La ética del cuidado en la Administración pública

AutorAlbert Llorca Arimany
CargoPresident of the Institut Emmanuel Mounier de Catalunya since 2015 and promotor/coordinator of the personalist philosophy research group of the Catalan Philosophy Society (Contemporary Philosophy Section), affiliated with the Institute for Catalan Studies
Páginas6-22
Revista catalana de dret públic #62
www.rcdp.cat
THE ETHICS OF CARE IN THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION*
Albert Llorca Arimany**
Abstract
The issues that a public administration needs to address lie within the eld of humanisation or ethical reciprocity, taking
into account the human subject. The administration must therefore act for the benet of the citizen, averting the ever-
present risk of bureaucratisation. The basic question is: what can we expect from the public administration? What is
most crucial here is its educational or personalising nature, which entails the use of human qualities, such as acting with
humility, respecting the citizens and fullling their basic rights. The notion of cultural conatus provides the guiding light
in our research: to remain attentive. Today, the commitment of any public administration is guided by the agreement
and consensus of the citizenry, beyond the limits of the state in which it operates. At European level, this makes the
task not easier, but rather more difcult; however, the elimination of all bureaucratism in the European Union is both
a praxis and a hope.
Key words: care; citizenry; ethical reciprocity; attention; civic education; bureaucratisation; European Union; cultural
conatus.
L’ÈTICA DE LA CURA A L’ADMINISTRACIÓ PÚBLICA
Resum
Els temes que una administració pública ha d’abordar s’inscriuen en la línia de la humanització o reciprocitat ètica,
atenent al subjecte humà. Ha d’actuar, doncs, en bé del ciutadà, evitant el risc de la burocratització, sempre present.
La pregunta de fons és: què podem esperar de l’Administració pública? I el més elemental és el tarannà educador o
personalitzador, que implica desplegar qualitats humanes, com la humilitat d’actuació de l’Administració pública,
el respecte als ciutadans i la satisfacció de llurs drets bàsics. La noció de conatus cultural ens orienta en la nostra
investigació: romandre atents. Avui el compromís de tota administració pública es dirigeix per l’acord i el consens de
la ciutadania arreu, més enllà dels límits de l’estat on roman. En l’àmbit europeu, això fa la tasca no més fàcil, sinó
més difícil, però la supressió de tot burocratisme a la Unió Europea és una praxi i una esperança.
Paraules clau: cura; ciutadania; reciprocitat ètica; atenció; educació cívica; burocratització; Unió Europea; conatus
cultural.
* This article is a translation of an original one in Catalan.
** Albert Llorca Arimany, president of the Institut Emmanuel Mounier de Catalunya since 2015 and promotor/coordinator of the
personalist philosophy research group of the Catalan Philosophy Society (Contemporary Philosophy Section), afliated with the
Institute for Catalan Studies. Faculty of Philosophy of Ramon Llull University, c. de la Diputació, 231, 08007 Barcelona. albert.
llorca.arimany@gmail.com.
Article received: 15.01.2021. Blind review: 10.03.2021 and 10.03.2021. Final version accepted: 19.03.2021.
Recommended citation: Llorca Arimany, Albert. (2021). The ethics of care in the public administration. Revista Catalana de Dret
Públic, 62, 6-22. https://doi.org/10.2436/rcdp.i62.2021.3598.
Albert Llorca Arimany
The ethics of care in the public administration
Revista Catalana de Dret Públic, Issue 62, 2021 7
Sumari
1 What does to take care of mean?
2 The horizon within which the public administration must operate
2.1 The praxis of the proto-ethical categories
2.2 Civic education and the cultural conatus
2.3 The state that must protect a public administration of a community of citizens with rights
3 The state and European administration. The problems of European states
3.1 The place of the state in the European Union of today
3.2 The European problems that do not go away
By way of epilogue
References
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1 What does to take care of mean?1
The problems to be solved by a public administration must be polarised to help the persons or human subjects
that are citizens thereof; in other words, human beings that are not only individuals, but who exist and live
in a relationship with others and with the administrative structure that presides over their present and future
decisions and actions. These actions range from paying taxes to requesting any aid that they may need in
terms of health, nancial, employment (right now the temporary employment regulation les or ERTO by its
acronym in Catalan, the promotion of teleworking or the requests for long-term illness benets), education,
housing (a current problem that is becoming ever more pressing), etc.
Put simply, the public administration is that which, using its competences, makes and manages the state.
However, it is not the state itself and, obviously, even less so any form of ideology within a state, governing
party or the like.2
And what does it mean that the public administration takes care of people or citizens? It means that its public
or common praxis obliges it to act for the benet of the citizens3 insofar as they are the administered subjects
More specically, taking care of citizens is not only taking care of their psychological deciencies,4 given the
fact that the inclusion of psychology in the eld of administration has entailed discrepancies, as it insinuates
itself into the life of future administrated citizens and their freedom, since the former controls the stimuli
received by the latter.
We should therefore ask ourselves what to take care of actually means. Theologist Josefa Torres has made a
statement that can guide us in this search: to take care of or to care for means to attend to5 the life and health
of everyone and look after their well-being, and the rational justication lies in solving the basic human
needs, to which there are two aspects: vulnerability and dependency on others. Currently, both the most basic
psychology and common sense dictate that it is the family that is primarily involved in meeting human needs:
but the family does, in turn, require appropriate help. Furthermore, there are obviously different levels to
the public administration and these need to be coordinated, starting with the local level, to improve people’s
everyday lives and overcome any subjective feeling of administrative mistreatment on the part of those being
administered.
And here we nd again the needs of all citizens, placed in the public forum, where the notion of citizenship
turns into one of public careship6 .And some concepts become intermingled, because aspects such as
consumption, progress or feeling oneself fairly treated by the administration run the risk of commercialisation
by accentuating more the market economy than the economy of the gift,7 leading said attention along the road
towards the indenite exploitation of supposedly endless natural resources.8 And a humanly viable public
1 The Diccionari de la llengua catalana (Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1995) understands “care” (cura) as looking out for someone’s
best interests and well-being (l’atenció a vetllar pel bé o bon estat d’algú) and “to take care of” (curar) as taking responsibility for,
think and propose it (ocupar-se’n, pensar i proposar-s’ho).
2 This is a problem that no longer exists in genuinely democratic states today, except in those that are not, where civil servants act
in accordance with the designs of the governing politicians. Dahlström and Lapuente, in their book Organizando el Leviatán, afrm
that the perils of bureaucracy and the corruption of public servants in the administration go in the same direction. They claim that a
highly politicised bureaucracy – or the opposite, excessively bureaucratised politics – lead to the withering away of public life, no
matter how many regulatory laws may be established.
