LSovereignism is a political nebula which is on the rise in Europe. The resurgence of the phenomenon is particularly worrying as the European elections of June 9 reinforced Euroscepticism within the European Parliament. The ardent defense of a confederation of sovereign states rests on a nationalist base: it states that the nation is the sine qua non condition of democracy.
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In addition to the ethnic or linguistic foundation of nations, Europhobes invoke historical communities forged thanks to a glorious past. The cultural identity of a people would be the condition of its political identity. Language, history, territory, religion, sometimes, are called upon to embody the national sentiment. Just as much, the sovereignist argument is lodged at the heart of the myth of the Europe of nations.
And sovereignty is one and indivisible, a European sovereignty would sound the death knell for national sovereignties. In the name of the general will, constant, unalterable and pure, the far-right leaders do not hesitate to sanctify the infallible judgment of the masses and to relegate mediations and safeguards to the dustbin of history. Any transfer of powers to the Union would be a usurpation and a betrayal, accompanied by a risk of imperial hegemony of which France would be the innocent victim.
Desperate individualism
But Eurosceptics also invoke the devitalization caused by the European Union (EU): the desire to abstract “principles”, “values” and “rules” from their political incarnations would give rise to the danger of indefinition. Europe would lack myths, rites and founding symbols that would make citizens a “people”. No more than “human rights”, which are universal and non-European, the single market cannot confer an identity worthy of the name.
An imperial artifact destined to dissolve the cultural unity of the nation, playing individual freedom against the spiritual community, the Brussels Moloch is considered the worthy heir of the Enlightenment. In the sovereignist discourse, the veneration of patriotic traditions fuels the Europhobic discourse: in the face of the organic unity of the nation, the EU represents a rationalist, secularized and cosmopolitan creation based on a mythical and bland universalism. The liberalism of the EU would be only another name for its desperate individualism. It is not surprising, therefore, that it gives rise to the dispossession of peoples by uprooted, not to say “stateless” elites.
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