*** TERESA ELOLA CALDERON, ERIC VAN DEN ABEELE: La présidence belge de l'Union européenne: organisation et priorités. Centre de recherche et d'information socio-politiques (1A place Quetelet, B-1210 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 2110180 - Fax: (32-2) 219 79 34 - Internet: http://www.crisp.be ). "Courrier hebdomadaire", Weekly newsletter No. 2072. 2010, 42 pp, €6-90.
Much has been written about Belgium in recent times, most of it hugely pessimistic amidst concern about the very existence of this little country that was one of the founder members of the European Union and long considered as a laboratory for Europe with its intermeshing of different languages and cultures. With the dissolution of the elected government (following early elections on 13 June 2010), Belgium has held the rotating president of the Council of the EU since 1 July 2010 with a caretaker government. One piece of good news in this weekly newsletter is the fact that this extended crisis has done very little damage to the country's credibility at the helm of Europe. How come? For two reasons. Firstly, the Belgian Presidency's agenda, budget and logistics had been agreed upon long before the collapse of Yves Leterme's government - not to mention the fact that all the democratic Belgian parties in both the French and the Dutch-speaking parts of the country generally agree on membership of the EU and what it means for Belgium. Secondly, as the authors explain, the decentralised institutional organisation of Belgium means that governments of the federal bodies and therefore regional and/or language-community ministers (part of the complicated Belgian set-up) are able to fully exercise the presidency in matters under their own jurisdiction. This means that the role of presidency of the Council of Europe is being fully carried out, with diplomats and other high-ranking civil servants having plenty of experience and competence at properly managing the committee and other EU working groups that prepare the ground for meetings of the EU27 ministers.
In a decidedly pedagogical spirit, Eric Van den Abeele analyses how power is shared between the federal state and federal units, be they language communities (Flemish (Dutch) and French), but French-speaking is probably a more accurate term, unless this part of the country ends up as part of France in the future) or Regions (like Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels-Capital - the latter much to the disgust of some Flemings. He explains how powers over European issues are shared among the various levels of power in Belgium, and pays particular attention to the system of rotation among Belgian's federal bodies at the Council when issues come partly or fully into the jurisdiction of the language communities and/or regions involved. At first sight, this is a complex system, but so well-oiled that it enables Belgian regions to be genuine players on the EU decision-making front. Many other regions in Europe, those without legislative powers in their home state, have to make do with passing 'opinions' and other non-binding resolutions at the EU Committee of the Regions. The newsletter then reviews Belgium's list of political priorities, a list published on 16 June 2010, before looking at two in greater depth, namely the EUROPE 2020 Strategy and tackling climate change.
Over and above the very useful description of the Belgian set-up, the newsletter is also an invaluable tool because it sets the Belgian Presidency against the backdrop of innovations introduced by the Lisbon Treaty. The legal and political foundations of the EU presidencies are listed, along with the connections between the EU presidencies and other players on the EU scene, like the new standing president of the European Council and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and the Security Policy, areas that are discussed with as much care for pedagogical efficiency as the preceding section on Belgium. The authors also explain the trio of EU presidencies and how this was organised. Finally, and this is by no means the least interesting section (even for EU experts), there is a description of operational aspects of the Presidency from setting the agenda for ministerial meetings and their preparation by working groups to the EU's 'negotiating machine' - the Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER).
Michel Theys
*** JEAN-CLAUDE PIRIS: The Lisbon Treaty. A Legal and Political Analysis. Cambridge University Press (The Edinburgh Building, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK. Tel: (44-01223) 326050 - Fax: 315052 - Internet: http://www.cambridge.org ). "Cambridge Studies in European Law and Policy". 2010, 426 pp, £27-99 (paperback) and £65 (hardback). ISBN 978-0-521-14234-2 (paperback) ou 978-0-521-19792-2 (hardback).
