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*"Des Maçons Pour l'Europe "*
Association déclarée loi du 1er juillet 1901
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FÉDÉRATION  FRANÇAISE
LE DROIT HUMAIN
ORIENT DE PARIS No. 1593

"LA DIAGONALE DU FOU"
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Conference & Debate of Michel ROCARD on Europe
Wh.°. Cl.°. Meet.°. of March 9th 2006
      Today, what about Europe ? and which Europe ?
      At the initiative of "LE CHANTIER ITINERANT, Des Maç.°. pour l'Europe---THE MOBILE WORK YARD, Masons for Europe ", Free Association of  Feminine and Masculine Free- Masons to promote Europe,
      the R.°. L.° "La Diagonale du Fou" of the French DROIT HUMAIN  (THE HUMAN RIGHT) has  organized on March 9th  6006 a White Closed  Meeting to discuss the future of Europe with Mr. Michel ROCARD, Former Prime Minister of France, at present  European Deputy, affiliated to the French Socialist Group.
      Nearly two hundred SS.°. and BBs.°. of various Lodges and Obediences, practically  packing the Temple, attended this Meeting, among which Jean EISENBEIS, President of the National Council of the French DROIT HUMAIN, who led a delegation of Dignitaries of  his Obedience.
       Greeted in the name of  the CHANTIER ITINERANT  by our Br.°. Benjamin CUKIER, Mr. ROCARD has from the start informed that he was going to deliver a "very personal and enor- mously minoritary vision" of  a Europe "which does not go well" with "the situation of failure, of paralysis" generated by the refusal of the Constitutional Treaty, but a Europe which, according to him, remains nevertheless able to weigh considerably on the "great economic world challenges".
The Speaker then answered many questions :
      "European Citizen, fighting for Federal Europe since 50 years", Michel ROCARD has drawn up a history of the European construction back from the " Founders Fathers ", showing that the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty falls under a series of refusals to build political Europe, including, inter alia, in 1954, that of the French Parliament rejecting the Treaty establishing a European  Defense Community (CED).
     "Ambiguity was in the fruit since the departure, with hostile Parliaments to lower the national flag".
      But in spite of this original failure, to carry out the Common Market   " initially by the customs" was "the great idea" which made it possible to create an "effective economic interdependence", and today "the greatest economic power of the planet equipped with a single commercial piloting".
      "What a formidable success!  "the former Prime Minister launched, recalling that this European construction " which advances from crisis to crisis ", not only has allowed the Franco-German reconciliation, but has also generated "a durable space of peace " on the Continent.
       "Seen from outside, Europe appeared so fabulous that everyone wanted to be in it".  Suc- cessive enlargements, with Spain, Portugal and Greece, then with the Eastern European countries, thus "induced a paradoxical situation:  Europe took political weight without drawing the conclusions from them ".  Until it felt "a terrible shame" in front of its impotence facing the crisis in ex-Yugoslavia.
       In spite of the snubs, "trifles" as the Speaker called them, resulting from the new European Policy of Safety and Defense, "missions of Maintenance or Re-establishment of peace known as of Petersberg, or the future" European Corps" of 60.000 men, these things go on.  However, if one has a large look, it does not weigh anything on the geostrategic plan ".
      Considering as very unlikely  the resumption of negotiations on the Constitutional Treaty, Michel ROCARD estimates that " a Political Europe is dead".  " The old dream of the Foun- ders failed.  That of a European, integrated, even federal, true political international power ", runs up against reality which wants "that more half of the countries of the UE came to make large Switzerland of it", which readily leaves to the United States the role of "gendarme of the world".  "Europe has the bad luck to be dedicated to the supply management, to the money, to the economy, and to be a club of rich people managing their problems of vicinity as well as possible".
     But, according to Michel ROCARD, this "sad assessment" does not reduce in anything the influence of a Europe which seems to be "the system best adapted to the world of today", at one time when "management problems are the key of the rescue of humanity, from the point of view of a political and social confrontation between developed countries".
The former French Prime Minister builds this original thesis on three observations:
      - the emergence of a "soft power", in a " strange time for humanity when military force would no more be useful at all".  According to Michel ROCARD, the analysis of the recent contemporary conflicts (the Middle East, Iraq etc....) tends to show that "one often returned to the starting point", and that "the democracy cannot be imposed by force".
     - the development of "actionnarial" capitalism, founded on "the requirement by the shareholders of the largest dividend and as soon as possible".  It has generated a "vertiginous aggravation of the inequalities, precariousness in work, the reappearance of mass poverty ", which indeed  makes this economic system " quite unstable".  "The colossal debt of the United States,who borrow 1,9 billion dollars per day, comforts the assumption of a very possible financial tsunami".
     - Europe "right now to the size of the dramatic world problems of the hour", is, with its own currency, Euro, protected from possible financial cataclysms.
     Beyond, because it developed " arbitration competences ", because it shows united, and speaking with one voice at the O.M.C (World Organization of the Trade), it could appear as a welcome "shelter", with its solid monetary pole, in the event of a financial tsunami.
     Michel ROCARD thus considers the confrontation of two antagonistic models within the world's actionnarial capitalism.
 
The first model, carried out by the United States, Japan, the IMF, the World Bank, favours Milton Friedman's ultraliberal assumptions,  to leave capitalism free from all rules,  and rely upon a "spontaneous" balance, that the market would ensure from itself.  A system which marginalizes the State, the Social security, Public Services.
 
The second model is that of a Europe embodying and supporting " Human Rights, plus the Social security and the respect of the Environment, with "80% of Europeans wanting to protect their social security".
     Now it is Europe, Michel ROCARD points out, " who forced the establishment of a World Commercial Tribunal, the O.M.C ".  Europe, does he add, " is today the most influential entity as regards the creation of international rights. It is in position to make gradually the law of the world " Hint : facing the USA, and  the other world giants at present emerging.
     For Michel ROCARD, we must learn how to live in a Europe which is durably a " NICO ", a " Non-Identified Constitutional Object ", which does not have the right to define its borders because it would have to guarantee them", and which thus may find it beneficial "to occupy the largest space".  "We have to manage an economic unit which is not limited by its space, and which will weigh enormously on the world economic rules".
     The main European stakes are in the fields of Education and Research, and in the rooting of our values in an economic system which allows it, and Michel ROCARD concluded by inviting his listeners, and more largely the French, to get familiarized with "an economic culture", that they too often lack.
     After having answered many questions of a particularly attentive audience, the Speaker listened to the warm thanks of the President of the HUMAN RIGHT, our B.°.  Jean EISENBEIS, on his own behalf and that of all the present SS.°. and FF.°.
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