Pascal Lamy, economist born in 1947, was for eight years director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and head of Trade for the European Union during Romano Prodi’s Commission. Now he is president of the Paris Peace Forum and coordinator of the think tank network of the Jacques Delors Institute. We meet him in Venice, invited by the Berggruen Institute, where he gave a lecture titled: “An Anthropology for a United Europe.” His proposal is to find a compelling imaginary, because the EU does not lack institutions, which are effective, but a connection between homo economicus and homo civicus. But to do this it is necessary to understand the enemies of the EU and the explosion of the new populist far right that “we did not expect.” “These people,” he says, “have moved forward, they have thought things through, and they have a political dynamic that we don’t have. Viktor Orb\u00e1n is their masterpiece, the apex of a change they’ve undergone in recent years,” says Lamy. “Before they wanted to leave the EU, but for some time now they have changed strategy: they want to change things from within. They want to change those values that were foundational in the creation of the EU in the 1950s: democracy, prosperity, freedom, tolerance. And now they are powerful, financially too. Orb\u00e1n is setting up a think tank in Brussels with a fund of 20 million, which is a huge amount. There’s the ideology but there are also the resources.” But did you expect this change in the anti-European right twenty or thirty years ago? “No. We thought, wrongly, that back then it was all concentrated only on anti-migrant policy. And instead later it became clear that anti-immigration was just that product you put at the entrance of the supermarket to attract customers. We thought that wouldn’t be enough, that it wouldn’t work. And then we thought they wanted to leave the Union. Now the benefits of staying in the EU are recognized by at least two-thirds of the population. They changed their ideological posture, they based everything on the idea of ‘taking back control,’ from bureaucrats, from institutions, from Brussels,” explains Lamy, and he smiles bitterly when he says: “It’s a bit like Make America Great Again, as if America weren’t already great. It’s a shift that we didn’t take seriously enough.”<\/p>\n
The country that worries Lamy most is his France, with a president “who is not a good politician,” while Italy “has managed somehow to create something, as always, different.” The main problem, says the former head of the WTO, is that “the EU’s values have collapsed, that philosophical liberalism is finished. This for people like me is terrible. Today the mainstream vision is that of Russia and the United States.” And then there’s the invasion of Ukraine, but “in the face of this threat,” says Lamy, “we must explain to people that greater integration keeps us safe, because if we don’t integrate even more we will be crushed between Russia, America and China. So we can use the threat to our advantage.” There are those, however, who say that what has put the EU in crisis was also too rapid integration of some economies, especially in the east. But on this Lamy is categorical: “Expansion has never been a mistake. We had no choice. It’s written in marble in the Treaty of Rome. If you want to join and you have all the right parameters you can enter. It’s an open system from the beginning.”<\/p>\n
Lamy is convinced that the new right’s attack on globalization is “superficial.” Because “these people are not against real globalization, which is the economic integration of the production system. They say globalization but they mean homogenization, openness, tolerance. They mean the destruction of national identities. It’s not a rational discourse, but an emotional one. We are rational. We keep saying: European economic integration is good because it increases system efficiency, and we cite economists’ studies. But this doesn’t reach what in France we call la trippe<\/em>,” that is, people’s gut: “We must regain the emotional element.” Donald Trump doesn’t have a real strategy to destroy the EU, but he doesn’t understand it, “he doesn’t understand how he can interface with non-individual political bodies. It’s too complex for him.” And then there are the tariffs, which for Trump are “the Swiss Army knife of the modern economy. He believes you can do whatever you want with tariffs.” But Lamy is optimistic. “We conventional economists believe it will turn into inflation for Americans. For the moment it’s happening more slowly than expected, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.” And then the WTO “must learn to live without the United States. After all, they are only responsible for 13 percent of global imports. If the remaining 87 percent behaves well, new markets could open up. I think global capitalism will adapt.” If America moves away from liberalism, “going back will be difficult” and there will be problems here too, “there will be strong emulation. If already today you ask the French whether they prefer democracy or a strong government, at least a third will tell you, especially among the youngest, that they prefer a strong government, and not this mess that exists now. If this right wins it’s not because of catchy slogans, but because there are real problems that we in the center-left have not been intelligent enough to see.”<\/p>\n Pascal Lamy is an economist. He was the general director of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and head of Trade for the European Union during Romano Prodi’s Commission. Now he is president of the Paris Peace Forum and coordinator of the think tank network of the Jacques Delors Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pascal Lamy, economist born in 1947, was for eight years director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and head of Trade for the European Union during Romano Prodi’s Commission. Now he is president of the Paris Peace Forum and coordinator of the think tank network of the Jacques Delors Institute. We meet him in Venice, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6013,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":19,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6004"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6100,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6004\/revisions\/6100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}