3 Using its structures and regulations and offering citizens whatever help they need.
4 In her book Saving the Modern Soul, Eva Illouz speaks of the introduction of psychology (scientic psychology, obviously) in the
US administration in the 1920s, with the use of tests to assess the suitability of future members of the postal service, police, armed
forces, etc.
5 The term attend to is a complex one in philosophical language, which we shall turn to later on. Let us simply say here that the word
is highly redolent of non-instrumental, non-hierarchised and non-objectifying rationality (cf. the criticism of the Frankfurt School),
and these are criteria of human cooperation.
6 The word is an invention of other thinkers, which can also be translated into English by a hypothetical derivative of care. But the
use of this word is exclusively due to the public nuance of caring for or taking care of.
7 In, for example, the sense of cooperation employed by Paul Ricoeur in his book Amour et justice (and not merely of competitiveness,
inherent in the capitalist market).
8 An approach atly rejected by bioeconomists and ecologists, from Georgescu Roegen to Fernando Valladares, who recently stated
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administration, distanced from this obsession, would have its priorities clearly focused on acting for and on
behalf of the persons making it up.9 This is the job we shall attempt to do in this paper, which inevitably
encompasses an in-depth examination of the ethical and psychological aspects of the human being. Such an
analysis should help us outline what will be a sort of key proto-ethical categorisation of the entirety of the
ethics of care in human action, and obviously in the actions of the public administration. So, without further
ado, let’s get started.
The above introductory words on care allow us, from a personalist anthropological standpoint, to embark upon
said categorisation, thereby laying the groundwork for the drawing up of an ethical praxis to be implemented.
The preliminary and fundamental ethical question in this matter will therefore be not what is right to achieve
the goal pursued —which is always debatable—, and which would lead us into a world of psychophysical and
psychological conditioning factors that would distance us from our commitment to the public administration.
Rather, we should ask ourselves how we should act, something that is achievable in three stages: what and
how we act, what we can actually do and what is the degree of achievement of what we want to obtain.10
The rst question deals with ethical sensibilities, but the three stages that form its backbone are inextricably
intertwined with the associated determinant psychophysical and cultural factors. Therefore, we believe that
a psycho-anthropological human description leads to an ethically valuable commitment.
The proposed threefold proto-ethical categorisation will tell us about essential human structures, which we
shall dub eidetic-practical (how we act), para-ethical (what we can do) and supra-ethical (associated with
what we can expect).
What is the specic function of each level or type of question? The rst category, which we will also call
pre-ethical, will serve to accompany an ethical discourse and will provide it with arguments, with notions
such as freedom, the sense of imputability and responsibility (so that no cracks appear in mental and human
solidity), motivation, intersubjectivity and the decision-making capacity of all human beings, and all these
arguments will be the means through which the person-citizen grows.
The second category, para-ethical, helps remind us of the limitations of human action and deals with the
choices made in given circumstances, where passions, emotions and prejudices may well prevail over
reason. Here, the key concepts that will impact upon the actions of the public administration are respect for
the positions of others and the obligation that must be felt to enable the rights of the other. This category
should help overcome the obstacles and anxieties arising from natural chaos and human distrust in the public
administration.
The third category, supra-ethical, deals with guiding what we do to bolster and achieve what we aspire to and
wish to achieve, such as a reasonable meaning to life, religious or ideological hope, a certain way of living,
aspirations or allegiance to a community, etc.
It is difcult to speak of care without these three psycho-anthropological levels. It is true that these psycho-
anthropological qualities are not (strictly speaking) ethical, but, without them, the ethics of care would be bare.
Thus, ethics can be seen as praxis-related reection that puts into play all the aforementioned proto-ethical
that “we need an economy that takes into account the fact the Earth’s resources are nite” (interview in newspaper La Vanguardia,
5 November 2019), an assertion that runs contrary to the capitalist available resources cost calculation. (Translated from the original
in Spanish).
9 We have used the word person four times —and not by chance— to refer to the human subject of the actions of the public
administration, and we should add that our personalist convictions make us think of persons and not of individuals (even though
the process of individualisation has some unavoidable psychological requirements). We dene a person within a process of
personalisation – compatible with the notion of public administration – as a being aware of themselves and of their links, which
oblige them to be in a certain way, with dignity: from the consideration of the personhood of every single person and their self-
overcoming of themselves in addressing others, by means of the administrative organisation underpinned by the state. Human dignity
would thus entail recognition of every single person —each citizen— by the public administration, which is the party charged with
enforcing said dignity in justice-related ethical-political terms.
10 These three questions sum up the relevant focus within the public administration, of civil servants and citizens (as for its
philosophical foundations, we would nd our thesis in Albert Llorca, De l’Eidètica pràctica a l’hermenèutica en el pensament de
Paul Ricoeur).
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structures. And this anthropological-psycho-ethical sphere calls for a dual motivation: the good of the person
(the administered citizen), and their educative shaping, and it is this latter that is the catalyst for embarking
upon the development of the former.11
2 The horizon within which the public administration must operate
2.1 The praxis of the proto-ethical categories
We shall use these categories to tackle the educational-humanising dimension, inherent in the growth of the
person-citizen, which Emmanuel Mounier named personalisation, in order to undertake the challenge of the
ethics of care and its application in the public administration.
From the standpoint of these categories, the ethics of care describes the personal self as one who must be master
of oneself and who knows how to position oneself before the world and before others, without being absorbed
by the culture (here, the public administration and the state upon which it depends) in which one lives.
a) In the case of the pre-ethical sphere, its educative role must speak of the sense of humility, on the basis
of the afrmation of the intentional and open personal self, which feels responsible and not diluted by the
surrounding environment (by satisfactions, fears, appearances, narcissisms, etc.) and of a consensus-seeking
attitude as a core factor of the public administration, because the other —citizen— must be listened to and
respected, satisfying their needs and rights.
b) With regard to the educative aspect of the para-ethical category, it is worth highlighting the need and
wish to live with others under the public administration on the basis of a recognition of one’s own limits
and weaknesses. This involves placing the emphasis on our own obligations and responsibilities, taking on
board human difculties, in that we are fragile beings, inconsistent with our very selves, often overcome
by the inertia of customs coming from outside of ourselves. This means, in educative-administrative terms,
that we have to overcome ourselves, we must foster improvements in human communications and become
socially and historically engaged in a public cause that is not determinant and imperfect, and do so in the aim
of humanisation. In short, it means overcoming our nite nature and making ourselves capable of regarding
the other beyond our own personal interests. At play here are the universality of every single person in the
public administration and intracultural sharable values.
c) Turning to the educative aspect of the supra-ethical category, it must be said that public educative praxis
will aim to foster a European and planetary awareness of human problems with repercussions on the economy,
on the organisation of work, on a range of rights, on respect for the environment, etc.12 It is clear that sharing
ethical values is extremely important. The human educative function at the supra-ethical level with regard to
the public administration sets out the possibilities and goals with which we orient ourselves around the key
ethical question of “how should we act?”, in other words, how we should behave in the place where we stand,
on the clear understanding that others have preceded us and left their legacy.
