Let’s be honest: until dawn on 24 June 2016 nobody really believed that the British were going to vote for Brexit. Now that the disaster has struck, it is tempting to feel discouraged and to abandon any dream of a democratic and progressive re-foundation of Europe. However, we must persevere and live in hope, for we have no other choice: the rise of national self-seeking and xenophobia in Europe leads straight to disaster. Let’s look at the sequence of events and see what should be changed and clarified to reconstruct Europe after Brexit.

Time and again it has been said that in many cases the Brexit vote is more of a vote against immigration and globalisation than an anti-European Union vote as such. Even if British insularity does also have its specificities, there is something profoundly nihilist and irrational in this attitude of reverting to xenophobia, a reaction which is well known in France with the Front National vote, and now in the United States with the Trump vote. Stigmatising immigrants and foreign countries and cultures even further is not a solution to the problems – quite the contrary. And it is obviously not by locating itself outside the only existing European framework for collective deliberation that the United Kingdom is going to find its path.

All this is true, but two points have to be clarified. In the first instance, this vote is also a reaction to the European institutions which are wholly focussed on the principle of ever purer and more perfect competition between countries and territories with no common fiscal and social basis and, objectively, these institutions have only reinforced the highly unequal trends to globalisation at work over the last decades. Confronted with the lack of any democratic and progressive answer, it is not surprising that the working and middle classes ultimately resort to xenophobic forces. This is a pathological response to a very real sense of abandonment. Originating in a project for a common market in keeping with the reconstruction and growth of the 1950s-1970s, European construction has never known how to convert itself into an effective force for regulation of the globalised and financial capitalism which has been growing rapidly since the 1980s-1990s.

Then, truth obliges me to state that UKIP (UK Independence Party) or the FN (Front National) are unfortunately not the only political forces to have succumbed to the rise of national egoisms and collective irrationality in recent years. In particular, it is short-sighted egoism and the rise of every man for himself which explain the disastrous management of the financial crisis by the Euro zone countries since 2008.

Seen from this angle, the centre-right and centre-left governments (CDU, UMP, PS) who have succeeded each other in power on both sides of the Rhine, bear a heavy historic responsibility which will have to be recognised one day. Scarcely a comma has changed in the position maintained in Germany for nearly ten years now, namely, if other countries in the Euro zone did the same thing as we Germans, implemented the same reforms, behaved with the same reliability and the same virtue, etc. then all would be for the best, in the best of all possible worlds.

The problem with this approach, which is moralising, sanctimonious and nationalist is that it is totally irrational. It is not that there may be some good lessons to be learned from the German industrial and social model, obviously. The problem is that if every country in the Euro zone had adopted the same policy of widespread deflation in wages and found itself today with the same huge commercial surplus of 8% of GDP, unheard of in history since the Industrial Revolution, then, by definition, there would be nobody in the world to absorb such a surplus.

Those in power in Germany always refuse to explain to their public opinion a factual reality which is obvious to the rest of the world and to history, namely, that their high level of economic activity and employment has to a large extent been obtained to the detriment of their neighbours. With several currencies, a significant devaluation of the currencies in the South of Europe would have sufficed; but from the time when the choice was made to keep the single currency it would have been necessary – and it still is necessary – to re-launch salaries and public investment in Germany on a massive scale and set up a fiscal and budgetary union.

In the case of France, which likes to use Germany as a bad excuse to do nothing, the truth is that the reason why it chose to abandon Southern Europe is because it has benefited from the same extremely low interest rates as its German neighbour. This has resulted in policy makers in the Euro zone imposing hyper-austerity policies which plunged the Euro zone into an absurd recession in 2011-2013, counter to world trends and from which it has not yet entirely recovered.

Thus the Euro zone has become a liability for Europe; the advocates of Brexit had no hesitation in exploiting this in the campaign which has just ended. What is the point in remaining with countries which drag us down and who appear to be incapable of correctly managing their monetary union? The Euro was to have been the hallmark of the transformation of the common market into a political union capable of protecting us from market speculation, the first stage towards a public authority enabling the regulation of capitalism in the 21st century. In reality, the Euro has become something almost diabolical which threatens to derail the whole process.

What should we do now? First, it has to be made clear that the European Union cannot be reduced to a vast zone of free movement of goods, services and capital with no fiscal, social and regulatory counterpart. To be sustainable, economic growth requires public services, infrastructures, systems for education, research and health, university exchanges, regional equalization, equality of opportunity and all this has a cost.

The United Kingdom is now going to attempt to obtain a status similar to that of Norway, Iceland and Switzerland. It is high time to remind the British – and it would have changed the course of things if this had been done sooner in a fully transparent fashion by the German and French governments – that this will not be free of charge. Norway and Iceland are part of the European Economic Area (EEA) which guarantees them full access to the common market. But in return these two countries must apply almost all the legislation of the European Union and pay a contribution to its budget (close to the present British contribution, if expressed in terms of GDP), all this with no participation in collective decision-making. Furthermore, we should take advantage of the occasion to apply the same rules to Switzerland which at the moment benefits from a preferential status (its budgetary contribution is half the amount).

