European Continent
 Breakthroughs

The breakthrough document of the European continental group was drafted by all the co-ordinators of the four topics and the assembly organisers. These breakthroughs are not intended to be an accurate rendition of the debates at Peles. However, we have sought to organise the different proposals that came to light during the five days of the assembly on the basis of the reports, notes, minutes, and various workshop documents.

Far from being able to write genuine proposal booklets, apart from the Rural World topic, which began several years ago, we wanted to contribute to the Alliance World Assembly a document that deals with all the subjects covered in Romania. Thus we have written short paragraphs in personal (and therefore subjective) style on the most transversal subjects of the four topics. The participants of the European meeting will doubtless search for the exact arguments of their workshops; however, this short document is the result of collective analysis.

Furthermore, we might ask what these breakthroughs touch upon in terms of European characteristics. Our ideas and notions (still not innovative enough) identified in this document do not only concern the European continent but also the world. The similarity between our driving principles and values and those of many citizens around the world is hardly surprising. On the other hand, our objectives will be fulfilled when Europe becomes a solid regional entity capable of managing its relations with the other regions of the world in conformity with the rules we propose. If these breakthroughs appear to be neither novel nor specific to Europe, it is because we have sought, despite everything, to achieve consensus so that each of the participants is able to identify with and adhere to them.

We recommend readers to refer to the general report of the European continental assembly, whicht sets out the proposals and describes the different ideas that came to light in detail.

Manola Gardez Rauss
October 2001

The political unity of continental Europe as a region 

Continental Europe must build its political unity in order to become a centre for regional governance.
Achieving this requires: 
•	Accelerating the passage from economic and monetary union to political union;
•	Defining a political project and rules in the form of a constitutive charter, with the participation of the future members and European civil society;
•	Playing an independent political role to influence the world governance and implement a policy for peace;
•	Developing European political opinion (the political identity of European citizens). 

The purpose of this European regional governance is to contribute towards wider, world governance whose optimum configuration would be polycentric, with agreements between regions. Each region would be given the power of exemplariness, in order to bypass vetoes by vested interests to block progress (the example of the UN Security Council), and thereby counter the current system based on trials of strength. 

A new concept of citizenship 
(Towards a clerkless society)

With forever more abstentions at elections, parties with fewer and fewer members and an increasing number of lawsuits aimed at politicians, one might imagine that the foundations of democracy are quaking. Well, they are not. All these changes express the difficulty of answering one basic transformation: the search for a clerkless society.

Until recently, the "citizen" placed his or her confidence regarding many situations in disinterested and uncontested experts: they entrusted their health to the medical profession, the education of their children to the teaching profession, the production of their food to farmers and their thoughts to political parties, etc. Their own judges, dictators of methods and the persons dispensing them, these professions were entrusted with a ‘mission’. Without going to the other extreme of thinking that human beings are only interested in profit, nobody believes that they are motivated only by the pure desire to fulfil a mission. The fact that there are no more clerks is a good thing. 

These institutions and persons should accept reconsidering their roles, seeing them contractually rather than as a mission.
In return, it is obvious that citizens must take on more duties. They will have to take responsibility for the consequences of the decisions made with them, since then nobody can plead ignorance or powerlessness. Citizens will have a voice in their own destinies, with no more clerks to speak in their name.

Governance based on active/participatory subsidiarity and solidarity 

Institutional subsidiarity 
This means that all decisions are taken at the level closest to the issue concerned, and thus the people involved. However, six conditions must be satisfied to check that the level of decision is the right one:
•	Financial viability: the most financially advantageous level.
•	Solidarity between territories (local authorities) and within the same territory: compensatory and distribution mechanisms.
•	Level of knowledge of the issue: knowledge diffused by the media and also the diffusion of the technical knowledge required.
•	Respect for the opinion of minorities when taking decisions
•	Integrate the notion of participation in decision-making and evaluation procedures (participation by citizens and civil society).
•	Efficient decision-making and agreement of the local community. This implies preliminary work and evaluation afterwards.

Participatory subsidiarity
All political power must ask for the participation by citizens and/or civil society, and it must ensure the collaboration of the administration.
It must therefore dialogue with civil society and set up a participation process so that any citizen can participate in the reflection and decision-making involved. This participation by citizens requires a mediator who would ensure they are trained and that what they say is taken into account.

