Aprender a escuchar

Josep Piqué, que ahora se dedica al sector privado, ha ido hoy a la Complutense a dar una conferencia sobre la crisis financiera. En la Complutense, aparte de los estudiantes que iban a escucharle se ha encontrado con un grupo de estudiantes que no han hecho más que llamarle asesino. No me parece normal que unos estudiantes universitarios tengan este comportamiento ante alguien que va a dar su opinión, les guste o no. Creo que en caso de que alguien no estuviera de acuerdo con Piqué lo que debería hacer es preguntar en el turno de intervenciones sobre lo que no se esté de acuerdo, pero en ningún caso entrar en el insulto; me resulta preocupante que estudiantes universitarios opten por el insulto, sin ser capaces de creer en la libertad de expresión.

Multilateralism for a democratic global governance

Multilateralism. Sounds like an option, but it should be the one and only option. If we lived together with other flatmates we would agree it is necessary to take the decisions together, democratically. Multilateralism is making the decisions together, it’s world’s democracy. A person who really believes in democracy should believe in multilateralism as well. Nowadays multilateral decision making doesn’t mean agree inside Europe, it means agreeing outside Europe. It is necessary that we are able to make decisions together on European foreign policy, but if we really want to work on multilateralism we should be able to find solutions with the other countries. Europe is a global actor and should be able to find solutions not only for itself but agreements for our world.

We should start to consider EU foreign policy decisions as unilateral if they don’t mean a joint solution with other countries. It is necessary that Europe has its own voice in the world, but Europe not only needs a common voice, but needs to be able to listen to what the world is telling Europe. EU has to listen to the world’s necessities if we want to play a democratic decision-making. Listening means we have to be able to deal with developing global actors such as Brazil, Russia, India and China, but it specially means listening to non developed countries. If we really believe in multilateralism it will be shown when we really start listening to small countries that are not heard in a world of powers.

We young socialists, as internationalists, we really believe in multilateralism. It’s our duty to fight for taking decisions together because the right wing has always and will always believe in unilateralism, in taking the decisions without having a democratic global governance.

Believing in a democratic global governance means believing in the role of the UN. I believe in the role of the UN, but it is true that UN itself needs to be reformed to be more democratic. UN is the place were decisions need to be taken in terms of global governance, but we should be all equal inside the UN. UN promotes equality, but UN itself is the one in need of equality, and a clear example of what should be reformed in terms of equality is the security council.

Is it possible that ECOSY voice is heard in that terms? Is it possible that as Young European Socialists we propose solutions to a globalized world? It is not only possible, but a necessity. We are young and socialists, which  means we have a special obligation on finding solutions for the future. Today’s children and young people will be the ones who will live decisions that are taken everyday in EU offices. As young socialists we need to internationalize the Social Europe for everyone slogan. We need to force our governments to adopt internationalism as our way of decision making.