While the world awaits with bated breath is the fulfillment of an almost inevitable "Hard Brexit" and the much-feared European elections of May 2019 that should open the doors of the Euro-Parliament to Euro-skeptic parties, another non-secondary event should add further concern for the thoughts of all the Europhiles of our continent. The 22 January 2019 in fact, against the backdrop of the beautiful setting of the city of Aachen (Aachen in German), in the presence of the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron, and the Federal Chancellor of Germany, Angela Dorothea Merkel, the "Franco-German Treaty of Cooperation and Integration" was signed, also known as "Treaty of Aachen "which, in the intentions of the signatories, should complete the previous" Élysée Treaty "of the 22 January 1963 signed by Charles De Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer.
The new treaty consists of 28 articles and aims to further deepen the Franco-German relations in order to accelerate the process of integration between the two European powers. Key points of the new agreement are:
- the establishment of a "French-German defense and security council" which should coordinate joint defense actions in the event of external military aggression as well as the exchange of information to facilitate counter-terrorism and organized crime operations, including through closer cooperation in the field of intelligence exchange and the coordination of judicial systems;
- the creation of a "council of economic experts", made up of ten independent members who will have the task of managing coordination in the fields of foreign and economic policy. In particular the members of this "council" should formulate the premises for the creation of a true one in its own Franco-German economic space characterized by common rules;
- the construction of new infrastructures, both physical and digital, which should facilitate both the process of economic interaction and the movement of people between the two countries, premise for an intensification of cultural relations;
- the establishment of a "joint parliamentary assembly" made up of one hundred French and German deputies who should manage all the work connected to the points mentioned above.
The legitimate suspicion is that the political elites of the two "architrave powers" of the European Union have decided to "push the accelerator" on the path of European integration without waiting for the other members of the Union in deep crisis. According to this interpretation, the exit of the United Kingdom from the European common house, the overpowering resurgence of nationalism and the pressure from Donald Trump of the United States, eager to get rid of a dangerous commercial rival such as the EU, in the last three years series of deadly blows to a political-economic-diplomatic structure no longer able to self-reform. Consequently, it is better to "save the salvable" and preserve "the Franco-German Axis", perhaps later extended to the Benelux, (on the footsteps of the ancient Carolingian Empire) giving a new chance at least to the "essential nucleus" of Europe.
The reaction of the Brussels authorities was extremely contradictory; if the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, enthusiastically applauded the initiative, the President of the Council of Europe, Donald Tusk, legitimately wished "This project is used for the benefit of the European Community and not against it". Italy, as usual, did not arrive.
Photo: Présidence de la République / Bundesregierung
