"There are 20 million unemployed and what does the Constitution offer us in the Europe of 25, 27 and soon to be 30: policies of unrestricted competition to the detriment of production, wages, research and innovation"
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Twenty million unemployed is not just a statistic here; its used as an indictment. Fabius frames joblessness as the hard, undeniable reality that should discipline any constitutional project. Against that urgency, he stages the Constitution as a technocratic answer to a social emergency it refuses to name. The rhetorical move is classic statesman-as-prosecutor: set the human cost first, then ask the damning question: what do we get?
His real target is the EU's economic philosophy in the early-2000s enlargement era, when Europe was expanding from 25 to 27 members and imagining 30. Enlargement is presented not as triumph but as pressure-cooker: more countries, more labor markets, more internal rivalry. In that setting, "unrestricted competition" becomes a loaded phrase, shorthand for a market-first Europe that treats competition as a virtue even when it functions like a solvent, dissolving industrial policy, bargaining power, and the idea that the state might actively steer growth.
The subtext is protection-by-another-name, but smartly packaged. Fabius links competition to a cascade of harms: production (offshoring and deindustrialization), wages (downward pressure and weakened unions), and even research and innovation (a warning that a race-to-the-bottom economy cant sustain the high-value future it advertises). Its also an argument about constitutionalization: once rules of competition are baked into a founding text, they become harder to contest democratically. He is asking voters to see economic policy as destiny when its written as law.
His real target is the EU's economic philosophy in the early-2000s enlargement era, when Europe was expanding from 25 to 27 members and imagining 30. Enlargement is presented not as triumph but as pressure-cooker: more countries, more labor markets, more internal rivalry. In that setting, "unrestricted competition" becomes a loaded phrase, shorthand for a market-first Europe that treats competition as a virtue even when it functions like a solvent, dissolving industrial policy, bargaining power, and the idea that the state might actively steer growth.
The subtext is protection-by-another-name, but smartly packaged. Fabius links competition to a cascade of harms: production (offshoring and deindustrialization), wages (downward pressure and weakened unions), and even research and innovation (a warning that a race-to-the-bottom economy cant sustain the high-value future it advertises). Its also an argument about constitutionalization: once rules of competition are baked into a founding text, they become harder to contest democratically. He is asking voters to see economic policy as destiny when its written as law.
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| Topic | Equality |
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