*** LAURENT MALO: Autonomie locale et Union européenne. Etablissement Emile Bruylant (67 rue de la Régence, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 5129842 - Fax: 5119477 - Email: jean@bruylant.be - Internet: http://www.bruylant.be ). "Droit de l'Union européenne" series, No. 17. 2010, 719 pp, €120. ISBN 978-2-8027-2617-3.
The fact that the preface of a published doctoral thesis heaps praise upon the research, praise coming from the student's director of studies, looks slightly suspect at first sight because the glory of a well-argued thesis also shines on the person who guided the student to their destination. In this case, however, the praise is lavished to such an extent that it is no mere chance: Prof. Henri Labayle is genuinely impressed with Laurent Malo's scientific investigation and his far-reaching analysis of local autonomy in relation to the European Union. Prof. Labayle ends the preface by hoping that when it reads this work, which is a credit to French research in Europe, the French University will give Malo the place that is rightfully his.
This thesis won the Henri Tietgen Prize, the Gustave Bazille Prize of the Académie de Législation and the Committee of the Regions' order of merit in 2009, and is clearly outstanding. The subject matter does not look very promising at first sight, however. Have nearly sixty years of the European project left unchanged the organisation of States that grants autonomy to the communities comprising it? Have the inevitable relationships between the infra-state and supra-state levels when running big public policies been characterised by indifference, encouragement or hostility? Has the re-organisation of pubic action caused by progress in EU integration had an impact on the action of local communities, and if so, what impact has it had? These questions are focussed upon in this book, but are unlikely to appeal to many people outside specialist legal circles. The answers by Laurent Malo, however, will be taken by some politicians to be explosive. During the book, explains Prof. Labayle, he demonstrates that "the relationship between the European Union and its territorial communities is manifestly unbalanced," and he scientifically demolishes the received idea that "the European project puts restraints on States from above and also from below due to the rising power of the territorial communities that it encourages".
The author of the preface argues that challenging received ideas makes a good thesis as long as the arguments are backed by credible, scientific reasoning, and this certainly in this book. With great care and attention to pedagogical method, rightly praised by the academic jury assessing his thesis, Laurent Malo examines the subject in a neutral manner, rejecting the speculation of people hoping that the European project will weaken the 'state hydra' but equally refusing to take road trodden by those who fear that the EU casts a self-interested eye on local organisation in the Member States. He also refuses to address the subject solely from the viewpoint of the EU's relationship with local communities, arguing that this could hide the role of States in this connection. By crushing this triptych, he shows that local communities make little use of the European Union to gain greater room for manoeuvre vis-à-vis the State to which they belong - although this does depend on the country because the situation in France, for example, is not the same as in Belgium. He also shows that the EU is reluctant to advance onto this sensitive territory any further than the oft repeated political phrases, paying great attention not to venture outside the remit provided in the Treaties. Above all, and this is the major revelation, he shows that the Member States immediately twigged the benefit they could gain from leaning on the European Union: "Their dominance of the European Community system gives them a way to channel the potentiality of local autonomy and to achieve their own aims. Local autonomy therefore seems to be manipulated and frustrated within the EU set-up," explains Prof. Labayle. An argument that has never been so clearly stated before and which will set many an individual's teeth on edge.
Pierre Bouvier
*** JEAN ANTOINE GIANSILY: Chroniques slovaques. Colonna Edition (La maison bleue, hameau de San Benedetto, F-20167 Alata. Tel/Fax: (33-4) 95253067 - email: colonnadistria.jj@wanadoo.fr - Internet: http://www.editeur-corse.com ). 2010, 158 pp, €17. ISBN 978-2-915922-41-7.
