Michel Rocard
Michel Rocard, former Prime Minister of France and a former leader of the Socialist Party, is a member of the European Parliament.
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2010-01-22
| There is no unanimity requirement or veto in the UN General Assembly, which might well be why it has not been called upon in the effort to fight climate change. Yet the General Assembly is the only place where obstruction by major countries – for example, by China and the United States at December’s global climate talks in Copenhagen – can be bypassed.... read |
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2009-10-22
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By awarding its Peace Prize for 2009 to Barack Obama, the Nobel Committee took a big risk. But the risk of devaluing the prize may have been worth it, because peace is hard to achieve and needs to be nurtured.... read |
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2009-07-31
| We are now in a strange period in which governments, bankers, and journalists herald the end of the economic crisis just because large banks are no longer failing every week. But nothing has been solved, and unemployment continues to rise.... read |
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2009-04-24
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As the recent NATO summit in Strasbourg showed, the inability to discuss, clearly and forthrightly, strategic doctrine continues to hamper the Alliance. The key questions are whether NATO’s doctrine of common defense is currently directed at one country in particular, and whether nuclear force remains the Alliance’s major defensive tool.... read |
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2009-02-20
| Once upon a time, the serene stillness of the Arctic and Antarctic was a perfect metaphor for human indifference to both regions. The onset of global warming, however, has changed everything, especially in the Arctic.... read |
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2008-11-27
| Today’s global recession marks the end of growth fueled only by credit. Although untying the knot that an overweening financial sector has drawn around the economy will take time - indeed, there is still no consensus that this needs to be done - the recession at least affords us the opportunity to consider the root causes of the current crisis. ... read |
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2008-08-20
| With financial crisis spreading and economic growth slowing, these should be boom times for Europe's social democrats. So why are center-left parties across the Continent faring so poorly?... read |
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2008-05-13
| No developed country has ever known a crisis similar to that in France in May 1968. Then, one month later, everything - capitalism, consumerism, and the government - went back to normal.... read |
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2008-02-28
| While capitalism remains more compatible with personal freedom than communism ever was, it is now blindingly obvious that the system is too unstable to survive without strong public regulation. That is why, after years of being neglected as a viable option, it is time for the social-democratic project to return to the political fore.... read |
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Ignoring the Storm
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Michel Rocard 
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There is an urgent need for a global conference – a Bretton Woods II – to adopt strict rules to contain today’s wayward financial markets. Unfortunately, as the most recent G7 meeting showed, the world’s major governments are not yet ready to act.... read
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2005-11-15
| As I write this, violent clashes with the police have been going on for nearly two weeks in the suburbs of Paris and other French cities, with cars being set on fire at a rate of nearly 1,000 per night. Why is this happening? How far can it go?... read |
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2005-08-12
| The rejection of the European Union’s Constitutional Treaty by French and Dutch voters was, according to all evidence, more a rejection of unregulated globalization than it was a rejection of Europe. The general instability of social relations – most importantly, but not only, of employment – is slowly becoming intolerable for a growing part of the population in many developed countries, not just in Europe. And there cannot be a stable economic order – at least not in democratic countries – if electorates reject its underpinnings.... read |
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2004-12-09
| The moment of truth has come. The European Union must decide on December 17 whether to open accession talks with Turkey. Is today’s Union prepared to reverse a course first charted by such titans as Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer four decades ago?... read |
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2006-01-03
| Turkey is now, finally, negotiating with the European Commission the terms of its possible membership in the European Union. But whether “possible” becomes “eventual” remains very much an open question. Indeed, completing the negotiations is likely to prove as difficult as the decision to start them.... read |
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2004-08-04
| Reconciling morals with how a society is organized - in other words, reconciling ethics with politics - is one of humanity's oldest ambitions. Hammurabi, Raamses II, Solon, Confucius, and Pericles were among the first great figures to embark on this effort. The emergence of the nation-state in the eighteenth century, and the extreme level of barbarism reached in the twentieth century, may have created the impression that an ethical politics was an unrealizable dream, or that it was a dream growing ever more distant as it receded into the future.... read |
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2004-11-17
| Europe’s integration project is historically unprecedented. For the past millennium Europe has lived in an uneasy equilibrium, giving birth to every great empire that dominated and pacified the world in the last 500 years. Its eight or nine principal nations made war on each other whenever one threatened to seek and secure mastery over the others. Europe gave us the last two world wars, and to the balance sheet of monstrosities must be added its grotesque refinements in the art of murder: the Holocaust and the Gulag. ... read |
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2005-05-23
| With its ten new members, the European Union comprises 25 countries and 453 million citizens. In light of the fact that during the past millennium the EU’s members fought countless wars with each other, and that for forty five years a cold war split the continent into two hostile blocs, today’s Europe is a success of monumental historical significance.... read |
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2005-02-01
| Are Israelis and Palestinians really ready to strike a peace agreement? Events have certainly moved at a brisk pace in recent months, with one obstacle after another to a lasting deal seeming to come down. Yasir Arafat’s death was followed by the choice of his successor in a direct election with universal suffrage, which was accompanied by Israel’s decision – one unique in the world – to help, not hinder the democratic process in territories it occupies. As a result, no one doubts Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s legitimacy.... read |
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2004-05-07
| On May 1, ten new nations joined the European Union, pushing its membership up to 25. Two more countries, Romania and Bulgaria, are in the process of negotiating entry, and another, Turkey, is knocking at the door. But, beyond the celebrations of the most recent enlargement round and preparations for the next one, it is time to ask what effect the enlarged EU will have on world affairs? How should - and will - the other member states of the United Nations view this event?... read |
