*** PASCAL FONTAINE: Jean Monnet. Actualité d'un bâtisseur de l'Europe unie. Editions Economica (49 rue Héricart, F-75015 Paris) et Fondation Jean Monnet pour l'Europe (Ferme de Dorigny, CH-1015 Lausanne. Tel: (41-21) 6922097 - fax: 6922095 - Internet: http://www.jean-monnet.ch ). « « Les Cahiers rouges », No. 214. 2013, 216 pp. €25. ISBN 978-2-7178-6621-6.
Given that the European Union is still mired in an existential crisis of which the scale and seriousness will be measured next May when the eighth European Parliament election results by direct universal suffrage are announced, is it really a good time to publish another book on Jean Monnet, the “Father of Europe” who passed away on 16 March 1979, just a few weeks before the first European election was held? There has been a lot of water under Europe's bridges since then and the problems we are currently experiencing are not very similar to those known by the Cognac born Monnet. Was his wisdom therefore of a bygone age that is fatally inoperable in a world like ours and which he never knew?
The answer to these perfectly legitimate questions is a resounding no! No, Monnet still has a lot to say and teach the European people in the year 2014! He should therefore, more than ever, remain the source of inspiration, as General de Gaulle had himself indicated, not without a certain amount of regret… for all those from Berlin to Paris, by way of Brussels, the president of Europe's destiny for which he had created its foundations. This new Cahier rouge publication from the Jean Monnet Foundation for Europe illustrates and teaches, perhaps even more so to younger Europeans, how Jean Monnet, thinker and man of action, was encouraged, “by the conviction that there is always a common interest between man and that this interest must be defined and organised”. Is it therefore not essential to remember and reaffirm him once again at the very moment that this common interest is increasingly being concealed by specific interests of either the member states and regions which no longer want to pay for those that are less well off and at a time when citizens no longer see other as simply a neighbour from another region or country but instead a potential threat?
These pages are drawn from a book published by the author in 1988, to celebrate the hundredth birthday of Monnet when his ashes were transferred to the Panthéon. It is important to publish this account again, which has been adapted and significantly added to, because no one is better suited than Pascal Fontaine today, “to draw lessons taught us by this man and achievements”, as pointed out in the preface by José Maria Gil-Robles, the former president of the European Parliament, who now chairs the Lausanne Foundation. From 1973 to 1977, Pascal Fontaine was Monnet's very last assistant and in this capacity he helped his father, François, in the drafting of the Mémoires for which every page had to obtain the lengthily negotiated approval from the “Father of Europe”. There are now very few people who are alive who actually knew Monnet, so it goes without saying that this honorary director of the European Parliament who had the privilege of knowing Monnet is ideally placed for providing testimony to the lasting legacy of this unique individual who almost instinctively spent his life, “identifying the common interest, overcoming obstacles to bring people together, building sustainable and efficient institutional structures in which the unity of action could be organised”. This is what the author does by shedding light on “this man of war and peace”, through the two world wars of the last century, up to 9 May 1950 when he becomes the man responsible for building Europe and the affirmation welcomed by the European Council in the middle of the 1970s and finally, “the man and his legacy… and humanistic message… which this peaceful revolutionary” from the Charente was able to bring.
Fontaine doesn't stop there. In the fourth part of the book, he attempts to imagine how Monnet would have interpreted the events and developments, positive and negative, as well as worrying, that have occurred in the European Union since he died. It is a rather perilous task to attempt to get the dead to speak but he is not altogether sure that his former “boss” would have berated him for having dared to point out in the three general conclusions that he draws (from evidence that has too long been kept under wraps) that, “Jean Monnet had had the wisdom to advocate a stagist approach to construction by creating alliances of solidarity but also envisaged the ultimate creation of a European Federation that had already been mentioned in the Schuman declaration”. Pascal Fontaine also ventures to say that, “in an effort to re-endorse the Union it is now necessary to define the point at which it has achieved its ultimate aim, so that the feeling that there is a lack of determination and which feeds into public concerns, can be dissipated”. Wouldn't this be a rather excellent homage to pay to a man who had always urged those around him to continue moving ahead?