Director-General of the legal department at the Council of the EU's General Secretariat, Jean-Claude Piris has been involved as a legal advisor in all the intergovernmental conferences that have changed the European Union since the conference that gave birth to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. Who better, then, to provide a reliable legal and political analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the Lisbon Treaty? In this fine work prefaced by the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, the charming and distinguished French author starts by setting things in a timeframe in a very clear, user-friendly manner, examining how the EU was set up in the first place, looking at the European Convention and the Constitutional Treaty rejected by the French and the Dutch, the drawing up of the Lisbon Treaty in the light of this rejection and the difficult process of getting the treaty ratified. After describing the structure of the Lisbon Treaty, the author examines the general provisions in the following chapters (values and objectives, limits to and clarification of the EU's powers, the EU's 'legal personality,' procedures for changing the Treaties, how Member States can withdraw, and so on), looking at issues relating to democracy (the European Parliament and national parliaments, the 'Citizen's Initiative', the 30th June ruling of the German Constitutional Court (contained in the annex) and the EU's democratic legitimacy), along with fundamental rights, the theme of freedom, security and justice, examining all the EU institutions in the light of innovations concerning them, foreign affairs and finally financial, economic, social affairs and domestic issues like the budget, agriculture and energy. In the interesting and useful conclusions, the author points out that the Lisbon Treaty does not actually change the character of the European Union, which remains a "partially federal entity" but he adds that the Lisbon Treaty "marks a halt to the ambitions of the federalists,'" because Member States decided on "containment of the powers of the European Union". Nevertheless, he concludes more optimistically that the fate of the Lisbon Treaty will not only depend on what is there in black and white, but also "on the persons who will have to develop its potentialities, as well as on the economic and political context in which it will be applied". He explains that whatever happens, "the absolute priority should now be to enhance the EU's democratic legitimacy and improve its visibility". And this is a Frenchman saying this!
(MT)
*** The Federalist Debate. Papers on Federalism in Europe and the World. Einstein Center for International Studies (26 via Schina, I-10144 Torino. Tel/Fax: (+39-011) 4732843 - email: federalist.debate@libero.it - Internet: http://www.federalist.debate.org ). 2010, No. 2, 64 pp. Annual subscription: €15.
Sixty years after the Schuman Declaration, Guy Verhofstadt is scared. Speaking as the head of the Belgian section of the European Union of Federalists, the former Belgian prime minister slams the rising power of intergovernmentalism within the European Union to the detriment of the Community Method, the only method capable of creating a sturdy political Europe. Verhofstadt is also president of the group of European liberals and democrats at the European Parliament. He explains that he can see this distortion in the way the 2020 Strategy is being prepared, with the Commission being pruned by prominent Member States acting as a kind of Council of Ministers' executive secretariat. He also sees this in the dispersed and foot-dragging manner in which Greece was bailed out, which certainly "increased anti-European feeling everywhere on the European continent". Guy Verhofstadt therefore calls for resistance, urging readers to be as bold as Robert Schuman was on 9 May 1950 when he suggested taking on absolutely sacrosanct national sovereignty. In the same spirit, there is another article in this issue, an article by John Parry on the planned union between the United Kingdom and France that was developped in June 1940 by Arthur Salter and none other than Jean Monnet with the backing of both Churchill and de Gaulle, but which fell apart when Pétain became French prime minister. This does not alter the fact, explains John Parry, that "the idea that independent nation states can share aspects of their sovereignty for their mutual benefit was not unheard-of, even in the darkest days of the Second World War". This extremely valuable issue of the ever-fascinating federalist review also sees Antonio Mosconi setting the cat amongst the pigeons of US finance, openly accusing Wall Street of organising a speculative attack on Greece in order to attack the euro. He says that the idea behind the plot was to shift global investors' eyes away from the sovereign states that are the ones truly susceptible of going bankrupt under their massive debt burden, namely the United States and the United Kingdom.
(MT)
*** Fedechoses… pour le fédéralisme. Presse fédéraliste (Maison de l'Europe, 18 av. Félix Faure, F-69007 Lyons. Internet: http://www.pressefederaliste.eu ). 2010, No. 148, 32 pp, €3. Annual subscription: €15.
