*** CHRISTOPHE BOUNEAU, DAVID BURIGANA, ANTONIO VARSORI (Eds.): Les trajectoires de l'innovation technologique et la construction européenne / Trends in Technological Innovation and the European Construction. Des voies de structuration durable? / The Emerging of Enduring Dynamics? Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (1 av. Maurice, B-1050 Bruxelles. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Euroclio" series, No. 56. 2010, 259 pp, €30-50. ISBN 978-90-5201-605-4.
Emerging from an international, interdisciplinary conference of humanities and social science researchers at Padua University in June 2008, the eleven essays in this book examine the technological challenges of European integration and their repercussions on innovation in industry. In other words, the authors shed new light on the European project, examining it from the viewpoint of technology and technological innovation from the 1970's onwards. Running throughout the book are three questions. Firstly, whether the varied and complex technological innovation paths are sustainable foundations for the European Union. Secondly, what do they really contribute to the European integration process when one looks behind the rhetoric from an economic and geopolitical vantage point? Thirdly, can they help identify the paths taken or endured by Member States' governments during the "integration" process? The editors comment in this connection, as it happens, that it is better to talk about the European project and cooperation than integration as such, making a clear distinction between the European Area and the European Community, because innovation trajectories take one directly back to complex systems of actors involving governments, companies and multinational organisations, of varying shapes and sizes, and the role of international organisations like NATO does not facilitate the establishment of sustainable pathways for laying the foundations of European integration.
In the first section of the book, four essays examine the horizontal dimension of European technological policies through the Framework Programmes for R&D, trans-European grids, Galileo and the emergence at EU level of environmental and urban problems. Prof. Pascal Griset of Paris-Sorbonne University and director of the 'Centre de Recherche en Histoire de l'Innovation,' shows how national approaches prevailed in IT and communications, partly due to the absence of an EU industrial policy, but also because of the decision by the EU to follow a strictly liberal path, which stopped Europe from developing a 'telecoms Airbus.' Laura Grazi and Laura Scichilone, researchers at Sienna University in Italy, explain that this was not the case for the environment and town and country planning, for which domains the European Economic Community was "a model for transcending the exclusively national dimension, offering its Member States the opportunity to deal with the challenge of the geographical interdependence of environmental issues on a political and institutional level." Arthe Van Laer retraces the history and stages that led to the first Framework Programme in July 1983, more particularly the drafting of Article 130 of the Single European Act, which gave the European Community the aim of building the scientific and technological basis for European industry and encouraging it to become more competitive internationally. For this protégée of Prof. Dumoulin, Article 130 made it possible to move beyond some countries' refusal to countenance over-"integrationist" supranational approaches, and a common EU research policy was developed thanks to the decisive efforts, she says, of Commissioner Etienne Davignon. Finally, Prof. Johan Schot of Eindhoven University sets out his model based on the notion of a system of innovation actors operating according to formal or informal rules designed to facilitate management, or even governance, of transnational infrastructure grids.
The second and third sections of the book are devoted to strategic industries, firstly energy, with four essays providing an overview of technological innovation through the OECD's Halden nuclear reactor in the late 1950's and early 1960's, the ambivalent role of technological cooperation in European nations' energy strategies in the 1970's in response to the oil crisis, the complex technological innovation trajectories in European countries' electrical industries since 1945 and finally, the genesis of European interconnection of electricity grids, the focus being on the dilatation and varying shapes and sizes that the grid comes in. The final section provides detailed analysis of the space, aeronautical and car industries, in which the authors show that all three are dominated by the influence of national interests and Europe is only present as a backdrop.
Michel Theys
*** SACHA GARBEN: EU Higher Education Law. The Bologna Process and Harmonization by Stealth. Kluwer Law International (P.O Box 316, 2400 AH Alphen aan de Rijn, The Netherlands. email: kluwerlaw@turpin-distribution.com - Internet: http://www.kluwerlaw.com ). "European Monographs" series, No. 76. 2011, 274 pp, €100. ISBN 978-90-411-3365-6
The Bologna Process began life in Italy's gastronomic capital in 1999 when EU27 education ministers signed a declaration that would have a much bigger impact than even they imagined because the Bologna Process today has a huge influence on higher education in no fewer than forty-seven different countries. This revolution has spawned a wealth of publications examining it from all angles apart from the legal side of things. A law graduate from Maastricht University and the College of Europe, Sacha Garben fills the gap with this book following on from her 2008 thesis for the European University Institute in Florence. She addresses issues like (1) avoidance of the democratically legitimate procedures of the EU's institutional framework for cultural reasons connected with state sovereignty, (2) specific areas of overlap between EU law and the Bologna Process and their implications, (3) voluntary intergovernmental cooperation as a paradigmatic global shift of internationalization policies in education, (4) the idea that the university is being redefined, from a social institution to an industry, (5) the increasingly influential role in the process, by means of funding and coordination, of the European Commission, (6) students as recipients of services and (7) the fact that Member States have tried to sidestep the EU's growing influence on higher education. She makes a very useful description of how the domain covered by the Process has been vastly expanded over the past decade, looking in detail at related European Court of Justice case-law and how the Bologna Process has been incorporated into domestic law in Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Her remarkable work is interspersed with a legal assessment of the Bologna Process in the light of the way democratic demands are dealt with, along with the fate reserved for transparency and responsibility.
