Europe is a continent of borders. Geographical borders, in its mountains, seas and rivers. Cultural and linguistic borders, with its languages divided and sometimes confronted against each other; with its cultures enclosed in small parcels of land called nation-states, regions or cities. Historic borders where battles were fought, victory and defeat were tasted by kings, queens, generals and, most of all, by people. Political borders, where the nation-state finds its limits at another of its peer’s threshold. And, above all, social borders, with classes deeply divided, where the arrogance of the nobility, the high bourgeoisie and the senior bureaucrats is suffered by the millions that make this continent where common things divide us.

A river or a mountain doesn’t have owners, but we have chosen them to divide us. Our languages have common origins and are in constant contact, enriching each other permanently – not a single one of them is better than the others –, but we have chosen to impose a few and destroy the rest. Our varied and rich cultures have plenty of common elements, but we have chosen to ignore them. A battle was never fought more intensively by one side than the other – human blood is always red whoever spills it, from whoever it comes, there is not blue blood, there are no bloodless humans –, but we have chosen to claim victory over the defeated and remember it eternally. Political borders are human creations, they change, they fade whenever we, as a community, want them to do so, but we have chosen to make them natural, as if they were given by God to divide us.  Men and women should be able to choose their path of life with equal opportunities, but we have chosen to keep unjust and discriminatory privileges that limit our personal and social growth.

All these borders are intertwined in history. A state owes its borders to mountains, religion, culture, language, and war. A language is made official, taught in the schools and imposed by the state. Social inequality benefits from the protection that borders, any border, gives to the privileged.

Today, uncompetitive entrepreneurs, inefficient administrators, greedy partitocrats, eternal nobility, they are all using these divisions as their protective wall. They exploit them in many subtle ways. From the reinforcement of the immigrant-native division, to the defense of protectionist laws that divide Europe in small feuds, where old classes continue to enjoy their privileged position, against those that work with their hands and brains to improve their lives.

To construct Europe in freedom, equality and fraternity, we need to transform these borders into bridges, by making of our natural, political, cultural and social diversity the basis of our community. We need to find our individuality in common. We need to see that river that divides us as our common river, where all our ancestors bathed, drink and washed. We need to learn to appreciate our neighbor’s language as our own, enriching our words and expressions permanently. We need to teach our battles as tragedies in which our fathers, and the fathers of our fathers died side by side killing each other for the sake of a few. We need to replace our frontiers by a Constitution that unites us, and gives birth to a free, equal and fraternal Europe.

Change Congress stands on three legs:

1. Ushering the candidates into accepting a four-points pledge: to refuse contributions from lobbyists and political action committees, to support a ban on legislative “earmarks,” to promote legislation that increases government transparency, and to support public financing of political campaigns.
2. Allowing the people to track the record of candidates and incumbents on those pledges using the Internet and a wiki-style engine to pool the information from all voters (not ready yet).
3. Asking voters to take the pledge, by choosing those candidates that are taking and respecting their pledges against corruption.

To indicate the support to the campaign and to show they have taken one or more pledges, candidates will use a badge available on the website.

Now, I wonder if this campaign or a similar one could be imported to Europe. Politicians in the EU take advantage from the fact that politics is deeply fractioned in nations to keep their privileges and special relationships with money, without getting any criticism about their actions from a fractioned civil society and a capital-controlled media. Thus, a first step should be to get this civil society more integrated, more European in order to track the activities of their politicians. But would a French “citoyen” track what a British MEP or MP is doing? I don’t think so, though probably as much as a regular Californian would track a New York’s congressman/woman. The campaign should be pan-European, the action national, sort of “think European, act nationally”.

There are already some movements working for a more integrated political ecosystem in Europe, these movements may be ready to work together with anti-corruption groups on a campaign that wants clean and transparent European policy-makers.

I would be interested in working for that. Are you?

“With the Treaty of Lisbon to be ratified by 2009 it would be possible for there to be one person to call – the same person as President of the Commission and the European Council.”

The design of the page is really good. Its promotion has been lightning fast, as you can see if you visit the page (you can also read another review). Politically speaking, I am not completely convinced about this idea of having one single person at the top, not because I don’t like it, but because many people don’t. Sensitivities in UK and in Eastern European countries about the big central power of Brussels will, no doubt, grow if there is one single person, particularly if that person is French. I must admit I still have to give further thought to it, so I’ll follow up this website regularly.

At this very moment, I just have one question (actually, a few questions ): What is the goal of this site? Rally support for the petition? Create public awareness about the lack of the “really necessary” President of the EU? Inform the people about the advantages of having this institution? Inform (or misinform) the population about the EU? Not sure about, it. It may also be all of them and more. I only wish it won’t become another elitist site, directed just to those that think they understand the bureaucratic jargon-driven mess the EU can sometimes be.

“If nothing is done, thousands of European performers who recorded in the late 1950s and 1960s will lose all of their airplay royalties over the next ten years,” said EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, the union’s internal market chief. “These royalties are often their sole pension.”

And of course, all these musicians are planning to live 45 years longer, to more than a 100 years, assuming some might have performed music when they were 5! But if the normal musician performs its first songs between 15-25, their life expectancy life, according to Mr. McCreevy, will be of 110-120, not bad at all, I must say. And, of course, “these royalties are often their sole pension”, because they all stop performing at 25 (still assuming they will live 120), and then “viva la vida!”…poor musicians.

Mr. Commissioner, your intentions are crystal clear to me. Who you are defending is not the musicians, but again the big companies and their benefits. Is it a coincidence that Mr. McCreevy is the “Irish quota” in the European Commission and big companies are mainly coming from English-speaking countries? What a difference between you, Charlie, and Viviane Reding, the Commissioner for Information Society and Media. She is the Commissioner I most admire. She is fighting and regulating in favour of the citizen, not against him for the few. Thanks to her, mobile companies and internet providers are trembling. Last year, mobile companies were forced to reduced their roaming call charges, and now it is the turn of roaming SMS and internet charges. I wish all were like you, Viviane!

UPDATE: After writing this post, I realised that the extension of the term is for performers and not for composers, who already have 70 years copyright protection. I made the necessary changes to the text.

“It is necessary to answer people’s concerns – to answer them and not to explain! For two millenia, the scientific field has concentrated on offering science without listening to people’s demands. The ‘just shut up and we’ll explain it to you’ attitude needs to change: we need to be more responsive than explanatory.”

And…

“Politicians should listen to the people more as well [...] but it is not necessary to create new tools as we already have blogs. We need to profit from the new technologies – it is not worth paying for expensive meetings in Brussels. We need to create a democracy of science. That’s the main message”

Links:

• Euractiv.com
• Summary of the interview (in English)
• Interview (in French)
• Michel Serres wikipedia article