*** JOSIANE AUVRET-FINCK (Ed.): Le Parlement européen après l'entrée en vigueur du Traité de Lisbonne. Éditions Larcier (39 rue des Minimes, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 5480713 - Fax: 5480714 - email: commande@larciergroup.com - Internet: http://www.larciergroup.com ). 2013, 273 pp, €75. ISBN 978-2-8044-5770-9.
How many citizens will drag their feet when the time comes for them to go and choose the new MEPs in the European elections in May? And more importantly, how many of them will turn their apathy and indifference into a protest vote at the national and European 'system,' thus feeding all kinds of populism and extremism? The elections in May may well combine both protest and a low turnout. Does the European Parliament deserve such repudiation at the end of this term, when some people constantly tell us that since the Lisbon Treaty came into force, the EP has had more powers than it has ever had before in the history of the European project? This fine tome draws up a highly nuanced scientific balance sheet of the latter statement, comparing and contrasting it with reality to draw any lessons that might need to be learned. The book is the fruit of a conference organised by Nice - Sophia Antipolis University in order to discern what the Lisbon Treaty has really contributed in terms of democratisation, and the effectiveness and coherence of the European Union's work.
In reality, as Prof. Marianne Dony, chair of the European Studies Institute at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, points out, the essays show the extent to which the European Parliament has made genuine progress, but other progress that has been claimed has been overestimated or worse. This balanced impression is backed up in each of the four sections of the book, where the European Parliament is first examined in terms of inter-institutional relations, then foreign relations, followed by its relations with European citizens and, finally, its relations with national parliaments. It is clearly pointed out that MEPs remain in a purely advisory role in areas of 'high politics,' be it the common foreign and security policy or the common security and defence policy. As the book's editor, Prof. Josiane Auvret-Finck, aptly summarises it, the only means that the European Parliament has to apply pressure on the Council of Ministers lies in its power of deliberation and its right for information, which it uses 'by demanding, with ever greater insistence, full respect of the principle of loyal cooperation' among the institutions. As everyone will agree, this does not mean that one will be paid attention to or more importantly, that anyone will listen and take note. But that is nothing compared with the retreat registered on budget affairs recently compared with the past. Senior lecturer at Université Lille 2, Aymeric Potteau observes in his essay that alongside the fact that the question of the European Union's financing system remains the private hunting ground of the Council of Ministers, deciding on a unanimous basis, and member states which are called upon to ratify EU 'own resource' decisions, the people who penned the Lisbon Treaty 'cleverly and with a pinch of hypocrisy' wanted to give the impression that Parliament still had the final say in the event of disagreement among ministers. But he explains that States will never challenge a decision that they endorsed during conciliation a fortnight before, which means that 'the power of the European Parliament's final say is (…) purely and simply a mirage to camouflage what in reality is the regressive nature of the new procedure from the viewpoint of MEPs' prerogatives.'
Not everything is negative, however. As Prof. Auvret-Fink of Université Nice-Sophia Antipolis) explains, Parliament has asserted itself as the guarantor of the rights of the person, which it still wanted to protect during the last parliamentary term. Likewise, it did good work in forming a shield 'against the intergovernmental excesses and directorial connotations at the time of Merkozy,' amidst the raging torrent of the sovereign debt crisis. But it did not move closer to the citizen at all, quite the opposite in fact. The lack of any reform of the electoral system for the European elections is important here, explains Prof. Patrick Auvret, pointing out that 'the European elections are basically not European enough.' He criticises the excessive 'variety of selection of MEPs' who are supposed to be European parliamentarians. Does this mean that Josiane Auvret-Finck is going too far when she argues that sooner or later, 'election by universal suffrage will probably no longer provide legitimacy for the European Parliament alone' and 'in order to prevent decision-makers from being cut off from public opinion,' 'real democracy' will have to take 'precedence over formal democracy, reserving the right to transfer Europe into the post-democratic era'? The question certainly deserves consideration…
Michel Theys
*** BERTRAND VAYSSIERE (Ed.): Reflets de la construction européenne. Réflexions, références et refus du débat sur l'Europe. 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" series, No. 73. 2012, 367 pp, €52-40. ISBN 978-2-87574-011-3.
Renowned federalism expert Bertrand Vayssière piloted a colloquium a little over three years ago, organised by researchers at Université Toulouse II - Le Mirail, which concentrated on how the European project is experienced and discussed in daily life - if not simply slated and slammed these days. Slated and slammed because this senior lecturer at the Toulouse Institute of Political Studies opportunely points out in the introduction that if one studies it carefully, the 'chronic image deficit' that the European Union suffers from in the eyes of many of its citizens, arises from a retreat. In these times of devastating crisis, 'Europe's supporters and people in the European institutions' act slower than their opponents when it comes to communication and referendums for or against the constitutional treaty and the latter are now able to cherish the hope of again winning the image battle and protest battle without even striking a blow. And perhaps Europeans - these men and women who are 'singularly absente from the Community project whose political foundations have been forgotten in favour of a particularly economic construction,' - have had an opportunity over the past four years to 'revisit, in the stark and sometimes deceptive light of the crisis, the political myths about citizenship, the single currency and, in brief, the idea of Europeans wanting to live together? Hence the utility of experts from a range of disciplines, and practitioners who write about Europe, going to scientifically sound out the hearts and minds of the people who put up with Europe the way it is being built in their name. After eye-witness reports from two MEPs, one currently in office - Christine de Veyrac - and another, Kader Arif, who criticises the 'permanent abuse of Europe for party- political or clientelist ends,' attention is focussed in turn on perceptions in the Midi-Pyrénées region of France, the search for European identity (through the action and philosophy of the late Vaclav Havel), the positioning of some countries vis-à-vis Europe, and defence issues, with the European Union finally being considered 'as both a political object and a political subject.'
