Je invites you on a journey through time. For what ? In June 2024, elections will take place to renew the European Parliament. At the same time, it will be decided who will become the president of the European Commission; new commissioners will be sent by the member states, while old ones will be confirmed in their functions. All these decisions will mark, favor or block European policy for five years. We will be able to control the crises or we will have to endure them.
It is high time to discuss European democracy, its obvious deficits, its contradictions, the need to continue to develop it. You will ask me why. After all, Europe is democratic, the country where you live is a democracy. All member states of the Union are democracies. What is there to change about that? So is democracy what you are used to, what you know? We will vote from time to time, and those who then assume political responsibilities are either the elites well known to everyone, or elites who want to pass themselves off as anti-elitists: either populists who are not very popular, or qualified populists. of populists by populists in need of popularity.
Having this habit and having the right to get angry from time to time with complete impunity, is that democracy for you? And because it is democracy, it should not be questioned? Seriously ? Is it written in article one of the Constitution: “All power comes from habit”? Is the principle of democracy immutable? And since we are talking about principle, let’s go back to the very beginning, to the root of the idea, to the “cradle of democracy”, to the foundation of European values. So let’s go back in time to the days of ancient Greece! We will speak with the wise people who introduced the idea of democracy to the European world and put it into practice for the first time.
With Cleisthenes, in VIe century BC
That’s where I’m taking you, and since I took Greek in high school, there shouldn’t be any communication problems. We come out of our capsule which took us through time and meet Plato. We haven’t set the clock to go back in time very well, because Plato is very skeptical about democracy. The fact that his master, Socrates, was forced to commit suicide after a democratic majority decision is for him proof that a popular vote goes against the higher laws of reason.
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