I arrived to Europe last week. A board meeting and alumni meeting in Geneva (boy do these T-Birds know how to have a good time!!!!), a few meetings in London and then to Madrid, to the Future Trends Forum organized by the Bankinter Innovation Foundation. Within two weeks, voters in France and the Netherlands slapped their political leaders in the face with a loud "No" to the so-called new European Constitution (actually a treaty). I'm still struggling to interpret what's happening around Europe... but a significant number of citizens seem to think that their leaders have grown out of sync with them. Interestingly, some still insist that the "no" votes were misinformed, or that they were misguided by narrow national politics as opposed to the more "enlightened" and future oriented issues our fearless leaders care about. Like my friend Jose Maria de Areilza recently wrote in EL PAIS, to some arrogant political figures, the referenda were more an intelligence test with only one possible (and correct!) answer than a true and open polling of people's opinions. I hope they know get the point.
Meanwhile, Switzerland voted yes to the Schengen agreement, which will abolish some of the remaining border checks in the heart of Western Europe. A message that, while we continue to define where Europe is heading, Europeans are by no means reverting to an isolationist past.