(MT)
*** LEONCE BEKEMANS (Ed.): A Value-Driven European Future. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (see above). Europe of Cultures series, No. 5. 2012, 242 p., €44-90. ISBN 978-90-5201-890-4.
Opening with a extract from the magnificent speech on European identity made by the Czech president, Václav Havel, at the European Parliament on 8 May 1994, this book that arose in the fold of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence "Intercultural Dialogue, Human Rights and Multilevel Governance" at the University of Padua provides a detailed, structured and interdisciplinary analysis of the cultural guidelines and values that should influence the future of Europe. As Prof. Bekeman explains in the introduction, the European Union is more than a single market. Above all, it is first of all - although it also requires 'increased economic governance' - 'a community of destiny and a Union of values embodied in a commitment to human rights, peace, freedom and (internal and external) solidarity.' The book, most of which comprises contributions presented in Padua in October 2011, is divided into three sections. The first part provides a conceptual framework for understanding and contextualising intercultural and antireligious dialogue, with a focus on an in-depth institutional and international law approach. Prof. Antonio Papisca notes 'the "supra-constitutional" relevance of international human rights law' before arguing that the 'intercultural city' has all the assets needed to become 'a laboratory for a new "Humanism",' as long, that is, that the freedom of religion respects 'the general principles of the universal code of human rights.' In the second part of the book, various values on which Europe is constructed are studied, by Prof. Luk Bouckaert for example, who observes among other things that 'the economics-driven logic at the heart of European integration is under pressure' and it would make sense to substitute a more spiritual approach in order to rebuild the social fabric. The final section provides a number of reflections on the values that the European Union could spread in the world in the future, which confirm, explains Prof. Léonce Bekemans, the 'fundamental importance' of being guided by 'a human-focused development,' which is largely what the former president of the European Parliament, José Maria Gil-Robles, explains in the preface.
(MT)
*** MICHEL ADAM: Jean Monnet, Citoyen du Monde. La pensée d'un précurseur. L'Harmattan (7 rue de l'École polytechnique, F-75005 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 40467920 - email: diffusion.harmattan@wanadoo.fr - Internet: http://www.editions-harmattan.fr ). 'Questions contemporaines' series. 2011, 133 pp, €14. ISBN 978-2-296-55094-0.
An engineer and creator of social enterprise provides in this book an admiring study of one of the most emblematic actors of the European integration process. For the author, reading or re-reading the Mémoires of Jean Monnet means diving into an unforgettable tale, and above all, is an introduction to his thought. The Mémoires are as far as Michel Adam is concerned, 'a veritable handbook of ecology and action and deserve to have pride of place in management training schools and engineering schools too, because Jean Monnet takes such a fertile distance from the notion of rigid programming of the European project and because he is concerned about the relationship of the people involved in the action, particularly for Europe's first hesitant steps.' In these pages, the author paints the portrait of a thoughtful practitioner, a man of action who generates useful knowledge that some describe as doable and transmissible knowledge. He talks of someone who could not be classified, and was happy about that, being extremely sensitive to space and aware of the decisive impact of the backdrop. He pays particular attention to Monnet's exceptional sense of timing, such as doing things at the right time, flair and intuition, along with the unpredictable sense of the future. A veritable lexicon on Monnet, this is not a book to be easily read end-to-end in one sitting, but anyone wanting to feed into today's debate about the European Union with the thoughts that led to the integration process being set up will be delighted with it.
(LT)
*** THOMAS M'SAÏDIÉ: Les pays et territoires d'outre-mer dans l'Union européenne. Bruylant (Groupe De Boeck, 39 rue des Minimes, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 5480713 - Fax: 5480714 - email: commande@deboeckservices.com - Internet: http://www.bruylant.be ). 'Droit de l'Union européenne' series. 2013, 567 pp, €130. ISBN 978-8027-4094-0.
The role of overseas countries and territories (PTOM) in the European Union and more particularly in the law that governs the EU is not easy to discern, explains the author of this thick tome, doctor of public law Thomas M'Saïdié, at the outset. He explains factors that substantiate the feeling of legal ambivalence (and he also provides a raft of annexes and a rich bibliography). In the preface, Prof. Jacques Ziller of Paris University and elsewhere welcomes this study of a topic often neglected in European law. He explains that the status of the PTOM is one of the oldest and most relevant illustrations of the ability of EU law to take proper account of the specific social, geographical and economic aspects of the member states. The author confirms this reading and notes the 'unusul place' of these territories, which are often colonial leftovers - of France mainly, but also of the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Denmark (Greenland). In reality, their status is sui generis, in other words dependent on the definition given in the constitutions of the member states concerned. It is therefore a 'status whose singularity, because of its very nature, cannot be classified in a single commonly recognised category.' Hence the need to define these territories, whose inclusion in the EU's founding treaties took a lot of difficult negotiating. Germany, for example, opposed the idea of including them, not having any old colonial ties itself. These territories 'associated' with the EU are not a full part of the EU and are not non-EU states either, and this is simply the outcome of a historical fact and extraterritorial coherence of relationships. The definition also requires a differentiation from the ultraperipheral regions and countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, although they are similar in some respects (attachment to cash from the European Development Funds). In the author's view, wanting to define their actual status would be a 'complicated task' given the 'exceptional lack of far-reaching writings in French legal literature' acting as reference material in this domain, with the risk of 'cobbled-together writing' according to the integration demands of the moment. The solution would be to combine geography and the legal affairs attaching them in EU law to an 'integrationist logic.' Thomas M'Saïdié says that taking these territories into account would give them an 'easily identifiable integrative position and would put an end to the current confusion.'
(FBC)