The educative manifestation of this supra-ethical category arises in the redening of the personal self of each
person in terms of the degree of satisfaction with oneself with regard to others. Have we tried as hard as we
could? Are we happy with ourselves? Were we able to use our freedom? In the end, it is a question of whether
we have been able to to reappropriate our very selves. And constancy (the second supra-ethical category)
asks us: have we held dear the sense of truth in our life? Have we been tenacious in the cause of humanising
the world that surrounds us, or have we given up in the face of the rst difculties?13 The issue of post-truth
11 This will be possible in what we shall call cultural conatus or reexion aimed at universalisation, which emerges from within the
embodied and/or contextualised human being.
12 This is the civic attitude, one that is quite lacking in our context, according to public management professors Carles Ramió (UPF)
and Marc Esteve (ESADE).
13 This is an important point: the measure of going with the ow or accommodative yielding makes itself felt here. Faithfulness to
shareable values is not always gratifying, and this is something that needs to be learned. Socrates stated that he was a good friend to
his friends, but a better friend to the truth, and this is something that is not easy to keep up.
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comes out here. As Daniel Innerarity noted regarding the problem of COVID-19,14 we are not dealing with
a contagion, but with a contagious society, meaning that we are living in a society that demands protections
that we do not receive.
The fact is that what used to protect us no longer does: we are living at a time of uncertainty in the involvement
of the state —one could say the public administration— and the only thing that can protect us is shared
knowledge based on cooperation and not on competitiveness. The ght that broke out in the autumn of 2020
to secure a COVID-19 vaccine before anyone else, more for economic and prestige-related reasons than
humanitarian ones, was not an exemplary situation. A ght egged on, in an odd combination, by the usual
social networks (WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) and the administration of the state, which now exists
under the shadow of post-truth.15
The third supra-ethical category is trust in humanising plenitude highlighted in the transnite attitude of human
communication on a planetary scale. From an educational perspective, this entails subservience to the common
good, instead of that of the common good to individual interests. And, with regard to the sense of truth, it
points to the need to be receptive to other subjects and to nature. To sum up, it means the implementation
of a civic/utopic attitude that is essential in all public administrations, which will allow us to understand
each other and improve ourselves in a human sense.16 In terms of the law, the Spanish Constitution of 1978
states: “The public Administration serves the general interest with objectivity and acts in accordance with
the principles of efciency, hierarchy, decentralisation, deconcentration and coordination, being fully subject
to justice and the law”.
2.2 Civic education and the cultural conatus
Of the many things that can be said about the level of civic-mindedness that arises from the care for the human
person in the public administration, there is one thinker, Lluís Cuéllar,17 who, with his notion of attentiveness
(atentivitat), provides us with an in-depth look at the aforementioned care of the person. Broadly speaking,
this philosopher argues that:
- Attentiveness provides a philosophical effort, from his phenomenological standpoint, towards the truth in
terms of installing ourselves in the world, and we are there in a place of gifts that offers us this access to the
truth, given in two phases: initiating us into it and guiding us with regard to it. Attentiveness thus offers us a
boost in our life to help us understand the gift in it.
- Access to the truth is a real process and not some kind of invention, so that only from the existential self
(vital and intellectual) can we/ aspire to truth and decisively live it. We can already catch a glimpse here of
how this notion of truth is not a comfortable one for us humans, as it leaves no room for inhuman masking.
- Thirdly, one could say that the truth we discover within ourselves imposes itself upon us, overcomes us,
reminding us of that third level of existence that Czech philosopher Jan Patočka described as living in truth
(and that he would also describe as living a life exposed), and which we could translate, in Cuéllar’s terms,
as living attentive to the truth.18
14 We base these remarks on some articles on COVID-19 by the philosopher published in several newspapers between March and
December 2020. Of these latter, cf. “Pandemia sin verdad” (4 December 2020).
15 “One factor that could explain our relative failure to manage this crisis is the installation of a post-truth culture in contemporary
social life” (“Pandemia sin verdad”) (translated from the original in Spanish), quite the opposite to what the meaning of truth would
indicate: that, in a pandemic, governing public spaces is complicated, perhaps because what is public begins in the private sphere,
like washing one’s hands, which has become a responsible act in the public interest.
16 Relevant here are the contributions made by authors such as R. Kane Appiah, Bhikhu Parekh, Lluís Cuéllar and Paul Ricoeur.
17 Lluís Cuéllar i Bassols was a personalist and Catholic thinker positioned between Augustinian thought and Husserlian phenomenology.
Born in the Catalan town of Olot in 1925 and dying in Barcelona in 1993, he was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona
and, in 1981, founded the Liceu Joan Maragall de Filosoa (Joan Maragall Lyceum of Philosophy), part of the Ateneu Barcelonès. His
most important work, his doctoral thesis, dates from 1980 and is entitled El hombre y la verdad (Ed. Herder).
18 Op. cit., p. 156.
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In these thoughts offered by Cuéllar, it is difcult not to glimpse a sense of personalist commitment or an
undertaking to a lifestyle to which truth commits us. And this commitment in practical life stems from what
he calls an attentive attitude before the key evidence19 that makes the truth tell us of our nite self as a kind
of advance notice prior to any judicative act.
It is worth noting the applicability of such analyses in the eld of the public administration as a civic extension
of a state respectful of its citizens: this would be in the form of the aforementioned transition from citizenship to
careship, which, for personalism, means a humanising attribute of human beings as a process of personalisation
in which everyone is and feels with the others (fraternity) and as the others (equality of rights). Now, the
patterns of domination are questioned, since indifference and desensitisation to others provide no good basis
for relations. The notion of careship as a public asset of administration requires an attentiveness that deals
with nature, the economy or politics in terms of persons and not of systems, in the Mounierian sense.
The preceding observations provide us with the guidelines to address the scope of our expression of cultural
conatus in public life. In the framework in which we nd ourselves, it is that of the relevant attentiveness and
care in the public administration, and the indifference and distancing between persons are the obstacles to the
rst two notions. The cultural conatus is given the role of promoting attentiveness and leading towards care.