Above all, beyond the question of the permanent budgetary contribution of non-member EU countries wishing to take advantage of the common market, it is time to discuss the question of sanctions applicable to countries that engage in regulatory dumping, and in particular, the countries which do not apply strict rules in matters of financial transparency and combating tax optimisation. It is not normal that we should have to wait for American sanctions for the Swiss banking secrecy to begin (timidly) to be challenged. Gabriel Zucman’s calculations (La richesse des nations, Seuil 2014, translated into many languages: The Hidden Wealth of Nations) show that the profits accruing to Switzerland from the banking secrecy are equivalent to what the country would pay in a 30% customs duties if these were applied by its three main neighbours (Germany, France and Italy).

The same question will be posed for the London financial market and the tax havens of the British Crown. A thorough evaluation of the losses imposed on others and sanctions imposed in keeping with these amounts will have to be made. As long as we are not prepared to impose sanctions of this type, it is not surprising that countries choose to prosper outside the European Union. If it is possible to take advantage of the common market, while quietly siphoning off the fiscal bases of the neighbours, why deprive ourselves of the opportunity? The legal and political system in which Europe has become ensnared which is ultimately based on the canonisation of free movement and the free market, with no serious counterpart in terms of collective regulation, will lead us straight to a whole series of Brexits.

Further if we want to save the Euro zone, a fundamental transformation in direction will be required. After the victory of Syriza at the polls in Greece in January 2015 (itself a consequence of the obstinate refusal of the Europeans to restructure the debt despite having promised the previous government they would do so), the leaders of the Euro zone made the absurd choice of wishing to humiliate the country to discourage other electors from being tempted by the same course of action.

This choice did in part pay since Podemos could do no better than equal the PSOE in the two rounds of elections in Spain in December 2015 and June 2016. The only drawback is that Spain is ungovernable today and the French and German leaders now find themselves faced just about everywhere with the rise of right-wing populism and nationalism, in the United Kingdom, Poland and Hungary. This threat is significantly more dangerous for Europe than the challenge posed by the radical left which essentially is merely formulating a sensible request: the restructuring of the European public debt is inevitable and must be organized as quickly as possible. It would have been preferable to try to rely on Syriza, Podemos, the PSOE and the left wing parties as whole, whether they be radical or not, which have the merit of being fundamentally pro-European in comparison to the populists on the right.

It is disheartening to note that even today the European leaders are still continuing to demand that Greece produce a primary budget surplus of 3.5% of GDP in the coming decades. Given the fact that this is a country where the level of economic activity is a quarter lower than in 2008 and where unemployment is soaring, this is strictly meaningless. It is normal to request a small surplus, in the range of 0.5% or 1% of GDP but not more. The decision to restructure has once again been postponed till the end of the year and it is likely that this will not be the last time.

More generally, it is urgent to establish a moratorium on European debts, until the zone has regained strong growth and to launch a programme of investment in infrastructures, training and research. Today the private sector is afraid to invest, as the negative rates of interest in force at the moment demonstrate, and without public stimulus there is a real risk that the Euro zone may drag on in a period of sluggish growth and almost-zero or even negative, inflation. History has shown that it is impossible to reduce a high public debt in such circumstances and it is much better to have the courage to clearly restructure debts when they become impossible for the new generations to reimburse (Germany considerably benefited from this when its debt was cancelled in the 1950s). The creation of money and the development of new asset price bubbles will not solve the problem in the place of action by governments, quite the contrary.

Finally, if we really want to make progress on all these questions, then the institutional debate cannot be avoided. It is always possible to cobble together compromises in a hurry on the basis of the present institutions. But in the long run if we want to be able to adopt a recovery plan within the Euro zone calmly and democratically, to restructure the debts and adopt a common tax on company profits, etc., then the institutions have to be re-established on a democratic basis. There is a theory that the European institutions reached a state of ultimate perfection with the European constitutional treaty in 2005 (finally adopted in 2008 in the Treaty of Lisbon) and that all would be well if national political leaders and public opinion finally had a proper understanding of these marvellous institutions and ceased to be foolish Europhobes.

The truth is that the present European institutions are seriously dysfunctional. They are based on a façade of bicameralism: on one hand the European Council with the heads of State (and their instruments at ministerial level: the Council of Finance Ministers, the Council of Ministers for Agriculture, etc.); and on the other, the European Parliament (elected directly by the citizens). In principle, the European legislative texts must be approved by these two legislative chambers. In practice, the main centre of power is held by the European Council and the Ministerial Councils, which in most instances must take unanimous decisions (in particular on tax arrangements, which prevents any real progress), and which, in the rare cases where the rule of the majority applies, still continue to debate behind closed doors.

