“Useless”, mute, invisible… the general press has been very harsh lately in describing the role — or non role — played by the European Commission in the attempt to solve the sovereign debt crisis. Brussels-based journalists, who are often more favourable to integration than their colleagues remained in national newsrooms, can hardly refrain from drawing the comparison with the Delors Commission and recalling the “good old days” under the leadership of the “Tsar of Europe”, twice president of the Commission (1985-1995) Jacques Delors.

The election of Barack Obama at the head of the most powerful country in the world has raised immense waves of hope not only in voters’ hearts but also in foreigners’, especially in Europe. If the personal qualities of the Democratic candidate and the effectiveness of his campaign should not be neglected, his task has nevertheless been made easier by the disastrous presidencies of his predecessor, George W. Bush (in case you’ve already forgotten him), who seriously impeded John McCain’s chances to get elected.

Like many other French liberal economists, Turgot is one of those figures more acknowledged abroad than in his home country, where he is mainly remembered as Louis XVI’s ephemeral minister of finance. His political work was undoubtedly considerable, so much so that Edgar Faure, his biographer and head of government during the 1950s, wrote that had Turgot been longer in power, the French Revolution may not have occurred.