“The best way to take off again”

A month later, the setback of the constitutional referendum was celebrated under the French tradition. When the prime minister Dominique de Villepin, invited all political parties represented in the European Parliament to his residence, Matignon, the presence of the National Front caused a controversy and forgot to speak about Europe. However, there are plenty of issues for debate.
The weeks after the referendum were full of threats: the Dutch “no”, the failure of the Brussels European Summit, the resounding breakup between Jacques Chirac and Tony Blair, the question of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), challenged by the British (but also by the Brazilians and a great number of emerging developing countries), the dispute about the budget, financial perspectives and “bonus” to be granted to Great Britain, etc. If it continues like this, the dispute, inevitably, will become a crisis of confidence in the monetary institutions and European Central Bank, thus affecting the Euro. In such situation, the only encouraging news is regarding to the state-of-the-art technology and our industries: the Airbus A380, Galileo, ITER (important project to which I was able to contribute as an envoy from the government and which would deal with the challenges set by the drainage of energy resources).
There is no question that technology is the best way our country has to take off again. A more noble and effective way than criticizing violently the traditional enemy: the British. Especially when Tony Blair, who became very quickly the object of our resentment, holds the post of president of the European Union this July 1st, and when the next six months will be decisive because, either Europe remains stuck up in the bottleneck to which we have brilliantly taken it (since, as far as I know, Mr. Blair had nothing to do with the failure of the constitutional referendum in our country; or because it would take off again, for which, however, we need a lot of help from the British prime minister.