It is a matter of fostering attentiveness, as we have said, and of quelling the indifference that would happen to
us if the cultural conatus were forgotten. And both things at the same time contribute to the praxis of human
rights. What shall we understand, then, by cultural conatus, how is it implemented and how does it affect
human beings?
To answer the rst question, the cultural conatus is a perspective (philosophically speaking, a hermeneutic) by
means of which one takes an in-depth look at the meaning of truth by means of intuitive-conative philosophical
thought from the standpoint of an always shareable historic-cultural singularity. As for its implementation, the
fundamental usefulness lies in the ability it confers to counter any indifference (a cursed word for the personalist
ear, and we fear that also for every public administration), as if it awoke the community-related and civic
dimension of the person. Lastly, regarding the effects it has upon the protection of human rights, the cultural
conatus affects the praxis of human rights in that it deploys ethical values —or virtues— such as tolerance,
fraternity, respect, forgiveness and justice, which are crucial to being able to recognise and assert such a civic
dimension. And these values can be discovered by overcoming said indifference, the instrumentalisation of
human beings and their condescension in public indecency, such as the institutionalisation of corruption.
If the core nature of the cultural conatus allows us to overcome practical nihilism, its implementation and
effectiveness in the public administration must be placed in front of ethnic unrest and public disaffection. The
inclination towards an unwillingness to understand and towards mistreating the citizens-administered parties
in public life is well-known, and quite the contrary to what Hannah Arendt called the ability to want to live
together.20 If the acts of public policy embark upon this road, violations and not consensus will be the rule,
and we would then be faced with a state that unceremoniously proclaims the obedience of the citizenry. One
example of this would be unconditionally demanding sovereign unity, entrusting its stability not to shared
power but rather to the power-strength (as Paul Ricoeur himself would say, to advocate a linkage of human
rights between the desire for power and the desire for justice).21
19 Later, Cuéllar states that truth has a therapeutic or purifying aspect to it, and that, as a result of the epokhé or reduction of
Husserlian philosophy, he more specically details what he calls verocentrisme (truth-centricity), which “consists in acknowledging
the complete subordination that the self needs to have ‘to that which is and which must be’ in the eld of one’s own life” (ibid.).
(Translated from the original in Spanish).
20 Arendt, Hannah (2005). Sobre la violencia. Alianza Editorial (p. 70). We must add that this concept of wanting to live together as
a cohesive element in a human community is shared by other thinkers such as Paul Ricoeur, Michel Gauchet and Pierre Rosanvallon.
Daniel Innerarity recently noted that “Pierre Rosanvallon points to the pluralisation of the old will of the people […] towards a
deconcentration of sovereignty, which is diversifying across times, instances, levels and functions”, Elogio del enredo europeo (May
2019; translated from the original in Spanish). We will state that, although the cultural conatus has no political pretences, it is a
thought with universalising aim that springs up within the human being, as an intuitive process within any cultural context, and we
would hold that the desire for truth and justice (or exercising of civic consensus), coexisting in a community, is the key attitude of
the administration in a state that sets itself the task of serving the community of persons. Put succinctly, the public administration is
found within the bounds of a triangle, whose sides are parties’ ideologies, the judiciary and citizens/administered parties.
21 One could say that he advocates a move from potestas (or the model of a state that enforces obedience) to potentia (or the
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2.3 The state that must protect a public administration of a community of citizens with rights
Let us deal with the concept of the state that lies behind and permeates through the public administration we
are describing. It is clear that our political history —that of Spain and that of Europe as a whole— has been
marked by two schools of thought very much set in their ways: the Machiavellian and the Hegelian. As a
result, power is potestas or rule that must be organised (with the French Revolution providing a great example
of this) to establish the dependence of citizens’ rights on of the state.
In the joint declaration of the Spanish and Catalan governments one year after the banned referendum
of 1 October 2017,22 it was stated that there was a conict regarding the future between the Spanish State
and the Generalitat of Catalonia and that they were committed to dialogue23despite their discrepancies over
the origin, nature and potential solutions to the issue: dialogue had to be pursued as a democratic response to
the demands of the Catalan people, within the framework of legal certainty . This was a good declaration of
intent that, regardless of the different opinions, asserted the path of dialogue rather than legal impunity and
a lack of public civic-mindedness.
In terms of institutional consolidation, what is the role that should be assumed by a state that regards itself as
affronted? In a mature state, it would seem that it should be able to provide options and not to punish from
the outset. It may, for example, issue pardons in the case of a nal judgement it regards as disproportionately
harsh or unequitable —from the Latin aequitas, a translation of the Greek epieikeia— and leave things in
the hands of the implementation of the criterion of impartiality by the justice system, in accordance with the
circumstances of the given case. This is not an administrative issue —the judiciary does not form part of the
public administration— but it must be implemented in accordance with protocols and without violating them.
Such considerations arise when dealing with a sensitive political issue, and one may wonder with a degree
of scepticism whether the current batch of politicians —government and opposition alike— have the skillset
to shape a scenario of peace dialogue with their opponents. We areback to the organisation of the Leviathan.
There is a somewhat inelegant word that perfectly encapsulates the attitude of some in the government and the
higher echelons of the law: impunity.24 It can be seen that such a notion becomes viable if arising within the
context of a state that is dominant, as that designed by Hegel or, more recently Max Weber. In other words, the
state in the sense of a sittlichkeit according to Hegel —translatable as ethical order— whereby a the human
person as a citizen is subjected to the superior entity or state, which shall have decision-making power over
the citizenry in the name of the common good. Nowadays, in these times of a hard-to-control pandemic,
this common good must, we believe, refer to health and climate-related justice, which would (for us) form a
signicant part of anamnestic justice, concerned with what has been done in the past. The unpalatable truth of
the matter is that we are living in a society used by political parties that spread ideas of freedom and equality
common action of the citizenry, which prefers justice over power).
22 The joint declaration by the two governments, of 21 December 2018, is included in the full text of the communiqué issued by
Presidents Pedro Sánchez and Quim Torra after their meeting in Barcelona (La Vanguardia, 22 December 2018).
23 Dialogue: this is the key word. But what does it mean? Broadly, we can say that dialogue will be possible if three basic facts are
acknowledged:
- That one must acknowledge, listen to and respect, most particularly the weaker party: in other words, overcome any attitude of
supremacy and, in short, pride.
- There is a need to institutionalise dialogue and rein in any desire to provoke or dominate the different other.