The truth is that the European Council is a machine for setting national interests against one another, a machine for preventing any possibility of generating democratic discussions and majority decisions at European level. As soon as one person (a Head of State or a Minister for Finance) is expected to represent, alone, 82 million Germans or 65 million French or 11 million Greeks, it is impossible to have a calm democratic discussion culminating in one or other of these persons being overruled.

It is this institutional system, along with the numerous rules aimed at by-passing democracy (unanimity on taxation, automatic rules on budgetary criteria) which produce the inertia and incapacity to act in Europe. Everyone is fighting for what they believe to be their own national interests and in truth nobody knows what is going on since everything takes place behind closed doors. These Councils regularly inform us in the middle of the night that they have saved Europe before we realise the following day that they themselves do not know what they have decided. This institutional structure is hardly calculated to endear Europe to peoples’ hearts.

Faced with this impasse, there are several possible developments. Some Europhiles suggest substantially reducing the role of the European Council and entrusting its main powers to the European Parliament (see for example Laurent Joffrin in Libération a few days ago). This solution has the merit of simplicity. But it has the disadvantage of saying nothing at all about national political institutions, which is likely to generate their hostility and a chain reaction of Brexits.

In my opinion, the most promising way forward is to imagine an original form of a European bicameral system based on one hand on the European Parliament (elected directly by the citizens) and on the other on a Parliamentary Chamber comprising representatives from the national parliaments in proportion to the population of each country and the political groups present in each Parliament.

This Parliamentary Chamber would include, for example, some forty members from the Bundestag, thirty from the Assemblée Nationale, etc., and would meet for one week every month, to deal in particular with budgetary and financial decisions which directly concern national taxpayers: these include, the choice of level of budgetary deficit within the Euro zone, the supervision of the European Stability Mechanism, the budget of the Euro zone, restructuring of debts, etc.

This would involve envisaging various rules for a qualified majority which in all cases would be more satisfactory than the present situation in which each national parliament has a de facto right of veto, which poses horrendous problems of democratic legitimacy (the Bundestag versus the Greek parliament, etc.) and in most instances leads to a deadlock. By giving national elected members the possibility of sitting beside one another and taking majority decisions after public and democratic debate, it is at least permissible to hope that progress will be made in the right direction.

This original form of bicameralism differs from the classical structures of bicameralism (the Assemblée Nationale and Sénat in France, the Bundestag and Bundesrat in Germany, the Senate and the House of Representatives in the United States) and in my opinion corresponds to the unique character of European construction which is based on old Nation States which have succeeded over the years in constructing extremely complex forms of social states, based on parliamentary democracy in a national framework.

It does not seem to me to be either realistic or desirable to build European parliamentary sovereignty by bypassing national Parliaments which, despite all their drawbacks, remain fundamental democratic structures; for decades these have enabled social levies and budgets representing dozens of percentage points of GDP to be voted with a rise in social welfare and an improvement in standard of living unprecedented in the history of the world. It would seem wiser to gradually transform national legislators into European co-legislators, forcing them to give consideration to the interest of Europe as a whole and preventing them from just complaining about Europe.

The debate is open and it deserves detailed discussion. We must also avoid the misunderstandings which could bring it to an abrupt end. Too often, when the question of the role of national parliaments is raised, one hears irritated reactions from Europhiles and in particular those close to the European Parliament, who see these suggestions as an intolerable step backwards.

In fact, before the first election of the European Parliament by universal suffrage in 1979, the European Parliament was only a Parliamentary Assembly comprising representatives from national parliaments with a purely consultative role. But the proposal defended here is entirely different. The intent is to give this Parliamentary Chamber whose members come from national parliaments genuine legislative powers in the place of the European Council (which will never be a real legislative chamber). Ultimately this would enable the parliamentary approach defended by the European Parliament to be strengthened and would undoubtedly constitute the only way to bypass the present deadlocks. But old fears are long lived and there is a concern that they will not disappear overnight.

A few days ago, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, a long-standing defender of a Europe of nations, suggested in Le Monde that the power of the European Council (which however is anything but a place for democratic discussion) should be strengthened, while at the same time the members of the European Parliament should be drawn from national parliaments (which will not fail to annoy the MEPs). However, he did neither specified the form this should take or the powers they should have. Some members of the European Parliament like for example Yannick Jadot or Henri Weber have suggested a mixed solution with a Euro Zone Parliament comprising partly MEPs and partly national elected members. This does not appear to me to be the most legible solution, but the debate is legitimate.

Whatever the case may be, this discussion about the European institutions is fundamental and it should not be reserved to the legal and constitutional experts. It concerns all citizens, as do the discussions about taxation or debts. For too long, these questions have been left to others with the results that we know. It is time for the citizens of Europe to take back their future.