*** PIERRE DE BOISSIEU, POUL SKYTTE CHRISTOFFERSEN, JACQUES KELLER-NOËLLET, CHRISTINE ROGER, DAVID GALLOWAY, JIM CLOOS, LUK VAN MIDDELAAR, GUY MILTON, THERESE BLANCHET, ANDRE GILLISSEN: National Leaders and the Making of Europe. Key Episodes in the Life of the European Council. John Harper Publishing (27 Palace Gates Road, London N22 7BW, UK. Tel: (44-1767) 604951 -Email: coutserv@turpin-distribution.com - Internet: http://www.johnharperpublishing.co.uk ). 2015, 320 pp. £18, €25. ISBN 978-0-9929748-9-3.
This book in itself constitutes an event. In it, senior civil servants who have operated behind the scenes at the European Council and who have extensive knowledge about its arcane machinations collaborate in this publication to recall the significant European “summits” they took part in. These are revealed as an almost pleasant incongruity (at lease for those who remember the taste of the secrecy for so long cultivated in the diplomatic milieu) or a veritable godsend for this particular journalist penning these lines and who happened to cover a great many of them. Thanks to their insight, these important chapters in the history of European construction take on a life of their own and provide the readers of these chapters of personal and appropriately anonymous memories (none of them are attributed to a specific author) with a clear and useful clarification of the meetings of heads of state and governments, their decisions and their failures, which have fashioned Community Europe over the past few decades and which in many cases explain…why the European Union has become what it is.
How, for example, can the showdown be explained between David Cameron and up until a few days ago, his collaborators, if we do not return to problems such as the British budget issue that have poisoned relations between London and its European partners since the arrival in power of Margaret Thatcher up until the Fontainebleau Council on 25-26 June 1984? “The Price of a New Start” is the title of the third chapter underlining the different stages of this episode: the “declaration of war” from the “Iron Maiden” during the press conference at the end of the Dublin European Council in December 1979 (“We are not asking for a penny from the European Community for Great Britain. What we are asking for is a very important part of our own money”); the attempt by Margaret Thatcher to use the (pseudo) compromise from Luxembourg to block the setting of agricultural prices in order to gain the upper hand on the question of the budget, a manoeuvre that was undermined by the Belgian Minister for Agriculture, who, by demanding that a choice be made by qualified majority voting, was obviously unaware that he was killing the chances of Jean-Luc Dehaene of being made President of the Commission during the European Council of Corfu in June 1994 (an episode related at great length in Chapter 9), without counting that of Guy Verhofstadt that follows; before the Athens European Council and the recollection of the Secretary of State, Grigoris Varfis, who saw Ministers Cheysson, Delors and Rocard suddenly arrive in his office like “gangsters from a French film” to tell him that the compromise ideas put forward by the Greek Presidency were, “completely unacceptable”, this summit was also the first to not have contained the “Presidency Conclusions”; at the end of the first day of work at Fontainebleau, where in the press hall, the Greek Prime Minister, Andreas Papandreou, claimed that, “the United Kingdom would do the Community a great service by leaving it”; the battle of Fontainebleau was ultimately won by Mrs Thatcher, but it did also mean that this lady, “who had never succeeded in being on good terms with her colleagues” finished by losing, “the war that sought to give the United Kingdom a central role in determining the future of European integration”. This obviously raises the question of whether Cameron deserves better in this aim than her, thirty years later!
