*** JÜRGEN HABERMAS: La constitution de l'Europe. Gallimard (5 rue Gaston Gallimard, F-75328 Paris cedex 07. Tel: (33-1) 49544200 - fax: 45449403 - Email: gallimard@librairie-gallimard.com - Internet: http://www.gallimard.fr ). "nrf essais" series. 2012, 224 p. €18.90. ISBN 978-2-07-013753-4
Originally published in German by Suhrkamp Verlag as “Zur Verfassung Europas. Ein essay”, the most recent book by this German philosopher marking our current period provides a breath of hope in an ocean of doubt and abandonment. It is also, in a certain way, an appeal to rebel by the 80-year-old author. In his preface in the French version he starts with the lines, “it is imperative that European citizens do not surrender the process of reciprocal de-provincialisation to their heads of state and government”. He argues that this is the only way in which member states will be able to a certain extent protect their current standing in our globalised world.
Is this another major work by Habermas? Perhaps not, given that he includes a substantial number of ideas that were already covered in the days following the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy and the period preceding the Obama's election in autumn 2008, up until the end of last year. Nonetheless, the intellectual coherence with which this book is imbued helps the reader to discover the underside of the picture presented, such as the senseless anarchy affecting European construction, as well as the unhealthy and puerile motives of those operating in this field and the problems underlying the European project, which result from this environment. The analysis will undoubtedly provide grist to the mill for those complaining about national sovereignty, as well as other nationalistic Eurosceptics but even these agents would do well to learn about possible solutions that fully respect member states and democracy, as outlined by Habermas, as a means to develop a Europe based on its people and which, in his view, is indispensable. Some federalists may feel somewhat castigated by the possible alternatives suggested by this German philosopher but the most thought out amongst them will no doubt take consolation in the fact that the brains behind the concept of constitutional patriotism also, in his way, leads them along deliciously meandering roads towards a kind of… global federation, which does not yet speak its name.
Any excessive claims are obviously banished from this intellectual universe but Jürgen Habermas is not loath to launch a venomous attack on the behaviour displayed by Chancellor Merkel on the European scene. He overtly accuses her of tearing apart the, “crucial confidence German governments have over the past half century successfully created with their neighbours”. The first part of the book consists of an interview and several feature articles published in the press (Die Zeit, Esprit, Süddeutsche Zeitung). Again, he pulls no punches in both his accusations and precisions when he states that there is a, “self-centred perception that Germany reunited all by itself”, which is revealed in the way in the which it puts into practice its European policy. He subsequently accuses Ms Merkel of sinking to the level of a short-sighted “lobbyist” acting on the basis of cold short-termist attempts to win votes in her defence of the biggest economy in Europe. Habermas regrets that under her leadership, Germany has forgotten the lessons that the former Republic of Bonn learned from history. This in turn has revived former suspicions towards Germany regarding the fact that what is good for Germany is not necessarily good for the rest of Europe. On an even more serious note, this aberrant German behaviour is based on the cult of sanctions in the Union or at least the Eurozone and that, “an economic government should take into account regional and national differences when attempting to gradually harmonise the different levels of competitiveness”. All this is a far cry from the “inter-governmental collaboration”, which served as a watchword for the Merkel Sarkozy duo, which the author believes led to a more obvious democratic process, given that the circumvention of funding rules by national parliaments gave the national executives room for manoeuvre that was hitherto unknown and which the writer describes as a “coup d'état of the executives” by way of the European Council and through it, the other national executives.
