*** ELKE CLOOTS, GEERT DE BAERE, STEFAN SOTTIAUX (Editors): Federalism in the European Union. Hart Publishing (16C Worcester Place, Oxford, OX1 2JW, UK. Tel: (44-1865) 517530 - fax: 510710 - Email: mail@hartpub.co.uk - Internet: http://www.hartpub.co.uk ). “Modern Studies in European Law”, No. 33. 2012, 414 pp. £65. ISBN 978-1-84946-242-6.
At the very moment when whole world is watching the European vessel reeling dangerously in a raging economic and financial sea and certain quarters imagine and some of them are hoping that the European project is doomed to sink, is it an appropriate time for academic experts to assess the potential of federalism in the Europe of today? At a time when euro zone countries have their, “backs against the financial wall” is this book not, as Eleanor Sharpston writes in her preface, “all about angels dancing on the head of a pin?” The answer, actually, is no! Not, definitively no, because as this lawyer at the European Court of Justice also explains, the current storm compels us to look reality in the face because now, “what is needed is 'more Europe', not less” and look at, “the sort of European Union that our present half-way house may need to evolve into” forthwith. This brilliant British legal expert demonstres throughout this book that free spirits will always and everywhere rise up to oppose the dominant ideologies and dogmas with intelligence. This book illustrates perfectly how, “federalism could be the answer to the European Union's quandaries…By addressing the two distinct but interwoven questions of whether the European Union itself is a federal system, and whether the European Union allows for federalization within the Member States, this book arguably points to the possible way out of both the EU's crisis of legitimacy and its economic crisis”. Judging by the evidence, the faculty of law at the Catholic University of Leuven was not wrong to organise the conference that inspired this book a year and a half ago and which, more than ever, is hugely pertinent, notwithstanding the displeasure it will create among the doom mongers and henchmen of sovereignty!
In the first part of the book, the actual accomplishments and potential of federalism within the constitutional structure of the Union are illustrated and mooted by the authors responsible for writing about all the different aspects of the subject. Koen Lenaerts, for example, explains how the European Court of Justice interprets federalism as, “the balance of power between the search for "unity" and the protection of "diversity" in which the Union is engaged (due in part to the jurisprudence relating to the provisions of the treaties on citizenship which, in his view, reconcile the protection of individual rights granted by EU law with the powers of the EU and national legislatures). His colleague Pavlos Eleftheriadis (Oxford University) shares more or less the same opinion and drawing on the work of Plato and Aristotle argues that the pluralistic nature of the Union makes the inter-governmental model easier to understand. The researcher, Alexia Herwig (Centre for Law and Cosmopolitan Values at the University of Antwerp) emphasises the major role played by the subsidiarity principle for endorsing European law as well as the decisions taken at the World Trade Organisation. Monica Claes and Maartje de Visser from the University of Maastricht demonstrate that the European Court of Justice resembles the constitutional courts of federal countries and that the only difference is that the judges in Luxembourg are subject to more opposition when they adjudicate disputes over the division of powers between federal and federate bodies. The two final contributions in this part of the book compare the situation is in the US and the Union in the protection of fundamental rights field and international relations.