- That to dialogue is the diametric opposite to humiliate, and a precondition for it is understanding the other since; the more we know
about them, the more difcult it becomes to attack them.
In short, dialogue means that the two parties in dispute must be able to compromise, which is not the same thing as selling out.
24 Impunity can be understood as the corrupt abuse of the exercise of power by the state or an individual with no possible punishment,
be this in the form of corruption contrary to the law or in accordance with the law. I will be using the word here in its second sense
and when practised by the state. Included within said denitions are acts as different as civil servants lying about people in medical
tribunals (so as not to grant them benets), vast state programmes to prop up self-serving nancial institutions or the abusive conduct
of the state’s security bodies and forces (which are part of the administration) against the citizenry in a part of the territory under
their legal control.
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as it suits them, fostering facile beliefs/prejudices that give rise to hatred and violence, if they can be leveraged
to the benet of their own power. One could say that ideology has been imposed upon the administration.
We should also consider the mediocrity of power25. The thinker Pino Aprile spoke of the acritical imbecility
as the controller of the herd, by means of which the mass of citizens is used by an intolerant bureaucracy,
insensitive to the sufferings of the citizenry. What is most terrifying is how, as the Italian author points out,
if it were not so, there would be a catastrophic collapse in social order.26 What matters here is what we shall
dare to call the sovereignty of institutional stupidity upheld by certain political parties and the social classes
that support them, something that is not easy to overcome due to bureaucratic inertia.27 Whatever the case, a
relevant aspect in this matter is that of respect, which would constitute the compassionate requirement with
regard to the other, since any difculties he or she encounters are also my problem. Justice, the foundation
for all compassion, is equanimous or it is not just. The duty of the state is therefore to ensure that it acts as
an administrative tool to expand the meaning of citizenship to embrace careship, because it has the capacity
to establish and administer laws and wields monopolistic power to help citizens to live well together: linking
together the good of each individual person with acceptation of the laws that guarantee peaceful coexistence.
In this delicate task, the state relies on ethical reciprocity and, accordingly, on the efforts to make justice
ourish, which is, naturally, justice for all.
Facing economic and political problems by a state-administration that does not neglect fraternity requires,
on the part of both the governing and governed parties, an indispensable degree of civic education and sense
of what is good for others in the management of public life:28 in other words, of good public administration.
The eld of civic-mindedness is one which the state cannot afford to ignore: the government’s civic and
educative responsibility means it must foster and practice what it preaches to provide an example of the
praxis of fraternity. The current coronavirus crisis requires, more than ever, knowing how to walk the path
together. The fact is that civic-mindedness is closely linked with the notion of fraternity, because the latter is
the anticipatory symbolic construct of peaceful coexistence, without which any trust or hope deposited in a
community would be mere banality, typical of a society ruled by a great degree of civic annihilation, making
it more than clear that any social agreements would be pointless and absurd.
If civic-mindedness inspires trust, it provides security and the ability to overcome fears on the basis of conative
joy, or an intuitive collective momentum29, forgetting any political or economic interests or sectarian bias. It
then engages the action of every citizen in the community. At some point, we will have to consider that “to
be responsible will be to anticipate what may happen based on what we will do…, insofar as action mobilises
things and people, so that it transforms the situation by educating, improving the environment or not”.30
One of the categories of this arduous task of promoting fraternity is that of practical wisdom, an expression
coined years ago by Paul Ricoeur, which we would say constitutes the praxico-reexive gure that rehumanises
25 Aprile, Pino (2002). El elogio del imbécil (Originally in Italian: Elogio dell’imbecille). Aprile states that “if social organisation
works, there is no possibility of error: it is tailor the cretin (and of whoever is at its head)” (p. 135; translated from the original in
Spanish). These days, the talk is of the risk of being too cultured, rather than too powerful: “¿Puede ser peligroso un número excesivo
de personas inteligentes?” (Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?) (The Economist. La Vanguardia, 30 October 2020).
26 Aprile, Pino, op. cit., p. 115-128.
27 A disease leprosy, as Simone Weil put it— that spreads and propagates through the hierarchy of power. The dominance of
bureaucracy is a kind of small-mindedness or stupidity that is proliferating and gaining social inuence, and which Pino Aprile
summarises as imbecility.
28 Generally speaking, the public administration is at odds with power as a tendency or human —as Nietzsche would say, “human,
all too human” —inertia, and thus with legalisation in any democratic state.
Peter Drucker, the famous 20th-century administration philosopher, stated, in his 1993 Wall Street Journal article “Six Rules for
Presidents” that whoever became President would have to understand that, amongst said basic rules, they should not ever bet on a
sure thing, they must not stubbornly do what they want to do, and that they need to look after people. Today, this is assuredly truer
than ever: nothing is sure, there is fear and we have to take heed of the past, because it informs us with regard to a number of current
decisions.
29 Llorca, Albert (2013). “Triangulacions Hermenèutiques Postmodernes”. Calidoscopi, Issue 31. Here again, I make reference to
the cultural conatus.
30 Llorca, Albert (2013). “La responsabilitat: atenció a la persona i compromís en ser just”. Calidoscopi, Issue 33. (Translated from
the original in Catalan.)
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the human person, making it more aware of interpersonal relations, heaving these relations into the view of the
institutions, and that proposes proper management of rights in difcult and conictive situations. We believe
that the public administration should act in this direction.
Accordingly, Ricoeurian practical wisdom is to be applied in a number or elds —politics being one of them,
amongst others— to overcome human difculties and conicts (to which we can now add the pandemic,
also dubbed a syndemic, due to the complexity of the issues it entails) and, in its public version, it will put
pressure on those political decisions whose core concern is how the law is applied in certain circumstances
and which always affects people.31
So, in short, practical wisdom provides the basis for the imputability (“it is I who…”) and the responsibility
of both those governed and those governing, in the present and with regards to the past and future. From the
standpoint of practical wisdom, one would say that the state is not the guiding force behind the historical
developments in society, nor does it have the right to act as such. The opposite to this conviction would place
us in the eld of political monism (which is not appropriate to address now), which would speak more of the
poverty of human conception and of its implementations.
What should we do, then? This is always an uncomfortable but essential question, which, to different degrees,
some thinkers have attempted to answer in their own particular way and from their own particular standpoint
(Rosenzweig, Arendt, Fromm, Patočka, Gauchet, Rosanvallon, Ricoeur, etc.). Here and now, in the face
of the coronavirus, it would appear that the solution entails providing solutions to the consequences of the
pandemic, or, at the very least, highlighting its symptom of inhumanity (through thinkers such as Innerarity,
Ramoneda, Cortina, Žižek, Berardi, and the like) and/or resymbolising the meaning of the word state and its
practical application or administration, after the disasters of the wars in Europe and the Spanish Civil War.