The French translation of ideas expressed by Guy Verhofstadt quoted in the previous review of books, this issue of the ever combative federalist publication dips into constructive activist virulence with, for example, Jean-Pierre Gouzy in his usual commentary slamming a "cardboard Europe of deeply imprinted contradiction". This judgement is taken up and expanded upon by Gérard Onesta, who says that "Europe is undergoing a veritable deconstruction". The former vice-President of the European Parliament explains: "In a way, we have returned to the time of the feudal lords of the manor, but the worst thing about it is that we are living in feudalism without a king!" The current vice-President of the French region of Midi-Pyrénées explains that Van Rompuy and Baroness Ashton are the symbols of the preservation of national egotism and "in a way are a figleaf for European political impotence, the various institutions being nothing but screens to hide the voluntarism void of leaders appointed as a personal favour". Hence the call for the Council to be destroyed - Delendum est Concilium - because "nation states and the individuals they are embodied in see in Europe nothing but their own death!" This sentence along provides ample food for thought because all national political parties are losing interest in the European project. In the same spirit, there is an open letter by Bernard Barthalay and a few others to Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy to get the debate about the euro and economic governance out of the realm of "the mutually paralysing incantatory and conditioned reflexes". This issue includes an interview that took place at Café Babel Strasbourg, where economist Elie Cohen says that "Europe must follow its integration process and adopt budgetary federalism". Hence the appeal by the editorialist for the Greek-born crisis to lead to "a huge increase in the EU budget" and an abandoning once and for all of "only using the functionalist method" that has demonstrated its limits, because only a "democratic constituent associating citizens as the 'European People' " is capable of "giving Europeans the resources to take their own fate in hand and show the world how to have peace, progress and peaceful political unification of the human race". Utopia? No more than the call made sixty years ago by Robert Schuman…
(MT)
*** NIKLAS PERZI, BEATA BLEHOVA, PETER BACHMAIER: Die Samtene Revolution. Vorgeschichte - Verlauf - Akteure. Peter Lang (see above). 2009, 330 pp, €52-80. ISBN 978-3-631-55030-4.
In 1988, citizens' movements arose in various parts of Eastern Europe against the Communist dictatorships. The various waves of opposition, particularly in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, grew with the uprising at the port of Gdansk in Poland. The movements all weakened the legitimacy of Communist power. One of these events was named the Velvet Revolution, the title of this book. The 'revolution' kicked off after the commemoration of the uprising in Prague in the spring of 1968. In October 1988, the first demonstrations took place in Prague, arising sporadically throughout a whole year until November 1989 when a student demonstration in Prague, and another in Bratislava, were repressed by the police. This led to a series of protest strikes, demonstrations and other forms of revolt until the first non-Communist government was set up on 10 December 1989 after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. This book explains what took place at this time and is the fruit of cooperation among researchers from various universities in Eastern Europe (Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and others) and Vienna University in Austria. The essays are divided into three sections. The first examines the events in Eastern Europe leading up to the end of the Communist regime, the second looking at the Velvet Revolution itself, and the third analysing key players in the event and the role played by the press.
(JD)
*** Revue politique et parlementaire. Société d'Edition Académique et Diplomatique (3 rue Bellini, F-92800 Puteaux. Tel: (33-1) 46981374 - Fax: 47730148 - Internet: http://www.revuepolitique.fr ). April-May-June 2010, No. 1055, 192 pp, €24. Annual subscription: €61 (France), €75 (elsewhere). ISBN 978-2-85702-174-2.
"Ours is an age of suspicion"… This is the key subject matter of this issue, suspicion of politics and national institutions, of course, focussing to a larger extent on suspicion of the European Union, suspicions of banks and banks' own suspicion of fellow banks, suspicion of the Euro's ability to survive sovereign debt and more besides. As is shown by the political crisis in Belgium, this all feeds into turning in one oneself to the detriment of "wanting to live together". This phenomenon is assessed in detail I the light of the recent regional elections in France. Economist Christian de Boissieu looks against the backdrop of the moral and economic crisis at whether we will all be bankrupt in ten years time. He says 'No,' as long as new forms of governance are introduced.
(MT)