*** BRUNO CAUTRES: Les Européens aiment-ils (toujours) l'Europe? La Documentation Française (Direction de l'Information Légale et Administrative, 29 quai Voltaire, F-75344 Paris cedex 07. Tel: (33-1) 40157010 - Internet: http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr ). 'Réflexe Europe/Débats' series. 2014, 169 pp, €9. ISBN 978-2-11-009267-0.
The introduction to this book opens with a comment that even the most incurable of optimists would not dare to doubt: “Never has the gap between the citizen of the European Union and their leaders seemed as wide as it is today.” This is in fact the situation we find ourselves in, and the latest events connected with the arrival of new political leaders in Greece simply add to it. Faithful to the spirit that characterises this series, Bruno Cautrès provides answers in the book to the questions that have been gnawing away at people who set great store by the European project in this never-ending 'Great Recession.' This question, for example: “Is it legitimate to force economic policies upon the common people, and upon certain of them in particular, that don't necessarily respond to their democratic desires?” To this question, along with the more general one about whether Europeans still love Europe, the author, a lecturer in politics and a researcher at CNRS in France, does not provide univocal, definitive answers, but rather provides illumination in successive layers of the various aspects that contribute to the current malaise to a greater or lesser extent. He leaves it to the reader to draw his own conclusions, the author's aim being to provide tools for serious analysis and interpretation rather than holding forth from his academic tower.
The author starts by reviewing the various phases of the process of moving from “indifference to desamour” that he has found in the Eurobarometer opinion polls since 1973 - but whose results, he explains, are to not to be taken at face value. After the “permissive consensus” that prevailed until 1985 and the “golden age of European integration” personified by the Delors-Kohl-Mitterrand trinity, the post-Maastricht period paved the way for a “binding dissensus” that forced the elites to submit to “the constraint… of the people.” Over time, a “syndrome of detachment from European integration” then develops in a growing segment of the European population. It is clear that the big bang enlargement of 2004 was a factor here, but should this detachment (that was animated by the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty and the crisis that has been raging since 2008) also be seen as arising from a “growing politicisation of European issues”? Perhaps, but in that case, the national underpinnings of this politicisation would need to be explained, which the author avoids doing openly.
Claiming that Europeans have fallen out of love with Europe amounts to entering into caricature, argues Bruno Cautrès, however unpleasant that might be to Europhobes of all descriptions. But that does not mean that crumbling of support for the European Union is an illusion or a subterfuge produced by the opinion polls, and in the second part of the book, the author looks with finesse at the key factors in this desamour among citizens, dwelling on the question of “mutual trust amongst Europeans” which, unfortunately, is no longer measured by the Eurobarometer - something that Berlin may well consider a blessing these days … In the third section, he looks at whether European issues divide people into two groups and whether they are mobilising issues these days. Not really, he says, in the light of turnout for the European elections, although he admits in the same breath that more than anything else, European elections are a “mosaic of national European elections,” and this citizen disaffection could very well be the result of “marked lack of interest in the current modalities of European integration.” So who is responsible then if the European Union “remains composed of a plurality of national demos”? The politicians in the member states who are clearly reluctant to hand over powers to the European level or, at least, to the level that manages the single currency. Bruno Cautrès does not openly state this, but leaves it to the reader, the signatory of this recension, to draw his own conclusions…
Michel Theys
*** FRANCOIS SAINT-OUEN (Ed.): L'Europe de Denis de Rougemont. Editions Academia / L'Harmattan (29 Grand' Place, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve. Tel: (32-10) 452395 - Fax: 454480 - Internet: http://www.editions-academia.be ). Publications de l'Institut Européen de l'Université de Genève series, No. 13. 2014, 187 pp, €20. ISBN 978-2-8061-0132-7.
