The Fondation pour l’innovation politique organised a coffee-table discussion on the occasion of the release of its latest book What next for democracy? (available on Amazon).
At the request of Sciences Po’s En Marche students, Marie Lebec and Christelle Dubos, members of the French Parliament (MPs) information mission on “monitoring Brexit-related negotiations”, David Hanley, Professor of European Studies at Cardiff University, and Dominique Reynié, Executive Director of the Fondation pour l’innovation politique, discussed the consequences of Brexit, its opportunities and, more generally, the state of European democracies.
For Marie Lebec and Christelle Dubos, the sustainability of the European Union will depend on the existence, among its population, of a sense of belonging to one and the same people. This could be made possible through common decision-making between nations.
David Hanley identified the major historical, cyclical and structural causes of the “Leave” vote. The British have never politicised the European Union, seen from the outset as a remedy for the Commonwealth trading system.
Added to this are cyclical factors, common to many European countries: a drop in purchasing power, a political elite considered corrupt, distrust of immigrants perceived as “dangereous” on the labor market. For Dominique Reynié, Brexit is a testimony to the importance of the populist tendencies that affect our democracies and the predominance of the economy in the positions taken concerning the EU, to the detriment of social and environmental policies.
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