*** MARJORIE JOUEN: La politique européenne de cohésion. La Documentation française (29 quai Voltaire, F-75007 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 40157010. Internet: http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr ). "Réflexe Europe / Institutions & Politiques" series. 2011, 188 pp, €14. ISBN 978-2-11-008330-2.
Like the Common Agricultural Policy, the European Union's Cohesion Policy will soon be the scene of a pitched battle in the negotiations over the Financial Perspectives for 2014-2020, which are expected to be the bloodiest yet, surpassing all the intense bickering seen thus far in the history of the European project. To put it bluntly, the question is whether the EU27 still needs such a budget-guzzling regional policy in these times of belt-tightening and austerity. In a far more nuanced but equally devastating manner, Marjorie Jouen says as much in the very first paragraph of the introduction to this book: "Beyond the strictly financial controversy, there are more political matters at stake. Clearly, the expression of inter-State solidarity is no longer unanimously agreed upon in the greater and more culturally diverse European Union. Divergences about the new face of European Cohesion Policy have been followed by previously unknown infra-regional splits that have emerged under the impact of globalisation and also the current indecision about the political aims of the European Union"…
Marjorie Jouen elaborates upon this situation in the determinedly didactic and fully rigorous pages of this book, clearly explaining a highly complex issue. Lively layout and the creative use of tables and boxes enhance its user-friendliness. Advisor at Notre Europe, a think tank set up by Jacques Delors, Marjorie Jouen has been dealing with regional policy and rural development policy since her work at the European Commission's Forward Planning Department in the 1990s. The book confirms that like ii or not, it is important to know where one is coming from and what direction one is heading in. This is the history of the rise of regional policy, thought up by the first Delors Commission as a way of ensuring that the most vulnerable countries and regions could survive the impact of the Single Market then being developed, and the major challenges along the way, all set out in the first sections of the book. Marjorie Jouen explains the founding principles and instruments of Cohesion Policy when, on 24 June 1988, a Regulation set the Structural Funds in motion, namely the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the European Social Fund and the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund. In the 1990s, Cohesion Policy even became "one of the favoured means of European integration in the face of the limits to purely economic integration (represented by the achievement of the Single Market) and the vicissitudes of the attempts at achieving deeper political unity". Nevertheless, over and above the Irish economic miracle (which was brought about by the Cohesion Policy), it was not long before its limits thwarted the hopes of "European integration from below" - which Jacques Delors encouraged in preference to "European integration from above" in the form of legislation and treaties. In the second part of the book, the development of regional policy is assessed along with how it fared under the "Great Enlargement," a period characterised by Member States granting increasing importance to financial matters, "EU value-added" being introduced as an economic criterion and a political argument for re-designing regional policy. This was also a time of "questions about the desirable level of intervention in cohesion matters". This question would soon become ever-present because the "time of challenging everything" was about to begin.
The third part of the book analyses the substance and limits of the 2007-2013 programming period, during which the Commission and the Member States have endowed Cohesion Policy with key words like concentration, strategy and simplification, each of which she analyses in detail, along with the main components of the 2006 reforms. The author examines changes introduced in 2009-2010 to deal with the economic crisis, noting "the limits of the 2007-2013 programming". The final section is devoted to the prospects for reform with the opening of negotiations on the Financial Perspectives for 2014-2020. This is an extremely interesting section of the book, in which the author asks whether the new budget will take greater account of the territorial dimension. She describes Cohesion Policy as "held hostage by its financial weight in crisis-ridden Europe". Running throughout the book is the key question of whether some regions will turn against their national governments because the governments are punishing them in the same of the sacrosanct austerity and belt-tightening. Michel Theys
** CORDULA WANDEL: Industry Agglomerations and Regional Development in Hungary. Economic Processes during European Integration. Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel.: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Schriften zur Wirtschaftstheorie und Wirtschaftspolitik" series, No. 42. 2010, 276 pp, €51-20. ISBN 978-3-631-60091-7.
This work arises from a doctoral thesis that started forming in Cordula Wandel's mind when she worked as an assistant for Monika Wulf-Matthies, the then European Regional Policy Commissioner. The author focussed her study on the effect of pre- and post-enlargement integration policies on industry concentration and regional development in Hungary. The economist author examines the country's business centres over a twenty-year period in the light of manufacturing and regional specialisation. Cordula Wandel explains the lessons for Hungary and for the extended European Union, along with the fate of European regional policy. (PBo)
*** FRANCESCO MANTINO: Les réformes de la politique de développement rural de l'UE et les défis à venir. Notre Europe (19 rue de Milan, F-75009 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 44589797 - Fax: 44589799 - email: info@notre-europe.eu - Internet: http://www.notre-europe.eu ). Policy Paper No. 40. 2010, 69 pp..
Research Director at the National Farm Economy Institute in Italy, Francesco Mantino is an internationally recognised rural development expert. In this new publication from Notre Europe, a think-tank set up by Jacques Delors, he examines the European rural development policy, which is now the second 'pillar' of the Common Agricultural Policy, in the light of its true characteristics, its aims and its policy instruments. In a three-pronged approach, he explains that the policy can play a significant role in promoting structural adjustment and ensuring rural areas remain viable, as long as the policy is adjusted to improve and extend the scope of the action carried out under its instruments, which should, in the future, deal with the major challenges of climate change, renewable energy, water resources, competitiveness and social cohesion In this connection, he does not recommend a revolution in the EU's rural development policy, or even a change to the two-pillar structure of the Common Agricultural Policy, but makes highly practical suggestions to ensure integrated rural development is applied more effectively in practice. The way he sees it, the rural development objective fits with the EUROPE 2020 Strategy and can be achieved through a better division of labour among the two Common Agricultural Policy pillars, along with greater integration with Cohesion Policy. All topics that will be at the heart of the negotiations, which are certain to be heated at times, over the upcoming Financial Perspectives and the future of environmental Europe. (MT)
*** Confrontations Europe (227 bld. Saint-Germain, F-75007 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 43173283 - Fax: 45561886 - email: confrontations@wanadoo.fr - Internet: http://www.confrontations.org ). April-June 2011, No. 94, 48 pp, €7.