What good can be served by a book on the subject of Denis de Rougemont, a Swiss national whose name is known only to a handful of experts and scholars? This question will no doubt by asked in this thirty-fifth year after his death - but wrongly so! Senior lecturer at the Institut d'Etudes Globales at Geneva University and secretary general of the Centre Européen de la Culture that was set up by this writer who “focused on his epoch,” French national Saint-Ouen, has the merit in this book that follows on from a conference held in Budapest of showing the extent to which the thought of this personalist remains worthy of interest or even totally of the moment because, if not ahead of its time, it was at least timeless in many respects. No doubt some of the essays included in the book will only be of interest to a handful of experts, for example when Krisztina Horváth dissects “the poetry of the landscape in Le paysan du Danube,” one of his early works, and when Eva Szénási contrasts his conception of Europe with that of one of his communist contradictors at the end of the Second World War, or when Nicolas Stenger discerns his intellectual passion for “dialogue of cultures” in the decolonisation period that began in the 1950s. But readers who agree to venture int these writings will also discover there the traces of an intellectual who hoped “to find a middle way between capitalism and marxism,” a visionary who, in order to save civilisation and the human race, called along with Albert Einstein for the creation of a “planetary government,” and also the carrier, as Simon Charbonneau explains, of a spiritual vision incarnated in thought “whose meaning cannot fail to find an echo in the rebels and challengers of the materialist disorder” - which, as shown by the current Greek tragedy, are legion today, as they were yesterday… On many levels, the ideas of de Rougemont need urgently to be discovered anew. One should listen up, for example, when this high-priest of a Europe built upon the regions rather than the nation states slams the “micro-nationalists” and praises small groups in the political world because they are of a human scale. One should listen up when he speaks through his intellectual partner and friend Dusan Sidjanski, pointing out that a “federation can only be born from the renunciation of any ideas of organisational hegemony” and of “any spirit of a system,” because the aim is not to “erase diversity and melt down all nations into a single bloc, but rather to safeguard their own qualities.” Surely this message deserves to be meditated upon in Berlin, for example? On this basis, Prof. Sidjanski definitively turns the Barroso page (to whom he was an advisor) to sketch out what could be a crucial “European Federation” tomorrow, to be built by taking the eurozone as a “political, federating core.” Let us leave the final word to Denis de Rougemont himself who, in the sixth letter he sent to the parliamentarians of the Council of Europe in 1950 (and which is published in extenso in the book), accusingly taunts them: “Based on national parties, the way you are, it is clear that Europe will never be made!” Sixty-five years later, this comment remains an obstinate fact, because the European elections are still exploited for national ends…
(MT)
*** YANIS VAROUFAKIS: La genèse de la Grèce des mémorandums. Une chronique de la crise. Éditions Gutemberg (37 rue Didotou, GR-10680 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3642003 - Fax: 3642030 - Email: info@dardanosnet.gr). 2014, 432 pp, €19. ISBN 978-960-01-1668-7.
In 2009, the Greek state went bankrupt and Europe and Athens had to choose between truth and denial. According to Yanis Varoufakis, professor of economic theory at Athens Business University and visiting lecturer at the University of Austin in Texas, and more importantly finance minister in the new Greek government, they opted for denial and granted the biggest loan in the history of the world to the State that was the most bankrupt, on condition that Greek national revenue slumped! This absurd loan was camouflaged as an expression of… European solidarity. In fact, explains the author, the aim was to make cynical transfers that cost banks immense losses and then to get the weakest of citizens to bear the burden of the banks. This was the Memorandum manoeuvre, based on three "construction materials," namely toxic loans, a one-way street and fear of conflict with the banks. Today, the system that built 'Memorandum Greece' has had its day and the Tsipras government has ripped up the Memorandum straitjacket, whose genesis and the various stages are described by Yanis Varoufakis through the written texts over the 2006-2014 period. In nine chapters, the author explains how Greece arrived at the first Memorandum (May 2010 - March 2011) and the cataclysmic consequences it led to, going on to describe the advent of the second Memorandum (November 2011 - April 2012) and the hot summer of 2012. He also expresses his views about the possibility of a Grexit. The book includes a rich bibliography for this highly troubled period, both for Greece and the rest of Europe…
(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 ). 2014, No. 372, 168 pp, €20. Subscription: €50.