What do these considerations mean? Well, that the state-administration must open itself up to the citizenry,
because that is what gives meaning to its task: that of helping citizens to overcome their difculties, resolving
their needs, helping them to grow, guaranteeing that it will not falter in aiding them, caring for them, and
fostering opportunities for them to act freely. It is clear that it is here that civil entities encompassing the
citizenry have their place and their responsibilities: from what Ricoeur called, in the 1950s, the role of the
church and/or the trade unions to cultural, educational and social organisations of all kinds. Today we may
mention the NGO, but also, having seen the huge response of the citizenry to the COVID-19 crisis, of citizen
engagement and of patient institutional (administrative) collaboration, as has been the case in the healthcare,
education, voluntary sectors.
All in all, what this means is that the state must provide the educational wherewithal to its citizens —caring
for them— and it is they who must provide the solutions, even if any mass society needs the organisational
help of the administration of the state. However, what the state should not do is to force people to follow its
statist standards, if these involve blind obedience to the application of legal acts, without gauging their effect
upon human life.
In El perdón en la vida pública,32 Galo Bilbao pointed out, a few years ago now, the need to introduce the
sense of forgiveness in public life in which the action of the state entails a signicant amount of humility in
political and administrative life, which would appear necessary in the duties of the judiciary.
What does the introduction of a sense of forgiveness in public life entail? Basically, two things:
- First, overcoming resentment, which —we would say— is, unlike repentance (experts talk of the uselessness
of the former),33 nothing more than a memory without generosity, a deformed memory that may lead to
feelings of vengeance and hinder the praxis of the public administration, which must be objective and in no
way vengeful.
31 Just as science applies its laws to the personal and life circumstances of each and every human subject, as is the case with medical
issues, which are also at the same time psychological, relational, institutional, etc.
32 El perdón en la vida pública. Universidad de Deusto (p. 53-104).
33 Leading jurist Javier Melero limits repentance in Spain’s Criminal Code to cooperative behaviour in the future to avert future acts
and/or the consequent punishments for the offender (“El penediment”, 14 December 2020, La Vanguardia).
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- Second, to propose reparations in the legal eld from the hypothetical aggressor to the victim (with society
or the state being regarded as the administrator of the latter). And, with regard to reparations made by the
aggressor, one should ask oneself what he or she provides so that his or her generosity is not interpreted as a
payment of some kind to receive favourable treatment from the administration.
Turning to the principles of the power of the state, in its different forms, applied to the society it must protect,
three fundamental features come to mind, which directly affect the public administration:
Firstly, it must guarantee the security of people and property. Of everyone, in whatever procedural
circumstances in which the judiciary is involved, and however heterogeneous the elds in which it has to settle
responsibilities, there is a need to enhance its sensitivity and justice. Examples can be found in the troubling
recent cases of the gang rapes of women, as with Pamplona’s “Wolf Pack”, or attacks by civilians on police
forces as in the Altsasu case, or in the very politico-judicial actions against those not holding any political ofce
in political cases, as in the case of one of “the Jordis” in the macro-process of Catalan independence. And the
opportune distinctions must be made to prevent arbitrariness, whose consequences would be unforeseeable.
The opposite reects a suspicious legal confusion that augurs no good.
Secondly, there must be a guarantee that the law will be applied in defence of the social good (the common
good, political and economic stability, justice and social cohesion, among others) in an unhurried and prudent
manner. If not, public disaffection with the state is guaranteed.
And, thirdly, under no circumstances must hostility and hatred be encouraged, but rather reconciliation between
citizens. Here, great care would appear to be required in the narrative employed (including the currently, and
sadly, highly active “fake news”), which means that the judiciary should not carry out any political actions
that it is not entitled to, committing warped administrative abuse.
This third feature is so signicant that it denes the limit between a democratic state and one that is not and,
furthermore, makes it erratically and bumblingly seem that the state is the origin of society, and a place where
impunity reigns. And where there is impunity, we know that anything ruled by power —be it political or
judicial— can happen. This means the end of all civic-mindedness, of all and any sound administration, and
all and any community in the personalist sense.
3 The state and European administration. The problems of European states
3.1 The place of the state in the European Union of today
Recently, regarding non-European states, Daniel Innerarity stated that, from our position as citizens of the
European Union, “we represent something that they cannot stand: a cooperative, diversity-based way of
organising post-sovereigntist political coexistence,”.34 For his part, Alain Touraine said, in a recent interview,
that, “the European Union’s strength lies not in its arms nor in the discipline it imposes upon its citizens, but
rather in its internal pluralism. It is the only region of the world which has the slogan ‘We live together with
our differences’. This attaches great importance to defending migrants and refugees”.35
Opinions such as these, which are basically positive with regard to the effectiveness and/or potential of the
European Union, are many and varied, but complaints about its ineffectiveness should also be taken into
account.36 The fact is, the problems that Europe, and the European Union in particular, has to deal with are
34 In a recent editorial for the journal Calidoscopi (issue 46), entitled “A què pot fer front la Unió Europea”, we stated that, “states,
constituted in modern times, do what they want. Nevertheless, despite this fact, the European Union is an interesting thing, in that it
introduces the ‘citizen right’ (even though this has not actually been legally ratied in any constitution), which emphasises human
values and a reappraisal of human rights”. (Translation in footnote from the original in Catalan; in-text translation is from the original
in Spanish).
35 Interview in newspaper La Vanguardia, entitled: “La fuerza de Europa está en su pluralismo, no en las armas” (10 May 2019).
(Translated from the original in Spanish).
36 In a succinct reference, yet one that is indicative of the concern with which the issue is regarded in many societies, including the
Catalan, I would mention some papers in the book Europa (Col·loquis de Vic, Societat Catalana de Filosoa), such as:
- “Per què en diem Europa, si volem dir Occident?”. N. Carrasco (p. 170-175).
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many and serious, because they stem from the difculties suffered by the component European states and
because the European Union does not itself constitute a state: it has no constitution, nor does it seem likely
to have one for many years to come. Basically, it is a matter of citizen education37 and, if you want to put it
that way, of caring for people’s souls, with its associated political translation. Currently, with the disastrous
refugee crisis,38 or that of COVID-19, we would be right to ask ourselves, more than ever, what the is level
of Europeanness extant in the old Europe: community solidarity versus individual state action, or the
incomprehensible attitude of certain political parties that seem to adhere to the incivic maxim of the worse,
the better.39 The fact is, in the worrying case of COVID-19 and its economic and social consequences, the
Europe of the states is in complete chaos, almost to the point that it appears that there are ideological/political
criteria and administrative constraints that are predominant due to what the other —the political rival turned
enemy— may do or say. So, as a result, within the European Union, borders between states are being reinforced
and discussions are held within each of them as to the suitability of self-isolations and quarantines, because
these individual states have had their borders in place for many years (exactly how long depends on the state
in question), and the only thing they have to do if to close them with police or military troops.