The second part of the book focuses on EU law and the devolution process over the past few decades in certain member states. The editors of the book explain in the introduction that it is totally acceptable to say that the regions have won a certain amount of autonomy by pursuing, “the aim of federalism, that is, to guarantee unity as well as diversity in a given polity”. Nonetheless, the very quest for this balance between unity and autonomy is translated by a “centrifugal dynamic” at the level of member states and by an “integrative force” at the level of the Union. The key question is one of whether these two phenomena will be able to coexist. Most of the other contributions argue that there are good reasons for preserving this Janus- style federalism and many of the authors illustrate how the institutional actors involved at European, national and regional levels have recently taken steps to ensure that the process does not impact negatively on one another. Nevertheless, the situation is still far from perfect. Piet Van Nuffel (Catholic University of Leuven and a member of the Commission's legal service) demonstrates that despite the Lisbon Treaty now recognising the role played by national parliaments, participation by regional parliamentary bodies in the European legislative process remains extremely dependent on the goodwill of the centralised national agencies. This is confirmed by Nikos Skoutaris (University of Maastricht) in light of participation by the regions in the domestic subsidiarity scrutiny of European draft legislation. This explains, perhaps, the robust plea from Joxerramon Bengoetxea (University of the Basque Country) who argues that the autonomous constitutional regions must be recognised by Community law so that they can get their voice heard more easily at the Council, the Committee of the Regions and the European Court of Justice etc. Some of the other authors examine a number of very concrete and sometimes political hot potatoes in an effort to see how judges reach their decisions and are obliged to make them when conflicts between Community law and regional budget, social and linguistic policies are involved. The book provides a certain amount of scientific clarification and only on a number of rare occasions will provide comfort to those in certain countries who are making their move under the mask of co-federalism to push forward a given nationalist cause that is diametrically opposed to the European project.
Michel Theys
*** ALLAN ROSAS, LORNA ARMATI: EU Constitutional Law. An Introduction. Hart Publishing (see address details attached). 2012, 295 pp. £16.95. ISBN 978-1-84946-320-1.
A year and a half ago, the author of the following lines was set ablaze by this book, which describes with great skill how the European Union is decidedly not an international organisation but rather a political enterprise engaged in a constitutional process (see Bibliothèque européenne 10379/914 17 May 2011). Why have the two authors of the book (a former Deputy Director-General at the legal service at the European Commission and subsequently appointed to the European Court of Justice) Allan Rosas from Finland and Lorna Armati (a legal expert working in the same legal service as the former, after being his deputy in Luxembourg) decided to put the book out again so soon again on this subject? It is mainly because of the crisis affecting the Eurozone and its ricochet effects throughout the whole of the Union. This crisis has shown in a staggering way that the European adventure of the past sixty years remains more than ever a permanent constitutional process where what is not said (about the final goal of the enterprise and the role states should play in it) remains the golden rule unless this past history is superseded by an ethos of every man to himself in the next stage to come. The authors therefore explain that recently we have had a string of last chance summits that, “has only amplified the lack of trust not only in the common currency but also in the ability of EU decision-making mechanisms to tackle the matter effectively”. European leaders have clearly proved incapable of tackling the underlying problem of European construction, the absence of a “supranational mechanism (the 'Community method')” in the economic and monetary system planned at Maastricht in 1992. This left a number of gaping holes in the Community legal system, particularly by preventing the Commission initiating infringement procedures against states that failed to respect the rules on excessive deficits. It therefore comes as no surprise that certain countries (and not just the small ones) really got themselves into a mess in this connection. This scenario leads the authors to conclude with astounding simplicity that, “it is an empirical reality that, for as long as stronger elements of supranationalism are not introduced, it seems futile to expect a pooling of the political will necessary to subordinate national interest to that of the Union and create effective common policies”. Compelled and forced by the scale of the crisis, European leaders effectively had no choice but to adopt reforms that just a day or two earlier were unimaginable, in an effort to put out the blazing fire. According to Allan Rosas and Lorna Armati, this proves that the European constitutional process still has a bright future ahead of it, notwithstanding any dramatic accidents that may befall it, and that one day, the earlier the better, European citizens will seek to better understand and get acquainted with the bizarre political animal of the European Union. They conclude that this is undoubtedly not the “good federative association” as dreamt by Jean-Jacques Rousseau but it is a “necessary association” nonetheless.
(MT)
*** DANIELA PREDA, DANIELE PASQUINUCCI (editors): Consensus and European Integration / Consensus et intégration européenne. An Historical Perspective / Une perspective historique. 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 ). "Euroclio Etudes et Documents / Studies and Documents" series, No. 68. 2012, 338 pp. €51.90. ISBN 978-90-5201-851-5.
