. All rights reserved ISBN 1-903805-04-X Paperback Production & Print: Perivan, London ii About Policy Network Policy Network is an international think-tank launched in December 2000 with the support of Tony Blair, Gerhard Schröder, Giuliano Amato and Göran Persson following the Progressive Governance Summits in New York, Florence and Berlin. In July 2003, Policy Network organised the London Progressive Governance Conference, which brought together twelve world leaders, and over 400 progressive politicians, thinkers and strategists. In October 2004, Policy Network built on this success by organising the Budapest Progressive Governance Conference, hosted by the Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány. Most recently, in July 2005, Policy Network has co-organised in Johannesburg, with the Africa Institute of South Africa and the Presidency of South Africa, the first Regional African Progressive Governance Conference, which will be followed by the Progressive Summit in South Africa. A Progressive Network Policy Network’s objective is the promotion and cross fertilisation of progressive policy ideas among centre-left modernisers. Acting as the secretariat to the Progressive Governance Network, Policy Network facilitates dialogue between politicians, policy makers and experts across Europe and from democratic countries around the world. By providing a forums that promotes debate and shares ideas, Policy Network strengthens the hand of modernisers and the case for permanent renewal. Our Common Challenge Progressive governments and parties in Europe are facing similar problems and looking for modern social democratic responses. There are increasingly rising fears for security - economic, political and social – combined with the contradictions of combining the traditional welfare state with employment policies, rapid change in science and technology, and pressing global issues, all of which should be tackled in common, as part of the need for fundamental democratic renewal. In the past, progressives worked independently to resolve these problems. Today, there is a growing consensus that we must engage with progressives from other countries, and to situate European and national responses within a broader international framework of progressive thinking, rooted in our social democratic values. For further information, http://www.policy-network.net iii Contents Foreword vii Introduction 9 World Powers and their Discontents 15 The European Laboratory 27 Towards an Alternational Democracy: Contributions to the Debate 43 Conclusion - Towards a World Community 63 v Foreword Pascal Lamy's latest work, Towards World Democracy, is here published for the first time in English by Policy Network, having first been published back in 2004 in French when he was my predecessor as European Commissioner for Trade in Brussels. Although the text is over one year old, he has decided not to update it to take account of recent developments such as the French and Dutch referenda. Why ? Because although he is writing - unabashedly - from the perspective of a European Commissioner, the lessons he draws have lasting value and are still relevant. Clearly we are now in a new European situation. Readers only loosely connected with the workings of the EU will still recognise some of the basic fault-lines of modern Europe set out in Pascal's original text. Indeed, if you read Towards World Democracy as a "pre-crisis analysis", it shows that what happened in the Spring of 2005 with the French and Dutch referenda has been coming for a long time. But on the other hand, others outside Europe will recognise from their own systems the need for legitimacy, the need for efficiency, and the need to belong. Indeed the lessons are less about “Europe” per se, and more about the nature of modern governance. Lessons about our collective failure to recognise the global nature of our political life. Lessons about how globalisation is starting to undermine our identities. Lessons about the sheer sense of no longer controlling our own destiny. In short, and not for the first time, Pascal Lamy challenges us, both citizens and policy-makers, to re-think fundamental questions about the way we are governed now. Peter Mandelson European Commissioner for Trade Honorary Chair of Policy Network vii ‘The sovereign nations of the past can no longer provide a framework for the resolution of our present problems. And the [European] Community itself is no more than a step towards the organisational forms of tomorrow’s world.’ Jean Monnet, Mémoires (Conclusion).1 1 Jean Monnet, Mémoires, Paris: Fayard, 1976, p. 617 viii Introduction The planet is unwell. The construction of Europe has stalled. Our democracies are tired. I think the time has come to think in political terms about the new reality that suddenly emerged in the twentieth century. It is a single reality that hems in our lives. This reality is the outside world. The world is no longer something that exists separately from our domestic lives. It has burst into our everyday life, introducing new risks, new forms of competition, new challenges and new fears. The social and political arrangements of our societies have been turned upside down. We are faced with a challenge, and the twenty-first century must take it up: it must invent a global political life that is at once democratic and capable of dealing with issues on a planetary scale. I say ‘invent’ because, even today, it seems that only representative and national democracies can legitimise collective action. How did this great transformation come about? It came about thanks to a threefold upheaval that was decisive for the whole of humanity and indeed provided the initial impetus to construct Europe. The origins of the first upheaval lie in war. Between 1914 and 1945, the world reeled as it was torn apart by the convulsions of the old Europe and its nationalistic and totalitarian passions. Verdun and then Auschwitz taught us that our civilisations are mortal, as Paul Valéry put it.2 For the fathers of the new Europe, the failure of the League of Nations – which represented a first attempt to take collective responsibility for the international order – and the ravages of two conflicts in the heart of the continent and the world were disasters that had a fundamental importance. They taught a lesson that struck them with all the force of the obvious: a union of the peoples of Europe was the only thing that could provide the basis for a lasting peace. The second upheaval occurred at the end of the twentieth century, when the Berlin Wall came down, when the Soviet Empire collapsed and when new geopolitical instabilities emerged. It also made what had been a tacit project much more explicit: it meant acquiring the ability to act outside the boundaries of Europe. In the rest of the world, the same upheaval emphasised the need to regulate and take on global questions collectively. Powers like the United States can obviously allow themselves 2 Paul Valéry,’ La Crise de l’Esprit- première lettre’, La Nouvelle revue française, no. 71, 1 August 1919, pp.321-327. ‘Nous autres, civilisations, nous savons maintenant que nous sommes mortelles’ (‘We civilizations now realise that we are mortal’). 9 10 PASCAL LAMY the luxury of pursuing a unilateral logic, by resorting to force if need be. But that logic cannot last. It cannot eradicate the major political reality of the coming century: henceforth, the problems of the world concern us all, and there are no more sanctuaries. The global nature of an increasing number of phenomena – the growing shortage of energy resources, the destruction of the biosphere, the spread of pandemics, the volatility of financial markets, and the migratory movements provoked by insecurity, poverty or systemic political instability – is a product of a third upheaval: globalization. Globalization – by which I mean the growing interdependence of all the people on the planet as the distinction between ‘near’ and ‘far’ becomes blurred – now affects every dimension of the life of our societies, and not only their economic dimension.
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