As our Euro-Star train from St Pancras was pulling into the Gare du Nord, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was arriving for dinner at the Elysee with the new Socialist Party President Francois Hollande.

Today (Thursday) they both trooped off to Brussels for yet another Euro-summit.

The whole Euro thing has become part circus, part nightmare. I don’t know what the Euro-crats in Brussels are smoking but some of the signals are bizarre.

In the past few weeks these are some of the “democratic reforms” which have been plucked from a top hat to sanitise the EU and win back support from a West European public which is being saddled with crippling Euro-zone austerity:

A popularly elected President and Finance Minister; a new Euro-parliament with wider powers plus an elected upper chamber, like the US Senate; a new European central bank with regulatory powers to protect the Euro currency and the liquidity of Euro-banks etc etc.

It is all pipedream stuff – too little, too late. The establishment of a supra-European state, with the member countries taking orders from a self-appointed bureaucracy in Brussels, was a nonsense from the very start.

All the talk of monetary union and political union was something that lived in the fevered imagination of right-wing social democrats, NATO militarists and Guardian readers.

What they eliminated from their Euro-fantasies was the nation state: the existence of national identity, language, culture, customs, currency, religion and traditions within individual European states. None of this was ever properly acknowledged or given guaranteed legitimacy.

Their attempt to obliterate nation states and impose a capitalist one-size-fits-all has ended in a shambles.  In the current stage of the crisis, the banks are trying to shift the cost of the Euro fiasco onto the backs of European citizens. Working people are resisting but with no help whatsoever from the political classes.

BORDER INCIDENT

When Angela Merkel arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport she was stopped at immigration and asked: “Nationality?”

“German,” she replied.

“Occupation?”

“No, I’m leaving tomorrow,” she said.

QUESTION OF LANGUAGE

I am reminded that language has a primacy in our lives, in our social relations and in our character.

For example, British people talk about the class struggle, socialism, trade unionism, colonialism and the ruling class without feeling embarrassed. Britain, after all, is the oldest capitalist country in the world with the oldest working class.

In France, conversation turns to the bourgeoisie, the petite bourgeoisie, the proletarian, communism, Marxism, Stalinism and even Trotskyism which is regarded as a legitimate intellectual current of Marxism.

Jewish friends freely discuss the perils of Zionism and deplore Israeli zealots.

The European political discussion is based upon the European experience of the past 200 years: it is the sum total of wars, revolutions, counter-revolutions, building barricades, parties and trade unions as well as the creation of magnificent works of art, literature, music and architecture.

In Australia, our political discussion is quite different. For example, start criticising the gouging profiteers of the mining industry and someone is bound to say, “Oh, there you go again, talking about the class war.” No, not really, just referring to the foreign companies and local oligarchs plundering mineral resources which belong to all Australians.

I don’t mind what language we use just so long as it lets people know what’s happening and who is profiteering at their expense. First step is to get over the name-calling followed by growing up and being adult.

DEJA VU?

I first visited Paris in 1968 for the London Sunday Times to cover the May-June events, a student-led insurrectionary movement which shattered Charles de Gaulle’s presidency and led to his resignation one year later. “Paris, London and Berlin – We shall fight and we shall win,” was the slogan which echoed along the Boulevard St Germaine.  Then along came Georges Pompidou, Giscard D’Estaing, Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac to reinvent the French republic as a state-funded capitalist enterprise. In so doing, they restored the compact between the government and les citoyens. At his election in May President Hollande promised to create 60,000 teaching jobs, reduce the retirement ago from 62 to 60 and raise taxes on big corporations, banks and the wealthy. When he switches to Euro-austerity (which he shows every indication of doing) maybe the streets will ring once again to the slogans of ’68.