EL MUNDO les ofrece la transcripción en inglés
del documento firmado por el primer ministro británico
Tony Blair y el canciller alemán Gerhard Schröeder
que recoge las líneas maestras de la nueva socialdemocracia,
bajo el título:
Europa: La tercera vía.
Introduction
Social democrats are in government in almost all the countries
of the Union. Social democracy has found new acceptance, but
only because, while retaining its traditional values, it has
begun in a credible way to renew its ideas and modernise its
programmes. It has also found new acceptance because it stands
not only for social justice but also for economic dynamism and
the unleashing of creativity and innovation.
The trademark of this approach is the New Centre in Germany and
the Third Way in the United Kingdom. Other social democrats choose
other terms that suit their own national cultures. But though
the language and the institutions may differ, the motivation
is everywhere the same. Most people have long since abandoned
the world view represented by the dogmas of left and right. Social
democrats must be able to speak to those people.
Fairness and social justice, liberty and equality of opportunity,
solidarity and responsibility to others, these values are timeless.
Social democracy will never sacrifice them. To make these values
relevant to todays world requires realistic and forward-looking
policies capable of meeting the challenges of the 21st century.
Modernisation is´about adapting to conditions that have
objectively changed, and not reacting to polls.
Similarly, we need to apply our politics within a new economic
framework, modernised for today, where government does all it
can to support enterprise but never believes it is a substitute
for enterprise. The essential function of markets must be complemented
and improved by political action, not hampered by it. We support
a market economy, not a market society.
We share a common destiny within the European Union. We face
the same challenges, to promote employment and prosperity, to
offer every individual the opportunity to fulfil their unique
potential, to combat social exclusion and poverty, to reconcile
material progress with environmental sustainability and our responsibility
to future generations, to tackle common problems that threaten
the cohesion of society such as crime and drugs, and to make
Europe a more effective force for good in the world.
We need to strengthen our policies by benchmarking our experiences
in Britain and Germany, but also with like-minded counterparts
in Europe and the rest of the world. We must learn from each
other and measure our own performance against best practice and
experience in other countries. With this appeal, we invite other
European social democratic governments who share our modernising
aims to join us in this enterprise.
I. Learning from experience.
Learning from experience. Although both parties can
be proud of our historic achievements, today we must develop
realistic and feasible answers to new challenges confronting
our societies and economies. This requires adherence to our values
but also a willingness to change our old approaches and traditional
policy instruments. In the past:
->The promotion of social justice was sometimes confused with
the imposition of equality of outcome. The result was a neglect
of the importance of rewarding effort and responsibility, and
the association of social democracy with conformity and mediocrity
rather than the celebration of creativity, diversity and excellence.
Work was burdened with ever higher costs.
->The means of achieving social justice became identified
with ever higher levels of public spending regardless of what
they achieved or the impact of the taxes required to fund it
on competitiveness, employment and living standards. Decent public
services are a vital concern for social democrats, but social
conscience cannot be measured by the level of public expenditure.
The real test for society is how effectively this expenditure
is used and how much it enables people to help themselves.
->The belief that the state should address damaging market
failures all too often led to a disproportionate expansion of
the government's reach and the bureaucracy that went with it.
The balance between the individual and the collective was distorted.
Values that are important to citizens, such as personal achievement
and success, entrepreneurial spirit, individual responsibility
and community spirit, were too often subordinated to universal
social safeguards.
->Too often rights were elevated above responsibilities, but
the responsibility of the individual to his or her family, neighbourhood
and society cannot be offloaded on to the state. lf the concept
of mutual obligation is forgotten, this results in a decline
in community spirit, lack of responsibility towards neighbours,
rising crime and vandalism, and a legal system that cannot cope.
->The ability of national governments to fine-tune the economy
in order to secure growth and jobs has been exaggerated. The
importance of individual and business enterprise to the creation
of wealth has been undervalued. The weaknesses of markets have
been overstated and their strengths underestimated.