For a Citizens' Europe

There are certain fundamental points or elements that need to be addressed, dealt with and analysed in order to arrive at a Europe of the citizens.

We live in a multipolar world in which only size makes a difference and in which the territorially or economically "giant" states are the absolute protagonists. This situation forces small states to form partnerships in order to escape irrelevance.

This primary associative tendency is now being joined by another strong trend stemming from the magnitude of the problems we face and the planetary dimension of many of them. Climate change, the inevitable transition to "clean" energy, the fight against inequality or the eradication of pandemics are all functional reasons for the partnership of states.

The concurrence of these trends has given rise to continental groupings of states that have been integrated into the limited instruments of global governance currently in place. The main continental grouping of states is the European Union (EU).  

However, the EU is not at its best today. Its coercive policies seem ineffective in the economic sphere when the United States or China have taken tariff or fiscal measures to our detriment; but even within the EU itself these policies have proved ineffective in the face of illiberal temptations in Poland, Hungary and a growing number of Eastern European countries.

Nor have their common policies worked much better in the face of problems such as illegal migration or the fight against pandemics. It would seem that, while agreeing that we face global problems and the need for global solutions, we are unable to implement global solutions.

In 2002, Joseph E. Stiglitz published his book 'The Globalisation Malaise', an essay that confirmed the existence of major imbalances in the globalisation process. Stiglitz states: "Globalisation today is not working. For many of the world's poor it is not working. For much of the environment it is not working. For the stability of the global economy it is not working". 

It was a pessimistic view formulated when the worst was yet to come. But the worst did come, a crisis that originated in the deregulation of the financial sector, but which ended up impacting all sectors of the economy. 

This pessimism in the analysis is corrected when it comes to proposing solutions, solutions that point in the direction of "governing" the process of globalisation. To put it in Stiglitz's own words: "On a global scale, the reason globalisation does not work is governance".  It is the lack of global governance, however limited its functions may be, that produces imbalances and reveals incapacities in many fields and today especially in the fight against the pandemic that is hitting us. 

Little by little, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation, together with the G-7 and the G-20, are introducing patterns of governance at the global level, to the point where it can be said that the 21st century is already the century of world governance, just as the 20th century was the century of bloc politics and the 19th century was the century of states and their imperialist sequel. 

It is undoubtedly a path of hope, even if it is not without its hesitations and setbacks. It is, however, wholly insufficient, and that gives greater prominence to continental government organisations and thus to the European Union.

Calling for more and better governance cannot be understood as calling for more bureaucracy or greater interventionism by administrations. The EU itself has often been accused of being excessively bureaucratic and interventionist. Much of the argument in favour of Brexit derives from this criticism. 

However, more and better global governance does not mean more bureaucracy or more interventionism across the board. Regulating short-term international capital movements, derivatives markets or establishing a unified minimum taxation for large transnational corporations seems essential, but none of these measures imply any restriction on the activity of the average citizen. 

The creation of the Next Generation funds, with the profound changes they have brought about in the EU's patterns of conduct, demonstrates that there are mechanisms with a strong impact on economic and social reality, without involving excessive regulations and replacing them with a combination of ex-ante planning and ex-post execution control.

The exceptional volume of resources mobilised by the EU as an instrument of economic reactivation requires that they be used where they can have the greatest impact, and this calls for a decentralised conception of the Plan in which sub-state and metropolitan administrations play an important role insofar as they are closer to the centres where the resources are most needed and capable of producing effects. 

Europe today is a dense network of cities in which most of its population is concentrated, but also most of its production capacity and most of its demand for social services. 

A large number of these cities constitute metropolitan territories that go beyond the municipal sphere to form communities with a growing willingness to take on new areas of competence, particularly in the fields of the economy, scientific innovation and the fight against inequality. 

This network of cities has very different forms and levels of governance, ranging from their configuration as federal entities in Germany and Austria to their organisation as city-regions in France, Italy or Portugal, or purely and simply as metropolitan entities as in the case of the Netherlands, England or Poland. 

In our case, the Spanish Constitution recognises the capacity of the Autonomous Communities to create Metropolitan Areas, a capacity only exercised in the case of Catalonia through the constitution of the AMB.

The common element of all these organisational formulas is the overcoming of the municipal framework to find answers to the challenges presented by mobility, pollution, energy transition, housing or the fight against inequality and exclusion.

More than 30 of these urban conglomerates are part of the European Metropolitan Authorities (EMA) network, which has an important role as a partner of the Commission and the Council and which should play an increasingly important role in the implementation of Next Generation funds.

In order to build a Europe of citizens, we will first have to develop the Europe of cities.

Juan José Folchi, State lawyer and lawyer by profession, Minister of Economy and Finance in the Government of the Generalitat presided over by Tarradellas, member of the second legislature of the Parliament of Catalonia and member of the Barcelona Federal District (BDF) Promotion Committee.