This short book is perfectly atypical and utterly brilliant. Atypical because of the argument it makes and the author's freedom of spirit. A philosopher and economist by training, the Corsican author is a disciple of Antoine Pinay and began his career in the finance ministry in France before going into politics and being elected in Paris in the circles of Jacques Chirac. This earned him a seat at the European Parliament from 1995 to 1999, before returning to the municipal team in Paris. He soon left, 'disgusted' as he put it with what he saw going on around him. Returning to his earlier post as an advisor at the finance ministry, his work took him to Istanbul and then on to Bratislava, where he had the pleasure of guiding Slovakia in its efforts to join the euro. He comments upon this time in the editorials he published in 'Nouvelles de Slovaquie,' a monthly magazine published by the Mission Economique Française. This is where the book becomes quite brilliant because the editorials published in the book are very plain speaking. There are innumerable passages where Giansily gaily criticises cabinet offices for being as 'burdensome as they are Anglo-Saxon,' acting more in favour of the banks than in favour of Slovakia joining the single currency. In December 2005, he wrote a paper on the debate about the EU's Financial Perspectives (budget) for 2007-2013, intending it to be provocative for the 'British partners, who had been freeloaders in the EU since 1983 thanks to the generous rebate granted to Margaret Thatcher to help her deal with temporary problems…' The author, who is vice-president of the Centre International de Formation Européenne then points out that without a decent budget, there cannot be a Common Agricultural Policy or solidarity with the have-nots. A highly topical paper!
(MT)
*** ROCH HANNECART: Le dernier carré. Les charbonniers belges, libres entrepreneurs face à la CECA (1950-1959). Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (1 av. Maurice, B-1050 Brussels. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - Email: pie@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). Euroclio series, No. 51. 2010, 392 pp, €40-50. ISBN 978-90-5201-574-3.
Resulting from six years of research for a doctorate at the history and civilisation department of the European University Institute in Florence, this book invites readers to examine the causes of an industrial crisis of which Belgium still bears the scars - hundreds of slagheaps remain as a reminder that coal-mining made the fortune of this little country that was set up in 1830, and even raised it to the ranks of the leading industrial powers at the turn of the twentieth century. The scars also bear witness to the sheer scale of the tragedy that hit the industry in the 1950s because the coal-mining colossus proved to have feet of clay with ageing mines, some of the oldest and deepest in Europe, which were therefore no longer so profitable. This is also the story of the Belgian coal-mine owners who would obsessively fight until the bitter end to remain free and independent businessmen, refusing state intervention in this strategic industry: 'In addition to being highly reputed engineers, they were proud of the fact that their mines were private and they were therefore the final vestiges of a species that was dying out in the Europe of the ECSC,' explains the author. Finally, it is the story of the setting up of the European Coal and Steel Community in the wake of the Schuman Declaration that the Belgian coal-mine owners fought tooth and nail against in order to defend their independence and privileges, although the transitory aid scheme introduced to help Belgian coal-mining adapt to the new market conditions did diminish their hostility in the end. In 1958, the aid scheme came to an end just as the world coal market entered the most serious crisis in its history, under pressure from oil and gas. It is this tragedy that scientifically unfolds in detail in this book, explaining how 'both the blindness and the stubbornness of public and private players seem to have unwittingly pushed an entire industry to the wall and ruined it,' plunging 'some parts of southern Belgium into structural backwardness that is remains to this day.'
(MT)
*** BENOIT MAJERUS, SONJA KMEC, MICHEL MARGUE, PIT PEPORTE (Eds.): Dépasser le cadre national des 'lieux de mémoire' - Nationale Erinnerungsorte hinterfragt. Innovations méthodologiques, approches comparatives, lectures transnationales - Methodologische Innovationen, vergleichende Annäherungen, Transnationale Lektüren. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (see above). « Comparatisme et Société » series, No. 9. 2009, 274 pp, €34.90. ISBN 978-90-5201-561-3.
