European leadership crisis: the Ukrainian crisis gathers all the conditions together to give a saving jolt to Europe

After two deliberately alarmist issues, our team wants to get back on the path of positive anticipation. Not that Europe is yet out of trouble but Political Anticipation (1) as conceived by its inventor, Franck Biancheri, stating that man is the author of his own destiny provided that he arms himself with the means to have a good understanding of the trends at work, aims to envisage desirable and feasible futures and identify players, openings and choices to draw upon to build this desirable and feasible future. Political anticipation isn’t afraid of being wrong in its forecasts (2) provided that it has contributed to a better understanding of the dynamics at work, pick up the trends supporting a positive future and show how to capitalize on these future paths. Because political anticipation isn’t a crystal ball but a rational tool to help make a decision and thus “armageddonist” scenarios (3) whose purpose is to paralyse people by terrifying and crushing them will never be the basis of its business.

That said, for more than two months not only our team has let itself be overcome by a certain despair noting the incredible collapse of European political leadership (if there are no more decision-makers what can one do with our tool to help make a decision?), but we also felt that a justified pessimism would also contribute to creating the conditions for the necessary jolt.

« Europe will be forged from crises and will be the sum of the solutions to these crises”, wrote Jean Monnet and the fact is that the global systemic crisis got Europe – Euroland to be exact – to take giant steps forward. It’s these developments that the GEAB has accurately analysed and anticipated since 2006. But, from the beginning, as we mentioned in the last issue, the political crisis which has arisen from this huge transition has an inevitable deadline. Either European politics finds its creative energy there, or the European project and the European countries with it, go into the dustbin of history.

Read the Public announcement GEAB N°85 (May 15, 2014)