The facts and anecdotes contained in these pages are all extremely edifying. Through them we clearly see, as explained by the authors in their collectively written preface, “the history of the way in which the national leaders became to be the driving force behind the European Union's strategic decisions”. Overall, their testimony should, nonetheless by taken with certain precautions because, judging by the evidence, their loyalty towards this body that has recently become an institution, also translates their attachment to a specific vision of how Europe should be built. In the first chapter on the birth of the European Council on the initiative of Giscard d'Estaing, they are also keen to underline the idea that the latter said the following statement came from Jean Monnet, “The creation of the European Council… is the most important in favour of the union of Europe since the signing of the Treaty of Rome!” The question of whether the “Father of Europe” was in favour of this body bringing the most senior political leaders from the member states together is a proven fact but is it so certain that he would have held the same arguments today? For the authors of this book, there is no doubt and for whom it is natural that the European Council ceased to be, “something resembling a diplomatic conference” to become the embodiment of the European political authority, the only one able to marry all the different national sensibilities to that of the European interest”. They explain that it is down to them that the Union is not a “Brussels of bureaucrats” imposing its will on European citizens but rather an enterprise of, “elected leaders taking collective decisions in the name of their electorates on questions that had a real impact on European societies and citizens”. Nonetheless, the fact that this collective leadership is not accountable to European voters or the hundreds of millions of citizens every five years, is not perceived a problem to the authors. Is it really the case that in many more of the essays, the horrendous challenge posed by refuges, the national selfishness displayed and winning out to sickening proportions, facilitated by the intergovernmentalism undermining the Community spirit do not create a crisis of conscience for them either? In his forward, Herman Van Rompuy puts forward the following interpretation, “The main responsibility of a President of the European Council is to be a guardian of trust: protecting trust and helping it to grow among the leaders, so they can work together and help re-establish the trust of the people of Europe”. In light of the decision taken at the most recent European Council, is it really certain that trust between Mr Cameron and his counterparts has grown? Perhaps, but would it not surely be absurd to claim that the trust of the Union's citizens has grown this this venture? Just by asking this question provides the answer …
Michel Theys
*** ANNA PACZESNIAK, JEAN-MICHEL DE WAELE (Editors): Comprendre la Pologne. Société, politique et institutions. L'Harmattan (5-7 rue de l'École-Polytechnique, F-75005 Paris. Email: diffusion.harmattan@wanadoo.fr - Internet: http://www.harmattan.fr ). 2016, 284 pp. €30. ISBN 978-2-343-06510-6.
Although Poland should not be seen in the same way as the Hungary of Viktor Orban, it is not, nevertheless, at this current juncture, among the countries seeking to provide the European project with strength and vigour. Why is that so? The answer to this question is not simple because the countries that joined the Union during the big bang of 2004 are still largely unknown. This is why this book is so interesting and which provides a comprehensive panorama of Poland over the past twenty five years. It explores the political, economic and cultural transformations that stemmed from the fall of the Iron Curtain and which subsequently accompanied the restoration of sovereignty to Poland.
This scientific presentation is all the more interesting because it is provided by Polish scientific experts, Professor Jean-Michel De Waele (Université libre de Bruxelles) being the exception to the rule. Particular attention is obviously given to the country's European trajectory and Joanna Dyduch and Anna Paszesniak (both researchers at the University of Wroclaw, the latter also works at the ULB's Study Centre of Political Life) give a methodical account of the different stages, different actors and sources of tension. In the same perspective, their colleague Andrzej Dybczynski identifies the three phases of the country's foreign policy. The latter also believes that the country has become increasingly European after a period in which Warsaw's only concern appeared to be that of guaranteeing the country's sovereignty - which still appears to hold true and where a previous unconditional attachment to the US put the country's integration into the European project in danger. Other feature articles look at the relations to be developed with eastern partners and the very sensitive issue of energy. Other contributions focus on democratic transformations specific to Poland, management of the Communist legacy in the country, economic and social policy, the role of the Catholic church - which remains considerable, even though Slawomir Mandes (University of Warsaw) demonstrates that a process of secularisation is taking place, as well as the importance of the agricultural sector. It is, indeed, a very comprehensive book.
(MT)
*** DIMITRIS IOANNOU: En disséquant la crise. Éditions Papazisi (2 rue Nikitara, GR-10678 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3822496 - fax: 3809020 - Email: papazisi@otenet.gr - Internet: http://www.papazisi.gr ). 2015, 322 pp. €18. ISBN: 978-960-02-3167-0.
