The leaders of the member states of the European Union have just finished yet another summit. They discussed through the night. This week’s summit like the one before it, and probably the one before it as well, finished early in the morning.

Each summit the leaders have is billed as the summit to take measures that should solve the problems faced by the Euro and indirectly the financial and economic crisis that the world has been passing through. But soon after each meeting we find out that, as we say in Maltese, ergajna koppi.

 The elected leaders of the strong and those not so strong meet regularly and decide. But the situation is such that it seems we should change around an old Maltese proverb. Instead of saying “Il-bniedem jipproponi u Alla jiddisponi” we could start saying “Il-mexxejja politici jipproponu u s-swieq jiddisponu.”

Is this right?

We know who the political leaders are but do we know who the swieq are? We know who the political leaders are accountable to but do we know who the swieq are accountable to? Is it right that Moody’s, Standard and Poor etc. seem to be more powerful that the heads of the twenty seven EU member states put together? Is not this situation creating a dangerous kind of democratic deficit? Are we not in danger of succumbing to the dictatorship of the markets?

Is this how things should be?

Globalisation and sovereignty

One of the big debates in these EU summits is the debate about sovereignty. This is a sacred cow that seems to be determined to keep on living the way it was before the great cultural and economic phenomenon called globalisation. The dinosaurs were eliminated by falling meteor – according to one theory. Could it be that sovereignty (at least as we have known it so far) will be eliminated by globalisation? The swieq are already more powerful that the nation state. The faceless leaders of the swieq have become stronger that the publicity hungry political leaders.

In the light of this radically changed and changing scenario should not the concept of globalisation be radically revamped?

Earlier this year the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace published a document called “Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority”. I will share with you a few extracts which can throw light on the subject under discussion.

“Modern States became structured wholes over time and reinforced sovereignty within their own territory. But social, cultural and political conditions have gradually changed. Their interdependence has grown – so it has become natural to think of an international community that is integrated and increasingly ruled by a shared system – but a worse form of nationalism has lingered on, according to which the State feels it can achieve the good of its own citizens in a self-sufficient way.

Today all of this seems anachronistic and surreal, and all nations, great or small, together with their governments, are called to go beyond the “state of nature” which would keep States in a never-ending struggle with one another. Globalization, despite some of its negative aspects, is unifying peoples more and prompting them to move towards a new “rule of law” on the supranational level, supported by more intense and fruitful modes of collaboration. With dynamics similar to those that put an end in the past to the “anarchical” struggle between rival clans and kingdoms with regard to the creation of national states, today humanity needs to be committed to the transition from a situation of archaic struggles between national entities, to a new model of a more cohesive, polyarchic international society that respects every people’s identity within the multifaceted riches of a single humanity. Such a passage, which is already timidly under way, would ensure peace and security, development, and free, stable and transparent markets for the citizens of all countries, regardless of their size or power. As John Paul II warns us, “Just as the time has finally come when in individual States a system of private vendetta and reprisal has given way to the rule of law, so too a similar step forward is now urgently needed in the international community.”

The time has come to conceive of institutions with universal competence, now that vital goods shared by the entire human family are at stake, goods which individual States cannot promote and protect by themselves.”