*** LUUK VAN MIDDELAAR: Le passage à l'Europe. Histoire d'un commencement. Éditions Gallimard (5-7 rue Gaston Gallimard, F-75328 Paris cedex 07. Tel: (33-1) 49544200 - fax: 45449403 - Internet: http://www.gallimard.fr ). « Bibliothèque des idées » series. 2012, 470 pp, €27.90. ISBN 978-2-07013033-7.
This book was published in Dutch in 2009 in the Netherlands. This version is the French translation of an extremely successful a PhD thesis written by Luuk van Middelaar, a recognised Dutch historian who undertook his research studies at the University of Amsterdam and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. In an attempt to analyse the relationship between European states, the author writes a three “sphere” paradigm: the “external sphere”, consisting of all sovereign states on the continent, which often resorted to war to resolve their conflicts; the “internal sphere”, Europe and its institutions that are independent of the states (Commission, Court of Justice and the European Parliament) and the “intermediate sphere”, which brings together representatives from member states, the Council of Ministers and the European Council.
He bases his thesis on the idea that, “this intermediate sphere has proved to be the main source of European policy and the first point of liaison”. There are many references to European and American historians, philosophers and political scientists from the 17th century up until the present day and the author brilliantly and eruditely describes the slow gestation process of the European Union genesis in an international environment. This has been full of crises and unpredictable surprises, replete with internal struggles for power that have been both discreet and spectacular. We have also witnessed the irresistible emergence of the European Council, which obtained the status of a European institution with its own stable presidency and central role conferred upon it by the Lisbon Treaty: “The European Council provided the Union with the necessary impetus for its development and defined the general political orientations and priorities”. The author ultimately analyses the action undertaken by these three different spheres to win support from the European public. He concludes that the European Parliament speaks on the behalf of European citizens, whilst the European Council speaks on behalf of citizens as nationals of member states and each member of the European Council has become in its own respective country, “the” representative of Europe.
This brilliant illustration provokes lively commentary and criticism in equal measure on both the form and content of the ideas put forward. Many readers will be surprised, indeed shocked by the form (“Bureaus” and “Bureaucracy” are the terms used instead of “institutions”) from the beginning of the book, (“The Europe of Bureaus”) to the end - “The escape outside history into a bureaucracy as sought by Monnet and his consorts…”. In this connection, the former European Commissioner from France, Robert Marjolin, is portrayed as the, “vice president of the European bureaucracy in Brussels”. Even worse, the Commission is nothing other than a “factory churning out words” and the “guard dog” of the treaties. He explains that the European Parliament, “has not ceased to pick up the crumbs of the different competencies due to the pressure exerted by friendly governments and the strengthening of its own (harmful) powers”. This scathing terminology demonstrates that lurking behind the historian is a politician who is not deaf to the siren calls of the sovereignists.
On the substance of the book, at least three remarks should be made. First of all, the actors in the “internal” and “intermediate” spheres are subject to the same treaty: the European Commission proposes ideas, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament decide. Once again, a populist language regarding the bureaucracy is adopted and the author's accusation that the Commission unceasingly demonstrates a judicial zealousness is both inappropriate and misplaced. Furthermore, significant progress has been achieved following consultations between actors in the two spheres. It is also useful to point out to Luuk van Middelaar that Commissioners can become prime ministers, which was the case with the economists Raymond Barre and Mario Monti. Secondly, the author brusquely rejects the theory of functionalism, namely that the European institutions were conceived as an antidote to war and a driver for political integration. Does this mean that Raymond Barre is not one of the founding fathers of Monetary Union? Or that Jacques Delors is not one of founding fathers of the Single Market? Is it false to say that the Single Market helped promote the transition to an integrated market of capital, a transition that was compelled by the single currency? Will budgetary union and the single bond market not be the next stages of this process? Thirdly, the author forgets to point out that the inspiration behind the concept of the European Council was… Jean Monnet. This individual had laid down the foundations in Paris, London and Bonn before the December 1974 summit, which his Memoirs attest. An additional precision, Jean Monnet was in fact even more audacious given that it was he who had proposed the terminology, “provisional European government”. On this point, Monnet would therefore appear to agree somewhat agree with Luuk van Middelaar almost forty years before this book was conceptualised or written. Nonetheless, is it really necessary to listen to a bureaucrat who is guilty of having invented European functionalism? Sometimes, unfortunately, this dogmatic denigration is the historian's undoing, as well as the history he describes. There is a lot of doubt that enters this account, even if the author now argues that a number of translation problems have distorted his ideas …
Michel Richonnier
*** GEERT MAK: De hond van Tisma. Wat als Europa klapt ? Uitgeverij Atlas (481 Herengracht, 1017 BT Amsterdam, Postbus 13, 1000 AA Amsterdam. Tel: (31-20) 5249800 - Internet: http://www.uitgeverijatlas.nl ). 2012, 94 pp. €7.50. ISBN 978-90-254-3920-0.
