On 5 July, during our biannual meeting, Professor Viviane de Beaufort looked at EU as a model of multicultural governance, a thought-provoking issue for decision makers, which should be shared with those who couldn’t join.

According to Prof. de Beaufort, the EU can become a model of multicultural governance for other world regions if it is able to find a solution to its internal citizenship crisis, to change its approach to the outside world by playing an arbiter role, and to strengthen its Single Market.

At the internal level, EU needs to solve its European citizenship problem. It is imperative to tell Europe’s citizens about the virtue of EU’s common values and fundamental principles: human dignity, freedom, equality, solidarity and democracy. The European project needs to go under debate: a safer and more competitive Europe, a social Europe, a Europe of public services, a Europe of consumers, a Europe of sustainable development and energy, a Europe of Research, a Europe of Education, a Europe of SME ……In short a Europe that is “moving forward”! If not, the lack of trust so forcefully established by the economic crisis, will feed on a serious internal crisis within Europe paralyzing the Union’s capacity to act, because governments will have to deal with heightened opposition to Europe.

At the external level, Europe needs to exploit its ability to work out compromises to be able to play a role as an arbiter (G8, G20, WTO…). Policies and instruments for national favoritism are no more pertinent at a time when corporate groups are being incited to “globalize” and break away from national ties. The question that globalization asks of Europe is whether it can protect its businesses against unwanted takeovers by outside companies or investments or it can open international public procurements to give European corporate opportunities and impose its rules of “fair trade” … yet give these enough access to maintain and develop domestic and international competitiveness.

To strengthen its external influence, the EU should strengthen its Single Market however. With the new political landscape created by the Lisbon Treaty, is it time for Europe to envisage taking more determined action to change the Single Market’s approach to the outside, toward more regulated openness considering the threats to its competitiveness it faces every day. Measures regarding Control over foreign investment, European golden shares, anti-takeover measures, European merger law as an industrial political tool or Tools of fair trade should be taken into consideration by policy makers.

Prof. de Beaufort concluded that Europe must be its companies’ base camp! There must be clear rules of reciprocity in the game, as any asymmetry could adversely affect the competitiveness of European companies. Systematically applying this principle would make it easier to establish a regulated single market; the principle is already mentioned in several European regulations (e.g. the agreement on government procurement included in the WTO Marrakech Agreement ) but not widely used.