It was in 1994 that French historian Pierre Nora first spoke about 'places of memory' and the idea really took off. Firstly, despite the fact that Nora only referred to places of memory in France, the idea was adopted in other countries and regions, from Denmark to the 'Grand Saar-Lor-Lux Region' via East Germany, Quebec and the Lorraine, at such a speed that it encouraged other people to examine 'areas of memory' for Europe as a whole. One way that this 'Europeanisation' or even 'universalisation' occurred was by taking an overview and comparing and contrasting areas once only considered from the point of view of their national context (like Verdun) or by becoming aware of a 'universal memory heritage' (like Auschwitz). The domain also expanded out beyond historians alone when it came to examining questions of 'collective memory' and 'cultural memory'. Ten years after the birth of the concept, Luxembourg academics organised a conference to compare research into wider areas of memory. As historian Michel Margue, Dean of the Arts, Humanities and Art and Science of Education Faculty of Luxembourg University, explains, the aim was to examine whether 'the memory cultures of the different countries in Europe are moving closer by opening up to the European perspective, a much more powerful phenomenon than the introduction of European symbols, commemorations or the canonisation of historic figures from above.' In the image of the conference of which it is the proceedings, the book contains articles in English, French and German and is divided into three sections. The first contains methodological reflections by historians in the face of the debates that enliven circles of sociologists, linguists, students of literature, art historians, philosophers, etc. In the second section, the authors compare and contrast the historiographical writings of 'national' places of memory in the various national scientific cultures and the last section looks at European and/or transnational places of memory, with the authors examining how they are formed and in what way they differ from national places of memory.
(PBo)
*** KAI-OLAF LANG: Postkommunistische Nachfolgepartein im östlichen Mitteleuropa. Erfolgsvoraussetzungen und Entwicklungsdynamiken. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft (3-5 Waldseestrasse, D-76530 Baden-Baden. Tel: (49-07221) 2104-0 - Fax: 2104-27 - email: nomos@nomos.de - Internet: http://www.nomos.de ). « Internationale Politik und Sicherheit » series. 2009, 359 pp, €59. ISBN 978-3-8329-3642-6.
After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the political parties that emerged from the Communist regime continued to exist in the countries of central and Eastern Europe, but none of them are in power today. This book's author looks at why the Communist parties are in opposition in the post-Communist world. Kai-Olaf Lang starts by analysing the situation from various hypotheses like access to financial resources or the heritage of the Communist past. The remainder of the book is essentially an analyses of the various national situations with the author reviewing events in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia before comparing and contrasting the situation of the parties that took over from the Communist regime. In conclusion, he looks at whether the Communist parties might see a rise in their electoral fortunes in the future or whether their decline is set to continue.
(JD)
*** KORINE AMACHER, LEONID HELLER (Eds.): Le retour des héros. La reconstruction des mythologies nationales à l'heure du postcommunisme. Editions Academia Bruylant (29 Grand Place, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve. Tel: (32-10) 452395 - Fax: 454480 - email: promotion@academia-bruylant.be - Internet: http://www.academia-bruylant.be ). "Publications de l'Institut Européen de l'Université de Genève" series, No. 6. 2010, 276 pp, €27 (Belgium and France), €29 elsewhere. ISBN 978-2-87209-958-0.
In this period of peace and democracy across Europe, heroes are taking some time off. We are still in great need of heroes, however, as is shown in post-Communist societies in search of a new identity and legitimacy for the new forms of power, which have re-written the past and re-invented heroes - founders, protectors, discoverers, inspirers and so on. The aim of a conference organised three years ago by Geneva University's European Institute and the Slav Languages Department of Lausanne University was to investigate this 're-appropriation of history' and the making and un-making heroes from old or new individuals for an entire country as the incarnation of specific political or cultural content, be it good or bad. The contributions cover central European countries like Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic along with Ukraine and Russia, all countries 'where history lessons today are both contradictory and highly charged symbolically'. The proceedings of this multidisciplinary conference constitute this very erudite book which will clearly help readers gain greater understanding of an area of Europe that remains on the other side of a mental wall for many citizens of the 'old Europe'.
(MT)