*** MARISE CREMONA, ANNE THIES (Eds.): The European Court of Justice and External Relations Law. Constitutional Challenges. 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" series. 2014, 290 pp, £50. ISBN 978-1-84946-504-5.
Would you ever have believed that the European Court of Justice would have more influence when it comes to the European Union's foreign affairs than member states' own courts have over each member state's foreign policy? This is one of the revelations made in this book, in which fifteen high-flying lawyers define now the European judges in Luxembourg influence changes in the law governing the European Union's external relations under the Lisbon Treaty through their reasoning and the role that they play. The member states were careful to ensure that the Common Foreign and Security Policy largely escapes from the European Court of Justice's jurisdiction, but it emerges from the essays that the 'legalised' nature of the European Union's foreign relations and the importance of its external relations legal commitments explain European judges' irresistible assertion in this domain.
In the first section of the book, the constitutional backdrop to this rising influence of the Court of Justice is set out, particularly in the light of the instruments utilised by the judges to this end, namely, on the one hand, their ability to define and shape the European Union's external powers and the duties and constraints on member states' prerogatives in this field, and on the other hand, and more importantly, as the book's editors explain in the introduction, their 'insistence on the autonomy of the European Union's legal system' and their role as guardians of what can influence the legal system from international law. After Prof. Cremona (of the European University Institute) demonstrates that the European Union does not have any 'external teleology' such as prevails for the Internal Market, and the Court of Justice is above all concerned about protecting European autonomy in this domain along with the internal institutional balance in this connection, starting with its own role. His colleague from Florence, Bruno de Witte (who also lectures at Maastricht University) looks more specifically at the suspicion that the judges in Luxembourg tend to demonstrate towards other international courts, a suspicion that is reflected in the way they 'reacted to initiatives taken by the Union's political institutions or by member states' governments in the direction of a commitment in new or existing international dispute-settlement mechanism.' He points out that the Lisbon Treaty itself establishes potential tension between the recognised capacity of the European Court of Justice to be the institution of last resort for interpreting and determining the validity of European law, including in the domain of international agreements, and the European Union's explicit task of promoting and developing international law, and therefore… dispute-settlement mechanisms.
Either way, we are far removed from the apparent exclusion reserved for the Court in the field of the Common Foreign and Security Policy. And even further removed in that Christophe Hillion (of Leiden University and the Swedish Institute of European Policy Studies) strongly challenges the reality of this exclusion in his essay. As he sees it, the Lisbon Treaty greatly strengthened the role of the European Court of Justice in this domain (that was initially reserved for strict intergovernmentalism) by allowing the legal control of some types of legal document coming under the CFSP and examination of compatibility with European law of treaties that have an impact on the CFSP, by re-balancing the Court's role in surveillance of the frontier between the CFSP and other policy domains and, finally, by generalising the application of general principles - such as loyal cooperation - the guardians of which are the judges in Luxembourg. It is not going too far, therefore, to state that the Court of Justice was evicted by governments but has come back in through the window of the realities of a political body that claims its legitimacy. The various themes raised in the first part of the book are developed in the rest of the volume. The second part is thus devoted to the key question of external competence from the angle of the principle of attribution and the vertical division of power between the European Union and the member states, the third (and final) part looking at how the Court of Justice has constructed the constitutional framework for the Union's external action, along with its methodological approaches, reasoning techniques and utilisation of general principles. The combination is a book destined to become an authority!
Michel Theys
*** BART VANVOOREN, RAMSES A. WESSEL: EU External Relations Law. Text, cases and materials. Cambridge University Press (Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge, CB2 8BS UK. Tel: (44-1223) 358331 - Email: information@cambridge.org - Internet: http://www.cambridge.org ). 2014, 618 pp, €50. ISBN 978-1-107-68430-0.
This manual is mainly for European law professionals and students and makes a very deep and comprehensive presentation (with the help of teaching aids such as law texts, summaries, tables and a number of illustrations) of the entire universe of the European Union's external relations. Lawyer Bart VanVooren, who lectures in European law at Copenhagen University, and Prof. Ramses A. Wessel, co-director of the European Study Centre at Twente in the Netherlands, shed light on the competence systems, the legal principle of loyal cooperation and the effects of international law. There are specific chapters dedicated to subjects such as the common trade policy, development policy, the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the Security and Defence Policy, energy and enlargement, with the authors also paying particular attention to the various links between European integration, the role of law and the European Union as an effective international player.
(CDe)
*** IRENA GRUDZINSKA-GROSS, ANDRZEJ W. TYMOWSKI (Eds.): Eastern Europe: Continuity and Change (1987-1995). Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (1 av. Maurice,B-1050 Brussels. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - Email: info@peterlang.com - http://www.peterlang.com ). Eastern European culture, politics and societies series, No. 5. 2014, 304 pp, €47,95. ISBN 978-3-631-64700-4.
In this book, there are articles from the US review East European Politics and Societies that were first published in 1987. The aim is to challenge the common link claiming that the Communist system ended suddenly in 1989 and to stress the intellectual and policy preparations that led to its collapse. The book includes a selection of articles viewed as 'classics,' written by the review's founders. It is divided into three sections: 'Before the change,' 'Alternative futures' and 'Heritage from the past.' Most of the authors are former dissidents who joined Western academia before or shortly after the collapse of the regime. This collection of articles is a kind of political reportage not only of events pre- and post-1989, but also of the mental journey of a community of intellectuals and people who took part in history.
(SLa)
*** PHILIPPE PERCHOC: Les Etats baltes et le système européen (1985-2004). Etre Européens et le devenir. Presses Interuniversitaires européennes / Peter Lang (see above). Géopolitique et résolution des conflits series, No. 16. 2014, 288 pp, €47,10. ISBN 978-2-87574-132-5.