3.2 The European problems that do not go away
Cristina Gallach, member of the Council of the European Union in 2011, in her presentation entitled “El
futur d’Europa: algunes reexions” (The future of Europe: some thoughts), stated40 that the European Union,
founded by Schuman and Monet, was characterised by:
- The integration of individual and collective rights into the European Union, which is essential for its tolerance
and success.
- In fact, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union of 2000 became legally binding with the
entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon. Therefore, human rights policy encompasses civil, political, economic,
social and cultural rights, and she stated that the issue of human rights covered, both within and outside of
Europe’s borders, the rights of women, children, minorities and displaced persons.41 She even asserted that the
European Union, as revived in 2010 by the Treaty of Lisbon, is that which has the most shared and common
policies, more citizen participation and representation, and is the best-prepared to act in the world, although
she did acknowledge that action is complicated by the complexity of the number of Member States.
- “Europa o l’etern retorn de la dialogia”. P. Casanovas (p. 181-185).
As well as press articles written before or independently of the “coronavirus” in La Vanguardia:
- “Derechos con sabor europeo”. David Dusster, 18 May 2019.
- “Insolidaridad”. Carles Casajuana, 19 August 2019.
- “Europa no funciona”. Guillem López-Casasnovas, 20 July 2020.
37 See our communiqué “Europa: educació humana en crisi?” (Europe: human education in crisis?), issued as part of the XV
Col·loquis de Vic of October 2011, published in the Minutes in 2012, under the title Europa (p. 106-119) by the Catalan Philosophy
Society (SCF) and Vic City Council.
38 An issue that is important enough to merit its own study, and one directly stemming from the confusion between security and
selshness in the European Union. As Carles Casajuana declared in 2019: “There are close to ve hundred million of us living in
the European Union, and we don’t receive more than a few hundred thousand immigrants a year. Given the ageing of the European
population, this should be a relatively manageable gure. Opening up legal channels for receiving them is the best way to put the
maas out of the game. The weak point here is the reception and integration policy. Powers lie in the hands of Member States. The
European Commission cannot intervene unless they ask it to”. (Translated from the original in Spanish).
39 Not so very long ago, after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, Miquel Roca Junyent noted: “It is unsettling to see that the
debate is focusing more on nding out ‘who’s to blame’ than on nding solutions. An unsettling race to be the rst to discover the
guilty party: outsiders, those who came before, neighbours or, if needs be, the citizenry itself…”. (“Desconcierto”, 21 July 2020, La
Vanguardia; (translated from the original in Spanish). There is a clear tension here between the civic-mindedness and political prot,
and there is no doubt as to which some political parties have chosen.
40 Europa, op. cit.
41 Which raises be obvious question of how and why the European Union acts as it does in the Mediterranean… although the
President of the European Commission has recently stated that we cannot see a repeat of this drama.
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- However, the European Union enjoys increased room for manoeuvre in every eld, thereby reducing that of
individual Member States. Thus, she noted that —despite restrictions— the European Parliament is more of a
co-legislator than before. And she concluded by saying that European ideals are necessary in today’s world:
“the values of the Union, solidarity, respect for human rights and peace”.42
Today, the problems affecting the European Union spring from the economic and political imbalances in the
world, inequalities and poverty existing for decades, the nihilism holding sway over Europe, busy with its
own development and deaf to the problems of countries colonised by it not so many years ago —the option
of taking care of having (Patočka, Fromm) chosen by European societies and their states since the end of the
19th century. Today, the growing nancial capitalism and the support of technology in competition with the
USA and China jeopardise the lives of millions of Europeans, who will encounter great obstacles to nding
work in the immediate future, with low salaries, difculties in paying for decent housing and with abusive
laws that, additionally, will be particularly suffered by immigrants, and so on and so forth.
In Europe, reborn after the Second World War, despite the mythical explanation proffered by the Greeks as to
its unitary origin, based on the late of the seizing and subsequent seduction (or rape?) of the virgin daughter
of the King of Phoenicia —Europa— by almighty Zeus, its territories have, for time immemorial, been at
each other’s throats, as they are today, with the increasing support for its Brexits and pro-fascist scepticisms.
Whittling down a doubtless long and varied list, of the immediate challenges faced by the European Union, we
are left with four signicant internal problems: the current growth in anti-European populisms/nationalisms,
which are becoming increasingly fashionable; Brexit, which harms everyone; the conict between the laws of
some Member States and European legislation (as with Poland, Hungary and Spain), and the not insignicant
environmental problem —including the coronavirus problem— and the treatment of animals,43 aside from the
aforementioned refugee drama, in spite of what the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights afrms. The problems
are piling up, with the resulting disaffection of Europe’s citizenry.44
In June 2019, the Public Administration School of Catalonia (EAPC) itself proposed, in partnership with the
German Research Institute for Public Administration (FÖV) a seminar entitled “The process of European
integration, today”, which highlighted a good number of the difculties mentioned above, beginning with its
lack of a constitution. We focus the obstacles addressed in the seminar on three areas of challenges for the
European Union: the values to be implemented, the weight of the European Union and the robustness of its
legislation, and the resulting scepticism of its citizens towards these.
Regarding the rst area of challenges, Professor of State Theory, Dr Karl P. Sommermann, spoke about the
values that unite us, their practical dimension and their operativity in European states.45
Turning to anti-European nationalist populism, one must accept that there are many variants: from
straightforward fascist ideology to serious and sizeable operations like the UK’s Brexit46 and nationalist laws
that disregard European requirements and ignore the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg47
(with Poland, Hungary and Spain providing examples of the latter). It must be borne in mind that, in some
areas, European legislation is binding upon Member States: for example, Article 2 of the Treaty of the
European Union notes the need for mutual trust between its rules of law (the solidarity that Robert Schuman
42 Europa, op. cit. (p. 218). (Translated from the original in Catalan).
43 Pérez Francesch, Joan Lluís (2020). “Elementos para un nuevo paradigma político tras la crisis del Covid-19. La ética del cuidado
a debate”. Forum of Animal Law Studies, 11.