(PBo)
*** MIRJA-TYTTI TALIB, JYRKI LOIMA, HEINI PAAVOLA, SANNA PATRIKAINEN (Eds.): Dialogs on Diversity and Global Education. Editions Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, Postfach 350, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32- 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). 2009, 205 pp, €27-90. ISBN 978-3-631-58806-2.
This book looks at how culture, ethnicity and diversity are dealt with by education systems around the world. With the ever-increasing speed of data exchange and the fact that it is easier for human beings to physically move around the globe these days, concepts like multiculturalism and interculturalism are increasingly entering the classroom in every part of the world.. How these issues are interpreted, however, depends very strongly on the interpreter's nationality and culture. The authors of this book are all university experts in multicultural education, who have written essays addressing the question from a number of viewpoints. They start by analysing what the concepts represent in Northern Europe, North America and Asia, going on to describe educational experiments in schools in the three areas of the globe. Other essays point out the key role of teachers in ensuring that multiculturality is well received by pupils because it is the pupils that have to come to terms with differences in the classroom and who ultimately determine whether the concepts will be accepted or rejected by society in general.
(NDu)
*** SASKIA BONJOUR, ANDREA REA, DIRK JACOBS (Eds.): The Others in Europe. Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles (26 av. Paul Héger, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 6503799 - Fax: 6503794 - email: editions@ulb.ac.be - Internet: http://www.editions-universite-bruxelles.be ). "Etudes européennes" series. 2011, 203 pp, €20. ISBN 978-2-8004-1506-2.
In the European Union today, the Other, the Foreigner, the One who Stands Out has changed. In the introduction, the editors point out that "the old distinction between nationals and foreigners seems to have transformed itself into a triangular logic distinguishing nationals, EU citizens and third country residents," and hence, "in the process, the Other has increasingly become the non-European Other - even if it is still unsettled who the European We might be exactly." In order to gain some understanding of what is going on in these new social and legal categories, researchers connected with the Université Libre de Bruxelles representing various academic disciplines - law, sociology, politics, social psychology and anthropology - pool their vision in eleven chapters. The first six address the topic from the legal, political and sociological angles. Kees Groenendijk comments that in European citizenship, EU law has created a difference between "Us" and "Them," Them being people from outside the EU, but he says that this categorisation does not inevitably lead to "stigmatisation." The editors wonder, however, whether it is about time to demand that the EU's legal system stopped creating obstacles that prevent non-EU passport holders from enjoying their rights. Yves Pascouau shows that rules governing the integration of foreigners aim to reduce immigration, particularly the arrival of family members, while Saskia Bonjour shows that there are far greater restrictions in place in this domain in the Netherlands than in France. Chloé Hublet argues that the way non-EU passport holders are protected against discrimination on the grounds of nationality has hindered their integration in Europe, and this even applies to immigrants who have adopted the nationality of their host country and to their children, which goes to confirm, she says, "the construction of an ethnic European society." The same issue is also studied from in the light of obstacles to the free circulation of certain categories of people, with the last essays examining the scope of "reasonable arrangements" for labour relations in the light of the Belgian situation. The other five chapters address the issue in the light of anthropology and social psychology and are equally fascinating!
(MT)
*** STUART ANDERSON: Answering the Critics of Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies (1000 Massachusetts Avenue, N. W., Washington DC, USA. Tel: (1-202) 8420200 - Fax: 8423490 - Internet: http://www.cato.org ). "Trade Briefing Paper" No. 32. 2011, 12 pp, $2.
Published by a US centre which aims to increase public understanding of the benefits of free trade and the inevitable costs of protectionism, this brief study sets out arguments to win over people opposed to planned changes to US immigration policy. The author says that the reforms would cut illegal immigration, legalising some of today's illegal aliens and lightening the burden on the budget.
(MT)
*** ANSGAR KREGEL-OLFF: Der Einfluss der Europäischen Menschenrechtskonvention und der Rechtsprechung des Europäischen Gerichtshofs für Menschenrechte auf das deutsche -Erbrecht. Peter Lang (see above). 2011, 260 p., €51-20. ISBN 978-3-631-61967-4.
One of the Council of Europe's greatest achievements thus far is undoubtedly the creation and application of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), which has hugely influences the legislation of countries in the wider Europe. It is true to say that the Convention has become a universal legal standard and a reference point in both Europe and the rest of the world. From this starting point, Angsar Kregel-Olff looks in this book at what he describes as the ECHR's vast influence on the German legal system. The book is divided into six chapters. The author starts by setting the ECHR against the backdrop of German law, analysing its role and impact, before taking a more analytical look at the ECHR's legal heritage, particularly when it comes to non-discrimination. The following four chapters examine the ECHR's influence in the German legal system practice, particularly in the light of changes to bring German law in line with the ECHR. The author looks at the growing influence of European law in areas covered by the Convention, whose influence has grown with the assertion of the primacy of European law over national law. Ansgar Kregel-Olff ends by considering potential changes to the German legal system in the future.
(JD)