The role of civil society 

Current political organisations do not generally associate citizens in their actions or in formulating their decisions. This "shortcoming" is offset spontaneously by citizens who organise themselves into pressure and action groups. This is the vast though often loosely structured movement known as civil society. It represents new forms of collective action. The 19th century produced labour unions, co-operatives and the scout movement while the 20th century produced organisations and public opinion campaigns. 
Today as with yesterday, this type of organisation is gradually finding its place. These social relays that compose civil society have the following essential functions:
1)	They stimulate a powerful desire to do voluntary work,
2)	They play a crucial intellectual, cultural and social role,
3)	They bring issues to light on the national and international stages,
4)	And they participate in formulating alternative solutions and stimulate numerous ideas.
Their importance is already known, at national and international levels, where civil society organises major conferences and counter-summits in opposition to the G8, for example. The entire movement will continue to take form and clarify its relations with the other components of society: the administration, the private sector, unions, etc. In return, the new actors of civil society need to apply and codify the duties that belong to every public actor.   

Evolution of democracy

Since its creation, the construction of Europe construction has been achieved by enlightened men and women; however, democracy has played no part in the process. However, things have changed, spurred by the combined effects of societal complexification, a higher level of knowledge, the effects of economic globalisation, the growing insistence for democracy by citizens, etc. The elitist argument that citizens are incapable of making complex decisions (on subjects that require technical knowledge, such as GMOs) falls flat once they have the information permitting them to acquire such knowledge. The exasperation felt about politics is a consequence rather than a cause of the opaqueness and inefficiency of the representative democratic procedures in force. 
To answer the need for more democracy, and to cease relying on our establishments, we propose instilling the idea of "democratic quality" in society. This implies that representative democracy should be completed and strengthened by participatory democracy at different levels, such as Consensus Conferences, etc. This also implies networking and information tools (Internet, electronic forums).
This leads to the question of the cost of these procedures and of the "price" of democracy. Part of the public budget (for example, of the European Commission) could be allocated (in the same way as for elections). This change would be in the public interest and taking this "wealth" into account (agreement and social cohesion) can hardly be considered as a non-productive expense. 

Basic income 

After nearly thirty years of increasing structural unemployment in Europe, full employment has become a myth. We need to examine alternative solutions such as the basic income.

Unemployment leads to irreversible situations of social exclusion (a person excluded from the labour market for too long has great difficulty in becoming reintegrated), whereas a solution avoiding any exclusion by paying out a minimum basic income would allow everyone to return to the labour market if and when there is a shortage of labour. 
The basic income cannot be compared to other conventional social revenues that are invariably linked to specific social conditions; on the contrary, it would be unconditional and non-discriminatory.

Freedom of movement and opening up borders 

Preventing national immigration policies from reflecting the general attitudes of politicians and the discretionary ones of administrative services cannot be achieved without harmonising the European Union's immigration and asylum policies. It must be considered on the basis of three observations:
- Although it is not an invasion, the pressure of migrations exists and is not about to decrease, 
- Controlling flows is impossible without infringing human rights.
- The effects caused by borders closing are harmful: it slows the fluidity of trade, increases clandestine immigration and fuels criminal organisations. 

Thus, rather than sticking to the dogma of tightening frontiers, the facts plead for opening them. Obviously this does not mean abandoning all controls: neither opening them without restriction, nor negating constitutional laws can be considered.
For most European citizens, this option that respects the right of human beings to circulate freely between countries is the cause for violent emotional reactions. Acting on these fears demands opening up a debate through which they can be expressed and exorcised. Such a debate would give Europe the opportunity to innovate and formulate policies that correspond to both its democratic ambitions and its future challenges.

Reversing the concept of productive work

Ulrich Beck said, "We must consider how democracy and social integration can be made possible without including the notion of work".
This entails dissociating social and individual recognition from employment and productivity. Respect should not only be given to work as a tradable value, all forms of activity should be recognised according to a scale that integrates social, cultural and political dimensions too. 
The right to human dignity is still based on work and social recognition is founded only on the "productive" activity it involves. Meaningful production of all kinds should be given social recognition and be taken into account by the community as a whole. 