Michel Theys
*** PANAGIOTIS GENNIMATAS: ÅëëÜò: Äýóç Þ ÁíáôïëÞ ? (Grèce: Ouest ou Est ?). Ï áêïéíþíçôïò åêóõã÷ñïíéóìüò óôï íåïåëëçíéêü êñÜôïò (L'impossible modernisation de l'État grec). Éditions Roes (27-29 Lomvardou, GR-11473 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 6429409 - fax: 6411597 - Courriel: printa@otenet.gr). 2013, 387 pp. €19.17. ISBN 978-960-283-361-2.
As the vice president of the European Investment Bank for seven years, Panagiotis Gennimatas, cultivated the art of the pamphleteer. In this anthology of incisive insights, he demonstrates that Greece remains essentially, but not completely, a non-European country that is difficult to include in Europe's hard-core. Westernisation in the country is merely imitated and lacks ambition. The legacy bequeathed at the end of the Byzantine Empire, namely an anti-western theocratic tradition from the East, is combined with an economic and ideological mediated approach in which the state monopoly continues to dominate and feed into the supposed “national identity”. Nonetheless, the truth will be out and the anthropology of Eastern Orthodoxy is outmoded to say the least. Paying taxes to be Byzantine state is still the rule with the Euro and any exceptions to this would appear to be an insult to national identity, even if it is an historic imperative. Consequently, the author proposes to change the contemporary situation so that Greece finally becomes capable of creatively participating in the affairs of the European Union and on the global stage. This would mean, however, getting the Greek people to agree to a new concept of production in the economy and a new model of education.
(AKa)
*** MANOLIS GLEZOS: Êáé Ýíá ìÜñêï íá Þôáí… (Et même pour un mark…). Ïé ïöåéëÝò ôçò Ãåñìáíßáò óôçí ÅëëÜäá (Les dettes de l'Allemagne envers la Grèce). Editions Livanis (98 Solonos, GR-10680 Athènes. Tel: (30-210) 3661200 - fax: 3617791 - Email: webmaster@livanis.gr - Internet: http://www.livanis.gr ). 2012, 286 pp. €9.90. ISBN 978-960-14-2570-2.
According to General de Gaulle, Manolis Glezos was the first Greek resistant to Nazi occupation. Today, he is an MP in the left-wing Syriza party. In this publication he denounces the debt Germany owes to Greece and the “genocide” of the Greek people committed by the Nazis during the occupation and the blood spilt during that time. In his eyes, the bill has not yet been paid and Germany still has the legal, historic and, above all, moral obligation, of paying its debts to Greece. Now aged 92, he is asking what is actually going on and why is Germany behaving in such a brutal way. He seeks to understand the problem from a number of different angles and provides a diagnosis in which, under the cover of having long forgotten, a spirit of a German vengeance is being released again, combined with a ferocity against the national will in Greece. He also explains that the Greek people do not feel hatred towards the German people and they remain in favour of preserving friendship between them, on the condition that this friendship is not harmed by any undue damage caused by what is currently happening...
(AKa)
*** NIKOS CHASSAPOPOULOS: ×ñõóÞ ÁõãÞ (Aube dorée). Ç éóôïñßá, ôá ðñüóùðá êáé ç áëÞèåéá (L'histoire, les personnes et la vérité). Éditions Livanis (voir coordonnées supra). 2013, 170 pp. €9.90. ISBN 978-960-14-2634-1.
What is the Golden Dawn Party hiding? Will its rise be short lived? Is it an ideological movement? Is it a political construction that changes according to the situation like a chameleon? How did this party emerge and shape itself? What were its ideological principles and prevailing political models (or, at least those which prevailed up until the clampdown by the Greek authorities on the party leadership)? In this book, the journalist Nikos Chassapopoulos retraces the history of the Golden Dawn Party, centred around the party leader, Nikos Michaloliakos. He also looks at the ideological origins of this extremist organisation and the occasional makeovers it has undergone to its image, in addition to its most recent electoral breakthrough and its attempts to hide its real underlying political goals. This book is the result of a detailed journalistic investigation, which effectively becomes a substantial prosecution against the accused standing in the dock..