The way in which the Greek economic crisis is currently being “read” is completely false and prevents the adoption and implementation of policies that would be able to take the country back, in a relatively short time, to the path towards further development. This is the point of view argued for by the author of this book, who denounces the inappropriate theoretical concepts and preconceived ideas that prevail due to political or intellectual indolence. All at once, Greek society and the Greek people find themselves exhausted and in an impasse, at the mercy of imaginary adversities but which do not have any real causal relations with the evils tormenting the country. The problem facing Greece is the economy, which is due to nothing other than result of a chronic structural malformation and asymmetry between consumption and production, diseases that have been in incubation for a long time before triggering the debt crisis stemming from poor economic policies and calamitous strategic decisions. At an ideological level, the problem results from chronic cultural dysplasia and a fundamental asymmetry between naive beliefs that belonging to institutions such as the European Union and the Eurozone code in themselves automatically guarantee the country's progress towards prosperity and modernity but also from the simultaneous refusal to adapt to economic realities, such as those prevailing in the country and in the Union and the globalised modern economy as a whole. Therefore, stop blaming foreigners as being responsible for all the country's difficulties and assume, with both honesty and courage, the responsibilities facing the country, which is a moral imperative for the Greek people. If they fail to do this, it will be pointless trying to find an exit strategy to the crisis and work towards a successful change of course in the country's fortunes.
(AKa)
*** COSTAS STRATILATIS: Le système politique grec à un tournant critique. Les conditions institutionnelles et la Constitution. Éditions Papazisi (2 rue Nikitara, GR-10678 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3822496 - fax: 3809020 - Email: papazisi@otenet.gr - Internet: http://www.papazisi.gr ). 2015, 280 pp. €14. ISBN 978-960-02-3150-2.
There are a number of factors that explain the extreme seriousness of the impact of the global financial crisis on the Greek economy, as well as the specific institutional conditions impacting on the Greek political system. In this study, a doctor in constitutional law at the University of startling Salonika and the London School of Economics and Political Science attempts to shed light on the causes of the tragedy being experienced in Greece. In so doing, he revisits the work by authors such as Acemoglou and Robinson on the origins of prosperity and poverty. Costas Stratilatis notes the during the critical years of 2010-14, the vicious circle between institutional pathologies and the tendency to close off the economy created a highly explosive cocktail that led to a collapse in political credibility, a declining constitutional quality, serious dysfunctions in Parliamentary democracy, and intolerable and increasing persistent corruption, nepotism and the pursuit of private interests, without even touching on the indifference of the media for which they should play a constitutional role. The electoral about-turn, such as the one experience in January 2015, was not enough to change these different trends and provide the right ingredients for the prerequisite of institutional regeneration.
(AKa)
*** PERIKLIS NEARCHOU: La Grèce en danger. Des idées et des positions pour une réorganisation nationale. Éditions Limon (2-4 rue Nikitara, GR-Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3227323 - fax: 3227324 - Email: ekd.limon@gmail.com). « Politique - Économie: la réalité grecque » series. 2015, 656 pp. €37.10. ISBN 978-618-80882-5-2.
The unprecedented disaster in which Greece has fallen in this period of peace, embodies the failure of the Greek political system and the action taken by the different political parties over the past three decades. All of a sudden, Greece finds itself playing the role of a guinea pig undertaking tests, under the cover of the European Union and extreme austerity measures prescribed in the name of neo-liberalism and the most aggressive form of globalisation. As a part of this story, the identification of Europe with globalisation is also narrated. The author, a doctor in political and social sciences at the University of the Sorbonne, Periklis Nearchou, has from long time been an ambassador in many different corners of the world and has chronicled in several different Greek journals, as well as in this book, that the Greece of today is confronting a threefold risk: 1) structural economic disaster, due to the lack of growth potential over an undetermined period; 2) exploitation of the country's economic weakness, with pressure and blackmail exerted at national level and, consequently, threats to the country's national security; 3) a worsening in the situation in the country, following the application of policies promoting neoliberalism and globalisation on the behalf of Europe and international counterparts. How should the Greek people respond to this triple risk? This book provides a number of ideas and ways that could lead to national regeneration and allow the Greek people to build a future that is worthy of its history and culture.
(AKa)