In order to decide which political science subject to tackle in his thesis, which he would be defending finally in 2011 at Sciences Po, Philippe Perchoc remembered that one of his ancestors had confirmed his presence in Memel in a sailor's logbook in January 1923, when Lithuania had just taken control of this city under French administration and had renamed it Klaïpeda. This is no doubt where the interest in the Baltic States came from for this historian by training and which led him to write a thesis that will be of interest to specialists of the region, specialists of European Union and experts in the impact of post-communism. The man who headed the research, Georges Mink, explains in the preface that the book 'could rapidly also become a reference for people interested in the role of small countries on the global geopolitical chessboard.' Comparing his hypotheses with the analytical approach of Raymond Aron that he revisits, the author manages to update a number of hidden variables that explain what he calls the 'Baltic Revolution,' showing that through a complex system of interaction, resources and constraints, the three Baltic States follow similar geopolitical logics. Mink points out that he also demonstrates how 'the belligerent atavism of Russia was anaesthetised by its former vassals' - the question now perhaps being to know for how much longer this will last…
(PBo)
*** CHRISTOS TEAZIS: Le deuxième changement de régime en Turquie. Recep Tayyip Erdogan: la montée des "non-privilégiés". Editions Patakis (38 P. Tsaldari, GR-10437 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3650000 - Fax: 3650069 - Email: bookstore@patakis.gr - Internet: http://www.patakis.gr ). Sciences sociales et politiques series. 2014, 231 pp, €12,50. ISBN 978-960-16-4631-2.
Professor at the Department of International Relations of Ankara University, Greek national Christos Teazis has profound understanding of the reality of Turkey. In this book, he describes with clarity and originality Turkey's domestic policy from 1920 to the current day, and dares to make predictions about the transformation of its political system. He bases his analysis on the "non-privileged" masses that have voted Recep Tayyip Erdogan in since 2002 and helps the reader discover and perhaps understand the mentality that reigns in the Party of Justice and Development, its ideology and the transformation of Turkish society that it wishes to see. The concepts of 'second change of regime' and 'non-privileged' were chosen to highlight the parallels that exist between Turkey and Greece. According to Christos Teazis, this concordance does not cover the internal dynamic of the two countries, but is based on international values such as neoliberalism, which has been dominant in both countries since the 1980's. These values are expressed by the Left in Greece and by the Right and Islam in Turkey. Against the backdrop of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's election to become Turkey's president, the author analyses the Party of Justice and Development (AKP)'s ideological roots, which he says go back to opposition to Atatürk at the first Assembly in 1920.
(AKa)
*** L'Europe en formation. Revue d'études sur la construction européenne et le fédéralisme - Journal of Studies on European Integration and Federalism. Centre International de Formation Européenne (10 av. des Fleurs, F-06000 Nice. Tel: (33-4) 93979397 - Fax: 93979398 - Email: europe.formation@cife.eu - Internet: http://www.europeenformation.eu ). 2013, No. 370, 216 pp, €20. Annual subscription: €50.
This issue of the review founded by Alexandre Marc, the high-priest of fundamental federalism, contains a special report on EuroMed relations in the wake of the Arab Spring(s). During a similar type of assessment in 2010, several speakers questioned the credibility of European commitment to the region, the European Union's action having been done a disservice by the different aims and visions of its twenty-eight member states. This perception survives today, but to a more measured extent. For Tunisia for example,, Laura-Theresa Krüger and Edmund Ratka stress the positive nature of the attention now being paid by the European Union to civil society in order to consolidate the democratisation process, while Silvia Colombo and Benedetta Voltolini say that Morocco is still a laboratory in which the European Community is testing its new approach to the promotion of democracy because of the relatively stable situation in the country. Julia Simons shows that the EU is trying to strengthen representative democracy's political elements while continuing to count on a liberal colouration of the political, economic and societal order to be promoted. Paula Gómez de Caso Villar compares and contrasts the various social movements around the Mediterranean region, while Federica Bicchi diagnoses a continued decline in regionalism as a foreign policy objective for the European Union. Another topic addressed is the energy question.
(PBo)
*** IRNERIO SEMINATORE: Six études sur les équilibres internationaux. Editions L'Harmattan (5-7 rue de l'Ecole polytechnique, F-75005 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 40467920 - Email: diffusion.harmattan@wanadoo.fr - Internet: http://www.editions-harmattan.fr ). "Questions contemporaines" series. 2011, 144 pp. ISBN 978-2-296-54629-5.
In this book with a preface by former Belgian prime minister and current MEP Guy Verhofstadt, Prof. Seminatore, founder of the European Institute of International Relations in Brussels, presents six studies on key moments in the European and global economy from the Renaissance and the emergence of nation states to the world international system in the nuclear and planetary age. Providing a synthesis of doctrines, principles and ethics of action, the book brings equilibrium, balance, legitimacy, rational calculation, sovereignty and national interest to the core of key references of political science.
(MT)
*** Rivista di studi politici internazionali. Edizioni Studium (25 via Crescenzio, I-00193 Rome. Tel: (39-06) 6865846 - Fax: 6875456 - Email: amministrazione@edizionistudium.it - Internet: http://www.edizionistudium.it ). July/September 2014, No. 323, 160 pp, €19. Subscription: €70 (Italy), €90 (elsewhere). This issue of a prestigious Italian review includes an article by Prof. Bichara Khader on Europe's positioning vis-a-vis Palestine from 1957 to the present day.
(MT)