*** DIDIER GEORGAKAKIS (Editor): Le champ de l'Eurocratie. Une sociologie politique du personnel de l'UE. Economica (49 rue Héricart, F-75015 Paris. Tel: (33-3) 21795675 - Email: sav@commande.eyrolles.com - Internet: http://www.eyrolles.com ). "Études politiques" series. 2012, 356 p. €29. ISBN 978-2-7178-6132-7.
Who's hiding behind the “Eurocrats in Brussels” and the “European technocracy”? If these words have entered, as explains Professor Didier Georgakakis at the beginning of his introduction to this book, “the common linguistic heritage of Europeans and beyond”, it is undoubtedly to indicate the distance separating the new centre of power embodied by the European institutions and the citizens and their “traditional representatives”, who in some minds can be no other than representatives at a national level. Is this yet another verbal illusion? The sociologists who contributed to this book should be congratulated for exploring the other side of this deceptive image and who succeed in identifying the profile and type of social and professional career of these agents and powerbrokers at the centre of European power that has been in the making for the past sixty years. Didier Georgakakis (Jean Monnet Chair for European political sociology and the Strasbourg University Institute of Political Studies, as well as visiting professor at the College of Europe) are the authors who outline, through a succession of different enquiries, the rather unknown map of “the field of Eurocracy” and establish a topography of the agents and groups which make it up, by way of an analysis of their individual and collective biographies.
The authors of this book subsequently provide the reader with a rather unusual insight into the institutions making up the institutional triangle and which are interpreted less as classic organisations in the sense of structures of relations between the different agents involved with their trajectories, remit and varying degrees of legitimacy. They are indeed interpreted as pieces making up, “a hybrid area where different factors, members from the management structures and institutions, representatives from member states or social and economic interest groups, the more or less permanent career professionals at the Council, from many different horizons, with their multiple profiles… are permanently doing battle to define the sense” of the Union and the “legitimate ownership to govern it”. Willy Beauvallet and Sébastien Michon demonstrate that a hard core of MEPs have taken a position on the basis of the specific institutional capital of the European Parliament and that it is made up of an avant-garde, which constitutes the real driving force behind the institutionalisation of the parliament. In the chapter, “A Commission under Pressure?” Professor Georgakakis demonstrates that a distinction must be made between officials, “who make their life in and for” the European Union and those who hold only temporary posts and positions, which mean that, “ it is not only the vision of Europe… more or less federalist, technocratic, intergovernmental… which is changing, it is its entire situation or, if one prefers, its degree of individual and collective rootedness”. In the wake of the reform initiated by Kinnock, he shows that, “the ethos of a European public service is under threat (based on the ethos of builder… to be replaced by administrative executives… who are increasingly difficult to differentiate from other bureaucrats in the public and private sector internationally”. At the same time, in the context of the increased political legitimacy of decreasing numbers of European Commissioners and the taking in hand of the Commission by member states, it comes as no surprise that, “the most integrated agents are tempted to deny the legitimacy of the Commissioners” and particularly the one at their head of the organisation. All of a sudden the “European project” becomes much vaguer than it ever has been before, to the point that certain actors begin to feel that they have been … had.
The different angles and analysis provided in this book are both rich and incisive, independent and appropriate and apply as much to permanent representatives (Filippa Chatzistravrou suggests that they be called “semi permanent” even though some of them end up by embracing a “European career”), leaders of the European Central Bank and the actors, “involved in military Europe”. Professor Philippe Aldrin (University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis) provides a clarifying analysis of the developments in the efficiency of European institutional communication over a long period, which leads him to point out that, “the incorporation of a professionalism from the commercial communications sector into specialised Community administrative services” is an obvious shift in the eyes of journalists but which does not ensure, on the contrary, that the European Union is capable of meeting the future challenge of developing a strategy, the resources and instruments that can reduce the uncertainty of a public and free area that is pluralist and sometimes oppositional, whilst avoiding a political and media process for producing propaganda. Other contributions examine the experts making up the advisory groups at the Commission, as well as the permanent Eurocrats, consisting of interest groups and lobbyists, actors at the European Trade Union Confederation and big business leaders. Finally, the icing on the cake comes with a contribution by Professor George Ross, who demonstrates on the basis of interviews conducted within the Eurocrats' camp to what extent the most permanent of the European old guard have been able to influence the response provided to the most recent crisis. A Commissioner of long date confided in him that, “the European Union is a cardinal sin against the Westphalian order… and just as the church has always preached, we often have to repent for our sins …” Amen!
Michel Theys
*** FRANCOIS-XAVIER PETIT: Le Parlement de l'Europe au-dessus du vide. L'identité politique des eurodéputés. L'Harmattan (5-7 rue de l'Ecole Polytechnique, F-75005 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 40467920 - fax: 43258203 - Email: diffusion.harmattan@wanadoo.fr - Internet: http://www.librairieharmattan.com ). « Logiques sociales » series. 2012, 245 pp. €25. ISBN 978-2-296-97032-8.
This book stems from a Masters in anthropology at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales. It is divided into three different parts. In the first part, the author examines the way in which MEPs think about and interpret Europe and covers the areas of culture, the relationship to the past and present, as well as the room for manoeuvre they have and the dynamic they contribute towards building their political identity. The author then tackles the way in which European construction has been put together insofar as the different balances and processes that structure it, particularly in light of the impact of enlargement and citizenship and the possible moulding of a European identity. The author ultimately seeks to understand how political identity is constructed in the specific context of the European Parliament and helps him locate the position and the role played by Eurosceptics in this unique identity and configuration.
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*** HANS-W. MICKLITZ, BRUNO DE WITTE (Editors): The European Court of Justice and the Autonomy of the Member States. Intersentia Publishing (31 Groenstraat, B-2640 Mortsel. Tel: (32-3) 6801550 - fax: 6587121 - Email: mail@intersentia.be - Internet: http://www.intersentia.com ). 2012, 402 pp. €95. £90, $133. ISBN 978-94-000-0026-1.
The scope covered by the European Court of Justice does not cease to grow with every new treaty introduced: criminal justice, police co-operation, opportunities provided to national jurisdictions to use the preliminary reference mechanism in the area of immigration law, the Charter of Fundamental Rights are also new areas where the judges in Luxembourg now have a remit for intervening. This paradox effectively means that member state governments can, at an individual level, lodge complaints against European decisions that restrict their political autonomy in a given sensitive area. Nonetheless, until now, they have all collectively agreed to confirm and extend the extended powers that the European Court of Justice enjoys for ensuring the appropriate application of European legislation. Nevertheless, what has been true until now, will not necessarily be the case in the future, given that recrimination with regard to specific decisions and orientations provided by ECJ judges in specific political areas becomes increasingly inflamed. In other words, has the ECJ left sufficient autonomy to the Member States in developing their own legal and policy choices in areas where European and national competences overlap? Legal specialists meeting up in a conference organised in 2009 by the European University Institute in Florence attempt to answer this question in their different analysis provided in this book. In this context, they have quite naturally sought to see to what extent the European Court of Justice still enjoys the legitimacy of extending the boundaries of European integration through a number of its decisions and subsequently maintaining the paradigms of a Union that is increasingly closer but under threat by certain member states. The authors of this book seek to analyse this question by way of four different approaches: member state autonomy as a competence question; the autonomy of member states as envisaged in light of decisions reached by the European Court of Justice in the areas of the internal market, citizenship and migration; the role played by European judges in the area of fundamental rights and, finally, the procedural autonomy of member states. These different contributions help to provide an image of a more open institution than some member states would have us believe.
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