Alongside the traditional chronicle by the indefatigable federalist look-out boy, Jean-Pierre Gouzy, this issue of a review founded by the high-priest of fundamental federalism, the late Alexandre Marc, is wholly devoted to the future of European social models. The tone of the essays, all written by people active in academia, does not really encourage optimism since, as economist Jean-Claude Vérez explains in the introduction to this special report (which he edited), 'in a context of crisis and post-crisis, the European Union's budget constraints show that the divergence of social models is becoming a major obstacle to greater integration.' From the start, the first authors reveal that the debate about the introduction of the social model that began in European countries after the Second World War very soon weighed on the side of the liberal market model to the detriment of the messages carried by progressive social forces. Analysing the social policies implemented in thirty European countries, political scientist Kostadinova (of Illinois University in Chicago) provides proof that several models of the welfare state co-exist in Europe, and that they sometimes diverge quite widely. Her Swedish colleague, Lars Niklasson of Linköping University, adds that it would be foolhardy to bet on the emergence of a single social model given the differences that exist from one country to the next. This is confirmed again by economist Mahamat K. Dodo of Valence University and the University of California, who observes how the attempts to give the EU a social dimension differ and diverge. Does that mean that the current crisis could deal a body blow to the diversity of European social models and, as stated by Francisco Rodriguez (European University Institute), give way to a neo-liberal ersatz? Nothing seems to rule this out, despite the people's (and, unfortunately, populist) rebellion that could emerge from this. One regret: surely a reference to the universal benefit that Alexandre Marc was keen on could have been covered in this special report?
(MT)
*** Politique. Revue de débats. ASBL Politique (9 rue du Faucon, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 5386996 - Email: secretariat@politique.eu.org - Internet: http://politique.eu.org ). January/February 2015, No. 88, 84 pp, €9. Subscription: €40.
In this issue of a high-quality progressive Belgian review, there is little in the way of illusion this time in the way Europe is being built these days, apart from a denunciation by Editor-in-Chief Henri Goldman of “European ukases that impose blind austerity across the board” and which no movement on the left has been able to right back, in Belgium at least, until a short time ago - but things might be changing in this connection, even if Syriza does not bring about a European spring. There is also a marxist reading of the crisis that says that capitalism has in fact been in this crisis since the early 1970s, when the post-war boom gave way to a longer gloom, of which the financial crisis of 2008 is the most recent episode. This reading says that capitalism is now in a state of depression that is deadly in social terms and that only political radicality could provide a way out.
(MT)
*** TIZIANA DI MAIO: Alcide De Gasperi und Konrad Adenauer, Zwischen Überwindung der Vergangenheit und europäischem Intergationsprozess. Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, P. O. Box 350, CH-Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - Email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Italien in Geschichte und Gegenwart" series. 2014, 395 pp, €65.95. ISBN 978-3-631-64564-2.
This book by Tiziana Di Maio about Alcide De Gasperi and Konrad Adenauer provides a very instructive and very well-backed explanation of two figureheads who contributed to the European project right from the start. The author begins by minutiously framing the historical context in which the two men had to work in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and the start of the Cold War. The first section demonstrates very in-depth knowledge and research into international relations. Italy's view of French foreign policy is also presented in a highly instructive and original, if not objective, manner. One of the merits of this book by Tiziana Di Maio is that it features a large number of actors in the post-war rapprochement between Germany and Italy, such as Baveria or the Vatican, and also how it deals with this rapprochement from many angles, such as politics, cultural and cinema, not to mention an important and quite innovative perception of the rapprochement by Italian and West German public opinion. Another of the book's strong points is the section on relations with former East Germany. Although quite short, it has the merit of making an appearance.
(GLE)