The author of “In Europe” has seen the latter translated into more than 20 languages and it has been discussed in a number of television series. In this new book, Geert Mak (whilst awaiting his next book on the US) seeks to provide an account of his feelings regarding the current crisis. The title, “Tisma's Dog”, came from one of his friends, the Serbian writer, Tisma, when he was telling him about how his dog, who, paralysed by panic, was stuck on a block of floating ice in the Danube and couldn't find the courage to swim to the nearby bank. Tisma saw in this the reflection of the soul of his compatriots during the fratricidal Balkans war. With the crisis raging for almost 5 years, Europe has lost its attraction as a laboratory for new forms of co-operation between states and a possible model for the rest of the world. The magic has clearly disappeared and the law of the jungle appears to have returned. Suddenly, Europe is disorientated, indecisive and paralysed by panic on its block of ice. How did it get into this situation? According to the author, the source of this stems from the confusion created by this question: how is it possible to allow a local problem, that of Greece, to become a danger to the European and indeed global economy? In the eyes of his Dutch compatriots, who are loath to come to the rescue of the euro, he points out that the crisis is inextricably linked to a variety of problems regarding security, peace and stability. Support for the euro is, above all, support for their own prosperity, he explains, reminding them that thanks to the euro, they have annually earned the equivalent of an additional monthly salary. At the same time, Geert Mak, entirely concurs with the observation made by his fellow Dutchman, Karel van Wolferen, that all Europeans aged between 25 and 75 are now obliged to acknowledge that the vision of the world in which they have been raised has now been superseded by the reality of a globalised world. A new dynamic may possibly surge forward, together with new priorities, which will not necessarily be entirely negative. Nonetheless, what counts is and will be the mentality with which Europe and European leaders respond and act. Will they be able to counter threats to democracy and avoid the trap of the interventionists that lead to hell? Given that we are, individually and collectively, increasingly interdependent, Europe will not be able to reinvent itself, asserts the author, unless it relocates the desire for wanting to live together. The author therefore says that the temptation to resort to the inter-governmental strategy for Europe should be avoided and which has once again proved so impotent in the face of the current crisis, as well as, that of the “greater Europe”. It should be noted that this forecast, written in a direct and very lucid style, is backed up by the visionary discussions with the late Max Kohnstamm. It should also be noted that Tisma's Dog was ultimately rescued by children. Perhaps we will be too through the intervention of developing economies?
(LT)
*** PIERRE DUCHATEAU: Mon aventure européenne. Images et souvenirs. 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 ). "Mémoires de l'Europe en devenir" series, No. 3. 2011, 159 pp. €27.90. ISBN 978-90-5201-790-7.
He arrived in Brussels on 13 May 1958, at the time that General de Gaulle had returned to power and no one could leave French territory without official authorisation. It was in this way that the European career of a Frenchman who, under Presidents Louis Armand and Etienne Hirsch, began today the foundations of Euratom, the European Atomic Energy Community. After a period as head of Cabinet for Commissioner Jean-François Deniau, Pierre Duchâteau then worked between 1974 - 1984 as the director-general the European Commission's external relations, before becoming the first ambassador of this body in China and Mongolia. This book bears witness to this remarkable career, written by his wife shortly before his death on 22 July 2009. He is revealed as less of a man solidly hewn from a European conviction than an adventurer and lover of Europe, who, through a number of subjective flashes recounts the different stages of his trajectory and the meetings and events that formed him.
