Liberalism: our project & our values
Eight principles underpin our commitment. Here they are, straight to the point.
“Liberalism is first and foremost a doctrine of the individual, not an economic programme“
Every individual has an intrinsic worth that cannot be reduced to any group, class or collective abstraction. Human dignity lies in each person's ability to shape their own life, exercise their freedom and take responsibility for it.
Placing the individual at the centre does not mean isolating them: it means refusing to let them dissolve into imposed identities or into structures that claim to decide on their behalf.
“Freedom has two faces: the range of choices and the ability to make them“
External freedom is the real range of possibilities that a society opens up: studies, professions, beliefs, ways of life.
Inner freedom is the ability to choose autonomously, resisting conformism, pressure and invisible constraints. One without the other is not enough: formal rights without real autonomy remain a dead letter.
“Diversity is the consequence of freedom; tolerance is its condition“
Free individuals naturally develop different paths, opinions and ways of life. This diversity is not a flaw to be corrected, but proof that freedom works.
In return, it demands a culture of tolerance: the ability to coexist peacefully and to debate within one and the same pluralist society.
“Neither an absent state nor a market without rules: freedom ordered by law“
Liberalism is a theory of freedom ordered by law. It dreams neither of a vanished state nor of a market without standards, but of an order in which limits on power, the protection of rights (property, security, expression, association, conscience) and stable rules allow individuals to act.
This is where it parts ways with doctrines that place the state or “the collective” at the centre: for us, the subject of law and justice is the responsible individual.
“Educating is not instilling an official truth, it is forming minds capable of seeking it“
From a liberal perspective, schools do not transmit a state doctrine. They form people capable of seeking the truth, understanding facts, principles and arguments, and taking responsibility for their actions.
Education is the first instrument of inner freedom.
“Work creates wealth, and wealth makes solidarity possible“
Liberalism is a doctrine of shared prosperity, structured solidarity and work as a central value. The industrial revolution, driven by liberal principles (trade, innovation, investment, protection of rights) generated unprecedented wealth and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty.
Work is more than a means of subsistence: it brings financial independence, builds an identity, contributes to collective wealth and funds the mechanisms of solidarity (social security, protections, risk-sharing).
The economy is not a zero-sum game: it creates value, and that value is the material basis without which no solidarity can hold. Hence our refusal of the simplistic opposition between the market and social policy.
“The equality we seek is equality of rights and opportunities“
Equality before the law, equal access to opportunity. Not uniformity of outcomes, which requires denying people's choices, but the guarantee that no one is trapped by their starting point.
And a solidarity that genuinely protects the most vulnerable, because it rests on an economy that produces.
“Nothing is ever settled: liberalism is a doctrine of progress“
Deeply optimistic about human capabilities, this doctrine knows it is never finished. The status quo would kill its momentum and freeze its principles.
It is up to each generation to find new solutions to new problems, while remaining faithful to a core of values held to be permanent. It is this constant reinterpretation that keeps liberalism alive and equal to its ambition.
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