Portugal ended yesterday a process in which, once more, history was made. Sadly, a place in history is not always conquered by nice deeds or fine achievements. In 2003 Portugal has already proved that when Durão Barroso hosted, in Azores, the Lajes Summit in which Aznar, Blair and Bush, with his acquiescence, decided one of the most unjustifiable and criminal wars recently promoted by the western world, with which we become ineluctably and shamefully associated. Yesterday, again, with the decision of parliamentary ratification of the Lisbon Treaty instead of its submission to popular vote in referendum.
In both cases, national governments largely surpassed their competences and made decisions to which they were not mandated, decisions with extraordinary repercussions to our country and to the rest of the world.
Sócrates justified the decision of non submission in referendum using a Weberian concept: “the ethic of responsibility”. Responsibility towards whom or what, we should ask. Towards the “European Project” he answers. And which project is this? Neither Sócrates or we may know it because it is not defined anywhere, not even in this treaty that he and the rest of the European leaders so feverishly want to ratify. But already has become more and more apparent that the opinions, the wishes and the preferences of the European citizens are not meant to play a major role in that project.
At this moment what was in discussion was not if “Europe”, while collective project, will or not become a benefit to the majority of its member states, despite Sócrates’ arguments. What was being decided is if Europe, in the process of becoming whatever is meant to become, will respect and defend its democratic inheritance and keep the values that brought her to its present state. And what has already been decided now is that it wont and that, from now on, anything goes, as in any other dictatorship, to justify taking down and ignoring legitimate and lawful rights and ethical principles. What has already been decided is that the “European Project” is the new mythical ideal to reach for, even if conveniently vague and undefined as any other myth.
Meanwhile, the Europe of the citizens and their countries has ceased to be an end to become just one more mean, a vehicle to this other mythical “Europe”. Thus Europe forgets that its constitution process should be a permanent end in itself and that it is by the way we drive it – our real responsibility – and the values that we choose to promote, that we will define what we are and stand for, before ourselves and the world.
