populism

Of Piotr Zygulski
Source: Appeal to the People
The contrast between so-called "sovereignists" and "Europeanists" is absolutely senseless, according to the political scientist Carlo Galli, spoke in Bologna on 13 maggio 2019 to present his book Sovereignty (The Mill). Which is aimed above all at those who intend to oppose chauvinistic forces by summarily liquidating the concept of sovereignty and above all without proposing an alternative vision. We can only say Europe (without sovereignty?) both good and sovereignty would be a bad thing. It would be trivial, simplistic and even harmful.
Galli then returns to this political category, inviting us to treat the topic more seriously: “We cannot talk about politics without sovereignty”. At most there can be indefinite “multitudes”., theorized Toni Negri, curiously in tune with some liberal individualistic views, which the Bolognese professor does not share at all. “The question is another: who should have sovereignty in Europe?” The concept of sovereignty, for Carlo Galli, it is existential; it can obviously also reach extremes, from non-interventionism to war, which also belongs to its existence. It is therefore not a pure concept, absolute, if not on a theoretical level in books and in a state of exception: it is always conditioned in some way.
Sovereignty coincides with constituent power, which is the basis of established power. It projects an idea of ​​unity - the Law represents unitarily through the "will of the Nation" what in itself would not be unitary - due to the fact that it is a part that becomes the sovereign whole. So sovereignty means "being the owners of decisions that have to do with one's existence"; we need to have the same strategic defense interests. Furthermore, it always arises from a violent act: an armed conflict, a secession, a civil war; “politics is not the dimension of wishing good”, Galli notes.
The European case, however, would be different: in history it has never happened that a state acquired sovereignty through a decision engineered from above. For this reason the European Union - "non-sovereign collection of sovereign states" - lives in an intermediate situation in which only monetary sovereignty would be shared. Think of defense or foreign policy, for which each European state continues to make different decisions; the crises in Libya, Syria and Ukraine would prove it. France does not intend to give up its army; the German constitutional court accepts European measures only from the perspective of subsidiarity: something that Germany simply cannot do alone, can be entrusted to the EU.
For the rest, further limitations of sovereignty are excluded, because for the Germans national sovereignty remains sacred, despite having left Nazism, Galli notes. Similarly Italy, in its republican Constitution, states that “sovereignty belongs to the people”, despite some exceptions allowing sovereignty to be ceded only "on equal terms with other states" if necessary to ensure "peace and justice among nations". They were designed for the UN, not for European construction. Furthermore, it seems clear that the national elites themselves do not want to move towards true European sovereignty.
Yet we arrived at the European Union on the one hand by building a "fortress" to compete in the global market, on the other, extending the German ordoliberal model to all European nations. It could become a textbook case in which what Galli defines as the "neo-enlightenment elite" - through the ideology of the "external constraint" that united us first to the European Monetary Serpentine and then to the Euro - fails miserably, without true sovereignty. Also following austerity measures, Indeed, This whole project, conceived on the drawing board, has entered into crisis. Now it would be right to go back to its profound causes, which cannot be circumvented with wisdom, accusing those who object to European construction of functional illiteracy. Also because this stalemate is what favors those more Eurosceptic feelings.
To say something in a much more proactive way and to do politics seriously, a strong investment of energy in sovereignty is needed. Whether you want it at the level of the European institutions, both to return to the national one; for both there would be non-negligible difficulties. “There will be a reason in the crisis of neoliberalism, or all this is fate?”, Galli finally asks.