44 To a large degree, all of this is the result of the lack of a European constitution and the bureaucratic workings of Europe’s states.
45 The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights speaks of common values (in the Preamble), dignity (Art. 1) of the praxis of values not
just to look good, and of the right to good administration (Art. 41).
46 With regard to which, Ian Kershaw noted that it was the greatest act of national self-harm in post-war history (October 2019).
Richard Sennett had previously expressed a similar opinion.
47 One can glimpse mistrust between states that bodes ill for the cohesion of the European Union (it is clear to a number of Europe
intellectuals, from the founders of the European Community like Schuman to Habermas himself, that questioning the European
Union will lead to disaster).
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had previously called for),48 but with restrictions on arrest warrants in the case of doubts regarding legal
independence in some states. And, if some state is found to be in agrant violation of this trust, it may be
sanctioned by the European Union.
Thus, the European Union can be seen as providing a sort of umbrella coverage for citizens’ rights. In any
case, as noted by Article 3, the values of the European Union are applicable to the politics of its states.49 This
forces them to improve their political culture. Indeed, the 2007 Treaty of Lisbon enshrines the EU Charter of
Fundamental Rights, proclaimed in 2000.50 Inspired by this, work still needs to be done in many Member States
in several legal, nancial and tax-related elds, as well as that of the institutional administrative consolidation
of the European Union itself, such as the procedures for appointing Members of the European Parliament.
From a civic standpoint, the hopes owering after 1945, looking to Europe to be a guarantee of dialogue
and liberal democracy, are fading. We can see how the Europe of today is making its way alone against vast
economic and political empires like the US, Russia and China, and the internal administrative problems of
those representing the EU today can be seen clearly, with a growing bureaucracy that would appear to emulate
some of its Member States, as well as the excessive dragging of heels with regard to the already endemic
problem of refugees coming from outside of the EU and seeking asylum here. There are a great number of
articles complaining about the ineffectiveness of the European Union.51 It is not for nothing that, with regard
to its bureaucratisation, it has been stated that, “the worst is the inability to rid itself of the image of a distant,
outdated bureaucracy affecting the European Commission and the rest of the Union’s institutions”.52
Against such a civic horizon, Emmanuel Mounier and his works —a champion of Europe defeated in 1945—
hold up a mirror to us, demanding civic-mindedness, by calling for Europe to become the direct inheritor of
those human rights that had been so crushed during World War II. There is a need for engagement to lead the
way towards a federal Europe of European peoples and cultures in which the state would do the necessary
ancillary administrative tasks pertaining to it. As this has not been the case,53 the Europe of today followed, to
a large degree, the capitalist mirage and is now tainted by interests and privileges that do not provide the best
of examples for its citizens. Also noteworthy is the contribution made by sociologist Eva Illouz who, in 2009,
introduced the concept of emotional capitalism, glimpsing that economics and psychology go hand-in-hand, so
that economic decisions have an emotional element, and that this involves the state and the administration.54
By way of epilogue
Thus, what should be done, today, in a public administration? Simply, exercising civic-mindedness, no more
and no less, which means ensuring the continued praxis of human rights, which, as such, must be peaceful
yet determined, and valuing the contributions made by human qualities: intelligence, honesty and the priority
48 After the end of the Second World War, Robert Schuman, former Foreign Minister of France, negotiated some post-war treaties
and, in 1950, promoted the project for European integration that would give rise to the European Coal and Steel Community. Shortly
afterwards, he would become the rst President of the European Parliamentary Assembly, regarded as a forerunner of today’s
European Parliament.
49 Following the Treaty of Lisbon —once it became impossible to implement the hypothetical European Constitution of 2003—
Europe’s legal community called for a community of law in which the Court of Justice of the European Union could work. So, after
its ratication, the —administrative— Charter of Rights became binding upon EU Members States (except for Poland and the United
Kingdom).
50 The Charter of Fundamental Rights is legally binding. Its Preamble and its 55 Articles set out the rights of Europe’s citizens and
the obligations of several administrative institutions to ensure that this is the case.
51 Note 30 makes reference to some of these complaints.
52 Aymerich, Ramon. “Europa, cada vez más sola”. La Vanguardia, 13 October 2019, and “El mundo que viene”, by the same author,
La Vanguardia, 26 April 2020. (Translated from the original in Spanish.)
53 It was quite clear to Mounier that any collective cause was imperfect, which is why he talked of engagement rather than enlistment,
more suited people who allow themselves to be guided by those shouting the loudest. He was already warning, in 1937 and 1938, of
the perils of Europe remaining in the hands of the blind enlistment of which P. L. Landsberg spoke, which accommodated those who
“allowed themselves to be led”.
54 Illouz, Eva (2010). La salvación del alma moderna (p. 112-118 and 209-211). Katz Editores. Original title in English: Saving the
Modern Soul.
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will to improve our immediate environment.55More specically, within the European Union, it must champion
the union of European citizens, demonize tax havens and tackle the obstacles that come from outside Europe,
by getting involved in a universal convergence of millions of people in defence of the most basic values and
basic rights, rights that improve not only their own lives, but those of all men and women, whether they form
part or not of European institutions.
Looking internally, there is a need to give the market economy a more civic focus: the current buzzwords
are natural capitalism,56 which would be worth revising in terms of the social market economy, such as the
market socialism of David Schweickart and other thinkers,57 to try to overcome the endeavours of the new
predatory capitalism, mindful of the benets that nature brings. Giorgio Kallis, the economist specialising
in ecology, recently noted that the key question is how to get ahead in capitalism in an economy without
growth. Capitalism —says the World Economic Forum— must focus on food-related and domestic issues,
and should invest in technology for precision agriculture and the manufacture of more renewable goods and
needs to encourage refurbishment and recycling and prioritise cooperative infrastructure and clean energies.
And, in turbulent times such as these (with COVID-19 and climate change and full of economic, civil and
legal arbitrariness, refugees, deportations and more), it must put its weight rmly behinds a sound, active and
participative administration, far from any idea of impunity.
An administration that will have to carry on its duties within the limits applicable to it, progress in the task
that Ian Kershaw assigns to the European Union, an entity that, “despite the risks of populism, has established
democratic societies, in freedom, peace and prosperity, accepted by the majority of the population”. 58
We nish this article by taking up an assertion by activist Franco Berardi, who stated that, today, in times of
coronavirus, nature highlights the limitations of our civilisation and invites us to think more carefully and
caringly. We would conclude that this calls for a more balanced and socially judicious administration that,
far from seeking blame for the contagions and from exculpating itself for the management, assumes the
responsibilities and seeks to vanquish dystopia.
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