(MT)
*** MICHEL SEYMOUR, GUY LAFOREST (Editors): Le fédéralisme multinational. Un modèle viable ? Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (see address attached). "Diversitas" series, No. 10. 2011, 343 pp, €40.50. ISBN 978-90-5201-749-5.
This book puts a number of texts together, the majority of which form the subject of a presentation during an international workshop on multinational federalism organised by the University of Quebec in Montréal, in September 2009. The two main questions that run as a lightning conductor throughout the book are the following: what are the questions and problems created by the presence of several nations and languages in a federal state? Is federalism the ideal model for managing national diversity? All the different contributions touch on these themes and which are all provided in light of a number of complex legal and political problems that come to the fore in Canada and in Belgium and Spain, in Europe. In their conclusions, the philosopher Michel Seymour (University of Montréal) and the political scientist Guy Laforest (University of Laval) demonstrate that federalism, “is not necessary the best solution to the problem created by multi-nationality within a state”. The book also illustrates that federalism is more appropriate for political entities that, in the example of the European Union, involve different “nationalities” than those in which two populations are engaged in a logic of domination between a majority and a minority.
Readers of the European library should pay particular attention to the contribution made by Daniel Innerarity (University of Saragossa) on the, “political innovation of the European Union”. As the director of the Institute of Governance at the University of the Basque Country, this philosopher begins by pointing out that the Union suffers less from a democratic deficit than a “cognitive deficit” because its citizens and even its leaders find it difficult to understand how much it is, “a real laboratory, which experiments with a new conception of identity, power and citizenship in the context of globalisation”. He then seeks to reveal the originality underpinning the European Union in three different ways. The first shows that the European identity is, “one we make of others” in that it has less of a geophysical consistency than the Indian subcontinent and does not constitute a unitary civilisation. He also shows how it cannot be reduced to simply the “West” (for a long time, the Alps represented a much more definitive geographical and cultural border than the Mediterranean, which was the centre of civilisation) and that it is the first to dissociate cultural and political identity, which makes, “democracy possible without demos or with divers demoï”. The second sphere is through the absence of borders and limitations that have characterised it and whose margins are more flexible and affected by the passage of time, as testified by European Neighbourhood Policy, which proves that the Commission is now aware of the fact that it has to shift from being a kind of “fortress Europe to a topography of border regions that are able to reduce Europe's separation and that of the rest of the world”. Finally, the Union is pushing forward its identity in the context of globalisation without cancelling out its internal diversity or opposing the identities of others in its quest to assert itself. Ultimately, it is proving itself that, “globalisation is not a threat to democracy but an opportunity for extending it beyond the limitations of the nation-state”. The author of this book concludes that the European experience has at least the merit of constituting, “the embryo of a genuine cosmopolitan community”.
(MT)
*** MIN REUCHAMPS: L'avenir du fédéralisme en Belgique et au Canada. Quand les citoyens en parlent. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang ( see address attached). "Diversitas" series, No. 13. 2011, 264 pp. €30.50. ISBN 978-90-5201-789-1.
Min Reuchamps is the co-director of the Centre of Quebec Studies at the University of Liège. In this book he examines how the Belgians and Canadians interpret the idea of federalism in their respective countries and how they envisage its future evolution. It is true that Belgium and Canada constitute two extremely interesting examples of multinational federalism based on the cohabitation is of two national communities, in which both minorities speak French. This scientific undertaking are was based on four focus groups of citizens, which enabled 127 Belgian (French and Dutch speaking) and Canadian citizens (English and French speaking) to talk about their experiences and politico-linguistic aspirations. These individual “histories” enabled the author to identify five ideal typologies. He demonstrates, for example, that the Belgian Dutch speaking federalist appears to be the most “regionalist”, whilst his French-speaking alter ego remains much more focused on the idea of Belgium. In Canada, the two similar profiles differentiate themselves by a more significant attachment of the country demonstrated by the English speakers, whilst French speakers are equally attached to Quebec and Canada. This book provides a detailed analysis of this crucial question.
(MT)