[FR] Organized civil society

We must commend this initiative by the ESC and its president, who has shown such determination and tenacity, not just out of politeness, but because, since the concept of organised civil society was launched, it has already gained ground.

Some economic and social committees are trying to regain public support by claiming to be representatives of civil society, and some more specifically, and I will come back to this, talk about organised civil society. Much has been said about civil society, and it would be a joke to see how some people brandish the banner of civil society to enter politics and then behave like other politicians. But civil society is not a new phenomenon, and what matters to us is that, even if the phrase seems a little harsh, we are currently in an era of democratic disenchantment, even though, paradoxically, democracy has prevailed over totalitarianism for half a century. Who would not rejoice in that? The Vice-President of the European Commission referred to enlargement because the candidate countries are trying precisely to rebuild a civil society, now that they have been freed from unbearable state control. This civil society has been the subject of much reflection over the centuries. It emerged, as the ESC’s own-initiative opinion rightly points out, during the Age of Enlightenment and the promotion of the individual. But some authors were already expressing fears at that time.

I will not overuse quotations, but I note, for example, that Adam Ferguson said in the 18th century: ‘The modernity of civil society, which carries within it so much liberating power, seems to isolate individuals to the point of making them lose their sense of belonging to a whole.’ And since that time, there has been an eternal dialectic between the necessary and vital expression of individuals freed from the constraints of the time and the need for these individuals to be represented and to be able to express themselves at all levels.

I said earlier that we must not confuse civil society with organised civil society. That is why I will begin by trying to understand the evolution of civil society before returning to organised civil society, which has been excellently defined in Ms Sigmund’s report: more or less formalised institutions on a voluntary basis that are structured by law and are a place for the formation of collective will and the representation of citizens.