Until now, surveys of European citizens' attitudes to the European project have been carried out within the exclusive domain of political scientists. This book demonstrates how historians have now entered the dance and who, judging by the evidence, provide a very rich and positive contribution. This book stems from an international colloquy organised by the Associazione universitaria di studi europei at the University of Genoa in May 2010. It includes contributions from 22 different authors on a wide variety of subjects and which have to varying degrees actively participated in shaping the European consensus. Daniele Pasquinucci (University of Siena) illustrates how the European institutions became fond of taking the pulse of European citizens even before the Eurobarometer instrument was set up. Simone Paoli (University of Padua) shows how this instrument created in May 1968 at the time that the first wave of enlargement had just delivered the coup de grâce to the “comfortable permissive consensus paradigm”. Within the same perspective, other contributions, sometimes very critically, focus on the information policy (propaganda?) developed in Luxembourg and Brussels. Action by pro-European forces, political parties and the unions and the other contributions in the whole book provides a very limpid fresco.
(MT)
*** CELINE BAYOU, MATTHIEU CHILLAUD (Editors): Les Etats baltes en transition. Le retour à l'Europe. Presses Interuniversitaire européennes / Peter Lang (see address details attached). « Géopolitique et résolution des conflits » series, No. 13. 2012, 264 pp. €38. ISBN 978-90-5201-868-3.
The objective of this book was to provide, “a small stone to the edifice of understanding the Baltic states' return to Europe”. This is how Céline Bayou (a member of the Observatoire des Etats postsoviétiques de l'Institution national des langues et civilisations orientales in Paris) and Matthieu Chillaud (a research at the Institute of Political and Administrative Studies in Tartu, Estonia) described their aim in their introduction. Judging by the evidence, their objective is to be praised. There are only a few people in the “old Europe” (but not exclusively so!) who can boast of having such a broad knowledge of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. There are also few people who are able to salute the political courage of these three “opposition” countries, which, with the end of the Soviet empire, conspicuously turned their back on Moscow after, “forty years of occupation and forced incorporation into a subject system”, to play the European and western card so decisively. This was a risky business but these countries went for broke and joined the European Union and NATO eight years ago and from a political and economic point of view are, “havens of peace and as solid as a rock in their self-confidence and trajectory which appears a posteriori clearly to have been outlined in their respective transitions that can be unanimously described as being successful”. They have made some astonishing journeys that are effectively too little-known or acknowledged and these young researchers from a variety of different scientific disciplines and origins help to shed light upon these journeys in this book. The book is divided into four parts. The main foreign policy options of these countries and their European commitment are discussed (as well as a contribution on their “impetuous commitment” to European Neighbourhood Policy), as well as memorial issues and broader security questions.
(MT)
*** OLAF MERTELSMANN, KAAREL PIIRIMÄE (Editors): The Baltic Sea Region and the Cold War. Peter Lang (1 Mosstrasse, Postfach 350, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - fax: 3761727 -: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Tartu Historical Studies” series, No. 3. 2012, 291 pp. €49.80. ISBN 978-3-631-62310-7.
This book follows on from a workshop held in Estonia two years ago, which brought together well-known researchers, university professors and eyewitnesses from the time. It puts to bed a number of preconceived ideas, particularly in Western Europe, relating to the Cold War and how this was experienced in Baltic countries. The different studies demonstrate how the Cold War was more than just a bipolar clash and that the Iron Curtain was not as impermeable as claimed, particularly in the Baltic region, where economic trade, cultural and media exchanges, even tourists were able to come and go.
(PBo)
*** CORRECTION. Contrary to what was written in Bibliothèque européenne No. 10700/973 on 2 October last, the book “Environmental Integration in the EU's External Relations. Beyond Multilateral Dimensions” published by Hart Publishing is not based on a doctorate thesis but is the result of a specific research project carried out by Gracia Marín Durán and Elisa Morgera when they were already working at the faculty of Law at the University of Edinburgh.