Each issue of this review so close to the heart of former MEP Philippe Herzog is replete with a welter of contributions inviting readers to reflect and leave the beaten track of the old pensée unique that is fast fading away. The special report in this issue, for example, examines new solidarity that could be contemplated to ensure that the European Union can invent a new type of competitiveness since competitiveness has now "become an imperative for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth". Other essays examine the "major progress" made in economic governance at the March 2011 European Council, the courage displayed by Angela Merkel at that summit and the disappointed expectations in the field of energy at the same event. Two other articles stand out as highly topical. Firstly, Hervé Fischer explains that the economic crisis, financial deregulation and the troubles facing farmers, coupled with food, environmental and global climate issues, shed new light on "the need for a new public regulation doctrine for the emergence of sustainable agriculture". The "Competition and Solidarity Pact" he suggests is based on the desire to ensure sustainable farming across all the compartments of the Common Agricultural Policy, rejecting any "liberalisation without European and global regulations," putting the fight against climate change at the heart of the farm aid mechanisms, expanding the Common Agricultural Policy and introducing sustainable farm development rules at the World Trade Organisation. The other articles is an interview in which Jean-Louis Guigou calls for the setting up of a "community of destiny between Europe and the Mediterranean," based on the European Community as it was before it became the European Union. The interviewee, general delegate of the 'Institut de Prospective Economique du Monde Méditerranéen,' says that "Europe-Africa, through the lever of the Mediterranean, can become the development focus of the twenty-first century by pooling areas of proximity and complementarity". In his opinion, the EuroMed Community could be based not on iron and steel, but on energy ("where we stand in a relationship of symmetry rather than domination") and agriculture, "because it is not possible to imagine a reform of the CAP against a purely European backdrop, leaving out everyone who will be affected by food insecurity". Saying that it is too early at the moment for the Mediterranean to join the common agricultural markets, he suggests that the European Union should get involved in renovating various sections of the agri-food industry of its Southern neighbours - particularly fruit and vegetables, livestock farming and arable farming - being aware, he adds, that "the Southern shores of the Mediterranean are not competitors but are complementary to the Northern shores". (MT)
*** L'Europe en formation. Revue d'études sur la construction européenne et le fédéralisme - Journal of Studies on European Integration and Federalism. Centre international de formation européenne (10 av. des Fleurs, F-06000 Nice. Tel: (33-4) 93979397 - Fax: 93979398 - email: europe.formation@cife.eu - Internet: http://www.europeenformation.eu ). 2010, No. 358, 223 pp, €20. Annual subscription: €50.
This issue of the review set up by hard-line federalist Alexandre Marc comprises the usual column entitled "La vie politique en Europe et dans le monde" by Jean-Pierre Gouzy, along with contributions to a conference in Philadelphia in September 2010 on the impact of the global financial crisis on federal states, organised by the 'Associations Académiques Spécialisées dans les Etudes Fédéralistes.' L'Europe en Formation gives an account of the conference, which amounts to a travel invite because the financial crisis is assessed in federal countries like the United States (and its individual states), Germany and its Länder, Spain and its Autonomous Regions, Italy, Switzerland, South Africa and Australia, with editor-in-chief Frédéric Lépine adding to this intellectual guided tour of the world a piece on the European Union "in search of economic governance". (MT)
*** DIDIER MUSIEDLAK (Ed.): Les expériences corporatives dans l'aire latine. Peter Lang (see above). "Convergences" series, No. 53. 2010, 483 pp, €64. ISBN 978-3-03911-749-9.
How has the 'Latin area' contributed to corporatist experiences? It was to answer this question that an international conference was held in the autumn of 2006 at the “Ecole Normale Supérieure” in France to examine the efforts of four European countries (Spain, France, Italy and Portugal) and two Latin American countries (Argentina and Brazil), an account of which is given in this book. The essays are in English, Spanish, France, Italian or Portuguese and focus on the period of the resurgence of corporatism during the crisis with the introduction of the mass production economy in the wake of the 1880s. Back then, corporatism gained a new lease of life with the rise of the neologisms nationalism and socialism that started to invade the semantic field as traditional structures entered a period of crisis in the face of industrialisation and population pressure (immigration, proletarianisation and urban overpopulation), all highlighted by the inability of the traditional ruling classes to deal with these problems. As Prof. Didier Musiedlak (Professor of Contemporary History at “Université Paris Ouest La Défense”) explains, the new rise of corporatism was the inevitable consequence of a debate about the way the working masses were to be managed, both spiritually and materially. It appeared as the fruit of a new ideological front in opposition to the "counter-Socialist church," and also in opposition to liberalism, in an attempt to deal with the social question. To discern whether the corporatist experiences that emerged in this cultural area (described as homogeneous and governed by dictatorships between World War One and World War Two) were novel, the authors examine in turn the question of the origin of modern corporatism, the time when the debate started to take shape in society at large, and then the application of corporatist solutions in the State and manufacturing, enabling the authors to examine the "third way" mythology. (MT)