Should we deduce that Habermas is prepared to accept this drift? On the contrary, in his essay on the “C/constitution”, namely, the current state of Europe and its political constitution, he seeks to pave the way towards the construction of transnational democracy, of which the Lisbon Treaty has proved, in his eyes, to be an outline, by distancing itself from an inappropriate model such as a federal constitution. In the very dense pages making up this book which, consistently, however, remain very readable, this philosopher methodologically unlocks the remaining obstacles to the trans-nationalisation of democracy and to this end, European unification within a comprehensive coherency underpinning and encoding through legal forms of state power in a subsequent humanising and civilising manner. Is this not also similar to the majestic contribution made by the “founding fathers” 60 years ago, which helped develop the political action and capability that went beyond national states? In the analysis contained in the final part of the book on the dynamic of conflict linked to “indignation”, which still continues to create hope that no matter how improbable it may appear, human rights could be institutionalised on a global scale, Jürgen Habermas finally leads his readers to the promising delights of a realistic utopia of human rights, which would be accomplished through the development of an international community of states, as an extension of an international community of states and citizens of the world of which the Union is a pre-figuration that should be both cherished and protected more than ever. Would such a utopia, however, no matter how realistic and promising, be able to inspire political leaders who have become a simple operational elite dependent on the polls and managing public opinion and who are ill-prepared for situations that are out of the ordinary? Asking the question, does not necessarily mean that there is an answer but it does, nevertheless, need to be asked.
Michel Theys
*** Le Revue nouvelle. Mensuel sociopolitique et culturel. Revue nouvelle asbl (19 rue du Marteau, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 6403107 - Email: redaction@revuenouvelle.be - Internet: http://www.revuenouvelle.be ). July-August 2012, No. 7/8, 112 pp. €10. Annual subscription: €85 (Belgium).
It is a sign of the times that this respected Belgian Journal focuses on European construction as illustrated and confirmed in a number of other instances in the democratic process outlined by Jürgen Habermas (see above). The economist, Pierre Defraigne, therefore points out that there is a coherency threshold in common policies that must imperatively be enacted, “to ensure both efficiency and democracy” in Europe, particularly the Eurozone, “where a deepening grip is increasingly being exerted on the national economies. The former senior Commission official, who is now head of the Madariaga Foundation at the College of Europe, is hopeful that the crisis may provide a crucial ingredient to, “a citizen federalism as an alternative to bureaucratic and opaque inter-governmental governance”, given that the real stakes at play is the re-appropriation by citizens of the Europe that has so far been handed over to a number of elite factions or rather the emergence of new elites that have abandoned European construction in pursuit of simple economic interests.
The economist and legal expert, Bernard Swartenbroekx, concurs and argues that European construction is undergoing an increasingly head-on battle about how to organise the economy in accordance with democratic demands when the single market and free trade make these principles taboo and where the European Commission and even the European Court of Justice have become the zealous handmaidens of this cult to the extent that they themselves oppose most of the different areas where social and state intervention has a role to play. According to this researcher at the Philosophy Centre in Law at the Catholic University of Louvain, states can no longer individually claim to be masters of their own legal systems or are able to unilaterally change the form and content of these systems. This is the case with competition rules that are now dogmatically erected and which are subsequently impossible for citizens to change and consequently beyond a democratic remit. Michaël Maira (UCL), subsequently argues that the European Union is now at risk of committing an historical error if it insists on sacrificing popular support on the altar of technocratic austerity, which is presented as being necessary in order to appease the markets.
Only radical reform of its governance and public policies carried out in its name will be enough to reconcile the European project with its citizens. Ultimately, the appeal made by the former MEP for the radical party, Olivier Dupuis, is that citizens should urgently be placed back at the heart of the selection process for those governing the Union and that they are able to participate in the emancipation of the Commission, “Parliament, Council of Ministers and the European Council by electing its president by universal suffrage”.
(MT)
*** Fedechoses… pour le fédéralisme. Presse fédéraliste (Maison de l'Europe et des Européens, 13 rue de l'Arbre sec, F-69001 Lyon. Internet: http://www.pressefederaliste.eu ). June 2012, No. 156, 36 p. €8. Annual subscription: €30.