A new conception of territorial management 

Today, the management of rural territories is practised with both the ideas and tools of yesterday. Worse still, we are unable to perceive the territory and its natural resources as an object of management in itself. We manage cities and towns, roads and agriculture and we manage their effects on the territory, more or less. However, surprisingly no approach is taken to view the territory as whole, something that is essential since Europe has such limited space and a very large population. In the future, we should focus our action on the rare and disputed commodities constituted by the territory and its resources. 

We must above all think of this territory as fulfilling a host of functions, not as juxtaposed ones (with spaces set aside for conservation and others for production) but as integrated functions. Each part of the territory must fulfil the largest number of functions possible: environmental, production, social, etc. The form that Europe takes tomorrow depends on this capacity to integrate these functions efficiently.

This implies radical change since it entails subordinating economic policies to territorial management. It is manifestly absurd at present to continue an independent agricultural policy. 

The current failure to open up debate at European level has undermined local territorial policies. The fine principle of subsidiarity has been made null and void by the principle of non-interference with competition, which leads to abandoning (public) incentives as coercive actions. (Everyone is afraid of applying the rules to the letter for fear of competition from neighbouring regions). European-wide negotiation of territorial policies is now indispensable. 

Modification of how wealth is calculated 

The mechanism generally used for measuring and/or comparing the quality of life and well being of our societies, i.e. GNP (Gross Domestic Product) is no longer adequate.
-	Firstly, although GNP is the total sum of goods and services produced by the national economy in one year, it is unable to express the distribution of this wealth.
-	Secondly, GNP is generally limited to recording the trade of services and products of the formal economy, that is to say official markets, while it excludes informal activities. This method of measurement benefits societies in which human activity is a remunerated and marketed service. However, the activities of traditional societies remain family oriented, or they are practised within clans and tribes, and are therefore not accounted for by GNP. In other words, anonymity in our societies has a positive impact on GNP, whereas activities that contribute to social cohesion do not.
-	Lastly, GNP is a blind indicator. It makes no distinction between the growth generated by industry and services that satisfy consumer demand and the increasingly important sector of economic activity that merely serves to offset the destructive consequences of industrialisation. In other words, the industrial system benefits from the very anomalies that it causes. It is obvious that this formula that permits increasing the GNP is increasingly a zero sum game.
For all these reasons, we ask our political leaders to give up this mechanism and use other indicators such as HDI (Human Development Indicators) that does not only take into account economic values, but also values such as health, access to education and culture and the environmental situation of a society.

Renovating education

Education is the keystone in the transformation of mentalities and it underlies our project for society. Indeed, collective change and individual transformation are linked and interdependent. In view of this, education must have several objectives:
- Firstly, education must no longer only focus on awarding professional qualifications, but, taking the perspective of a post-wage-earning society, it must be restored as a "free" service and teach people how to use their spare time.
- It must then educate all citizens to be aware of their civic responsibilities and teach them how to analyse their social and political environments.
- Lastly, it must trigger a change of values by educating citizens to have open minds. This requires leaving behind purely national visions of education (e.g., nationalistic teaching of history in schools) in order to instil a more open, European vision. It also entails recognising the diversity and cultural plurality of individuals. This is the first step for integrating and recognising the other and ridding ourselves of fear: We say no to a Europe of fear!

The transformation of international relations (co-development and contracts)

Europe currently imposes its economic and political interests as well as its Western system of democracy in its development activities. The aim is, on the contrary to change this outlook and demand that Europe take a contractual approach to all its development actions.
These contracts would consist of going beyond the current diplomatic logic of international relations based on trials of strength and subordination. Performed in a spirit of partnership, the contract should set out the rights and duties of each party, clearly explaining the interest of each of them. 
The concept of development would therefore change into one of co-development. 
European civil society should convey social and political aspects in its co-development contracts while, upstream, it should mould public opinion and promote this concept.
Europe could use this contractual method in an independent way in other regions of the world, and with respect to other issues, in view to creating polycentric world governance. (Why not draw up a contract between two regions to reduce the greenhouse effect, without being held up while waiting for world-wide consensus.)