NOTno one better than Emmanuel Macron knew how to embody the desire to accelerate the modernization of the French economy seven years ago; he called for initiative, mobility, innovation and he brought together a broad coalition on this project. But the 2022 campaign, by comparison, conversely lacked inspiration, and opened a period of uncertainty.
The call for “reform” continued its momentum, but ultimately it was a completely unexpected theme, that of “economic sovereignty”, which is now essential in all areas – agri-food, pharmaceuticals, energy. , digital, technology, etc.
We can certainly see a kind of common sense in this: diversify suppliers, hold an appropriate stock of vital products, invest in the technologies of tomorrow. But this is not enough to define a strategic vision, and therefore requires asking a fundamental question: do the notions of “national” economy and economic sovereignty still have meaning?
Two temporalities
Contrary to widespread prejudice, the nation has, since ancient times, been the central actor in what is rightly called an “international” economy. Historians make modern times part of the rupture that occurred in Europe in the 16th century.e and XVIIe centuries. The nation-state, recognized as the pivot of international relations with the Treaties of Westphalia (1648), has since become the dominant form of organization of political life; as for the national economy, under the impetus of capitalism it becomes the dominant form of organization of civil society.
Both have changed a lot over the centuries, but the “nation” form has imposed itself on a planetary scale, and the resulting world system has until now always been formed under the influence of a dominant power. Each nation, on the other hand, has only minimal influence on its environment – with the exception of European nations, which for the first time in history accepted a partial transfer of sovereignty to survive in a world of great powers. The “concert of nations”, even in the era of globalization, obeys simple but powerful forces: a combination of rivalries and cooperation in the political order, a mixture of competition and interdependence in the political order. economic.
By reading according to this grid the history of European nations, most of them grouped today in the European Union, we notice two things:
- On the one hand, this long historical process has led these peoples who are so diverse and so often at war to a common canonical model, an amalgam of capitalism, democracy and individualism.
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