The divorce between national sovereignty and democracy has been well understood in European contexts, with globalisation constituting the lightning conductor in this issue. Therefore, in light of the convulsions seizing the Arab world, the editorial concludes that, “with the lack of globalised democracy, the different peoples of the world continue to be subject to the dictates of local potentates, financial markets and the multinationals, those profiteering from national sovereignty and the division of humanity”. This observation is also valid for the European Union even though French federalists are delighted with the end to drift engendered by Sarkozy towards, “Bonapartism, bordering on a fascistic populism”. Jean-Pierre Gouzy does not harbour too many allusions with regard to the ability of French leaders to get out of the current political debate that has been, “stuck in norms that no longer correspond to the transnational nature of the current situation”. This is why Pierre Defraigne considers that the pact on budgetary discipline is temporary but also worthless and dangerous because no state worthy of the name intends to deprive itself of power which is, “discretionary by definition, and stimulate growth and job creation through budgetary balance when threatened with economic depression”. His colleague and fellow economist Bernard Barthalay points out that in 1944, Keynes had already emphasised that monetary union was not viable without a mechanism for transferring the surpluses of strong countries to countries in deficit, which was indeed the impulse underpinning the Marshall plan. In a different context, Andreas Bummel, the president of the Democratic United Nations Committee points out that democracy has been confiscated on a global scale by national governments and proposes the setting up of a Global Parliamentary Assembly as a remedy to the situation. (MT)
*** RAMÓN MÁIZ: The Inner Frontier. The Place of Nation in the Political Theory of Democracy and Federalism. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (1 av. Maurice, B-1050 Brussels. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - fax: 3761727 - Email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Diversitas" series, No. 11. 2012, 223 pp. €30.50. ISBN 978-90-5201-776-1.
In reply to the question of whether nations and democracy are compatible, a professor in political science at the University of Santiago de Compostella provides a response in this book (originally published in Spanish with the title “La Frontera interior: el lugar de la nacion en la teoria de la democracia y el federalismo” and published by Editorial Tres Fronteras). He argues that the national dimension is “indispensable for democratic political philosophy”. The thrust of his argument seeks to present a new non-nationalist concept of nation that is compatible with the normative requirements of democracy. Ramón Máiz analyses points of common ground between two national thinkers Abbot Sieyès (A Stateless Republican) and Johann Gottlieb Fichte (A Nation without a Republic). He then demonstrates, on the basis of critical analysis, the ethnic nationalism/civic nationalism dichotomy and that, “the concept of 'civic patriotism', the ideal of citizenship which supposedly has nothing to do with the nation or nationalism, is unsustainable”. The author also goes back to the roots of nation and nationalism before developing his non-nationalist concept of nation, namely, a “pluralist federal conceptualisation of the nation” of a cultural-politico republican nature rather than a civic or ethnically-based one. Ultimately, he incorporates this into a “normative theory of plurinational federalism”, which no-one will be surprised to learn is inspired by the “nation of nations” which is now the situation in Spain. (MT)
*** CHRITOPHER HODGES, IRIS BENÖHR, NAOMI CREUTZFELDT-BANDA: Consumer ADR in Europe. Civil Justice Systems. Hart Publishing Ltd. (16C Worcester Place, Oxford, OX1 2JW, UK. Tel: (44-1865) 517530 - fax: 510710 - Email: mail@hartpub.co.uk - Internet: http://www.hartpub.co.uk ). “Civil Justice Systems”. 2012, 479 pp. £50. ISBN 978-1-84946-348-5.
This is the result of the research undertaken by Civil Justice Systems specialists working at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford. It provides a comprehensive panorama of the way in which the relatively recent phenomena of Alternative Dispute Resolution between consumers and companies has developed so swiftly with the growth of a cast of mediators and other arbiters. In the first part of the publication, the authors examine the development and current state of Alternative Dispute Resolution involving consumers at a pan-European level. The development of these systems and how they function in 10 member states are then examined and analysed (from Germany to the United Kingdom, by way of Belgium, Spain, France, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia and Sweden). Particular attention is also paid to the pan-European schemes at resolving disputes and which are now increasing in number. On the basis of meticulous scientific information, the authors put forward a number of suggestions for improving the architecture of the systems at national and European levels. (PBo)