The energy crisis will have highlighted the shortcomings of the European Union. Difficulty in reaching an agreement on the gas price cap, the price of electricity which is soaring because of the very construction of the system which sets the tariffs… The war in Ukraine will not have spared certain rules from Brussels .
“Since 1992 and the Treaty of Maastricht, we have frankly renounced our (…) national sovereignty in favor of a European sovereignty which was there to protect us. But we have renounced and as a result, the protection of the nation has disappeared”, judges the writer.
The problem of “liberal Europe”
According to Michel Onfray, “for thirty years, we have been told that with Europe, there would be no more unemployment, no more misery, no more poverty, no more wars”. And to add: “but 30 years later, we still say to ourselves that we are more on a debate of ideas but on an observation of reality. (…) Isn’t there Was there a war in Europe? Was there full employment? Was there friendship between peoples? No, it’s exactly the opposite.”
Because if Michel Onfray explains that he is not against the very idea of Europe, he is opposed to the liberal Europe that currently exists in his eyes. “Today, we see that there is a kind of opaque commission in Brussels which has decided on the good, the bad, what to do, what not to do”, without possible criticism. , he believes.
An American Europe?
“One of the vices of Europeanists is to have led people to believe that if we were against a liberal Europe, we were against Europe period. No, not at all. Me, I am against liberal Europe , not because it is European, but because it is liberal. I am for Europe and besides, I do not know anyone who is against Europe”, he insists on the set of the Grand Appointment.
For the philosopher, it is urgent to change the European model, at the risk of seeing the nations composing it disappear, and to defend “the interests of a Europe which will only become a transmission belt for the United States”, concludes -he.