(AKa)
*** Region & Cities of Europe. Comité des Régions (99-101 rue Belliard, B-1040 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 22822211 - Internet: http://www.cor.europa.eu ). October 2013, No. 84, 20 pp. This Committee of the Regions publication will from now only be published in English. The other versions will be available at the website.
(MT)
*** GÜNTER HERZIG (Editor.): Jahrbuch. Europarecht. NWV Neuer wissenschaftlicher Verlag GmbH (6 Faradaygasse, Ö-1030 Vienna. Tel: (43-1) 7963562-24 - fax: 7963562-25 - Email: office@nwv.at - Internet: Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. 2013, 522 pp. ISBN 978-3-7083-0921-7.
The 2013 European yearbook edited by Günter Herzig from the University of Salzburg in Austria provides an insight into European legal developments over the last year in a number of different branches of European policy. The different themes tackled are subdivided into different chapters and articles, including the legal standards drawn up a European level on a given theme, which are then described and analysed (regulations, directives and European case law). Austrian jurisprudence on these issues is also looked at and commented on.
(GLe)
*** TOBIAS WAGNER: Regionale wirtschaftliche Integration und die Europäische Union. Eine Untersuchung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Stabilisierungs- und Assoziierungsabkommen mit den Staaten des westlichen Balkans. Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, Postfach 350, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - fax: 3761727 - Email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Res Publica. Öffentliches und internationales Recht" series, No. 17. 2013, 520 pp. €57.95. ISBN 978-3-631-64068-5.
Following a reminder of the role played by the European Union and its scope of competencies, Tobias Wagner provides us with a typology of the different kinds of possible regional integration (from the simple preferential zone to economic and monetary areas). He also demonstrates that the regional integration agreements sometimes go beyond issues of the economy and include political clauses relating to democracy, the rule of law and human rights. In the economic field, the Union represents an illustrative example of integration because in addition to the internal integration process that it embodies, it is also a stakeholder in trade agreements with many countries in the world, for which the author provides the legal details underpinning them. Tobias Wagner then provides an insight into the theoretical elements in an effort to analyse the European Union's policy to the Western Balkans, namely the former Yugoslavia, excluding Slovenia but including Albania. This area has recently been seriously affected by a number of wars but given that it does have a vocation for joining the Union, it also means that it represents a very specific entity, clearly represented in the substance of the agreements between the Union and these countries, such as the interim agreements with Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina and the association and stabilisation agreements with Albania, Macedonia, Croatia and Montenegro. According to the author, the latter two countries provide examples of the kinds of association and stabilisation agreements and also the subject of a specific study reflecting the more stringent demands applied by the Union in terms of justice and home affairs, as well as the notion of conditionality in the application of these agreements. These are effectively the preliminary agreements before joining the Union. Subsequently, the agreements' compliance with the World Trade Organisation and Union's legal standards are meticulously studied. Overall, the author appears a bit put out by an apparent desire to consider the Western Balkans as a single entity when the results of his analysis and the facts that have been established demonstrate a very diverse situation between the different countries. This, however, does not detract from the importance of the book and its purpose. At the end of the book, summaries in English and Polish follow, for the benefit of non-German speakers and which subsequently provide a degree of linguistic diversity.
(GLe)
*** ANTOINE FLEURY, FRANZ KNIPPING, DUSAN KOVÁC, TOMASZ SCHRAMM (Editors): Formation et décomposition des Etats en Europe au 20e siècle / Formation and Disintegration of European States in the 20th Century. 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 ). « L'Europe et les Europes (19e et 20e siècles) series ». 2012, 287 pp. €46.50. ISBN 978-90-5201-860-7.
This book provides a detailed report on the International Congress of Historic Sciences in 2010 and a colloquy organised by the International Association of Contemporary History of Europe in 2012. The four authors initially clarify the origins and impact resulting from the fall of the Ottoman, German and Italian empires in terms of the regional transformations that were brought about on the continent. Similar attention is paid to the fall of the Habsburg Empire and the Empire that arose in the East and which came to an end with the break-up of the Soviet Union. It is in this perspective that the issue of the nation state is examined, with particular focus on Polish, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Baltic examples. This approach intends to assess the limitations of national sovereignty and is even extended to different examples in the European Union, which, according to the authors, creates a number of significant questions impacting on the economic, political and even military domains.
(PBo)