*** GUY VERHOFSTADT: Le mal européen. Marque belge et Editions Plon (12 av. d’Italie, F-75013 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 44160900 – Fax: 44160901 – Internet: http://www.plon.fr ou http://www.marquebelge.com ). ‘Tribune libre’ series. 2016, 422 pp, €17. ISBN 978-2-259-24912-6.
In this book that was originally written in Dutch, former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, figurehead for European federalism today and currently a pretender to the presidency of the European Parliament on behalf of the group of European liberals and democrats, methodically and virulently attacks everyone who dares to remain in History like gravediggers of the Europe that was baptised at the time of Monnet and Schuman. He accuses those who preside over the destiny of the European Union of usurping the title of descendents of the ‘founding fathers,’ because it is clear to his eyes that ‘Europe today is a thousand leagues from the plan that was backed by Schuman, Churchill, De Gasperi, Spaak, basically the whole post-war political generation.’ In the preface, his accomplice, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, agrees, taunting the ‘incessant squabbling’ among ‘national kinglets,’ who are ‘incapable of ‘conceiving of political action and its legitimacy outside national shackles,’ which these days bolsters an intergovernmentalism that is deadly in that it could lead literally to the dismembering of the Union.
From having frequented the European Council for many years and observed its action and that of the other Union institutions from the European Parliament hemisphere, Guy Verhofstadt draws up a particularly precise indictment based on his rich political experience. His biting lines mostly hit the mark with feeling. For example, when he observes that the Union is suffering from a particular version of Korsakoff Syndrome, the illness that prevents the formation of new memories and erases information stored in the patient’s memory from the time before the disease was contracted. It is people with this illness who command Europe these days, and who believe they ‘are still living in yesterday’s world, somewhere between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, a period in which nation states set the tone.’ In this way, they are betraying the ‘revolutionary plans for Europe’ launched by visionaries in the 1950s. The moral degeneracy of the European project and ideal is relentlessly analysed, with the author deeply regretting that Europe remains a ‘dwarf’ on the world stage, going on to deplore in turn ‘the chronic ailment of nationalism’ and ‘plumber politics,’ denouncing the ‘Hungarian scandal’ and the ‘Mediterranean communal grave,’ not to mention the weakness of the response of Europe and its member states to the jihadi challenge. He goes on to set out the problems that are leading to ‘material decline,’ be it the decay of European industry, the digital desert, the credit crunch, the ‘obese labour market,’ the ‘swamp of European institutions’ or the ‘chimera of the European budget.’ Finally, he stigmatises the various errors of diagnosis, from the Grexit temptation to the Brexit reality and the possibility of other exits via the threat of a Euro-North and a Euro-South.
This closing speech for the prosecution is damning, cruelly pertinent and with a brutality that spares no one and no thing, not even what is done in Berlin and Paris. The picture he sketches is dark enough, black enough even, for readers to wonder whether it is still possible to prevent the European dream from turning into a nightmare in fine. In the final chapters of the book, Guy Verhofstadt the fighter finds words and ideas to revive the flame and regenerate hope. To those who feel that hoping for a ‘United States of Europe’ is a pipe-dream, he responds that moving to a federal Europe would be the wisest, most intelligent and pragmatic solution as globalisation implacably eats away at the national sovereignty of European countries, even the biggest, which are these days but wisps of straw in the face of the world’s country-continents. To save the European project, he wisely rescues from oblivion the ‘avant-gardist’ plan for a European Convention drawn up in 1953 by the German politician and lawyer, Heinrich von Brentano, which was swiftly nipped in the bud by the French national assembly in 1954 through the action of the Gaullists and Communists. The author says ‘Reading von Brenanto’s Constitution shows at first sight that an effective democratic Union, in the image of the United States is not utopian.’ His personalised reading of this Constitution leads one to believe that he might be right! Michel Theys
*** NAPOLEON MARAVEYIAS (Ed.): L’Union européenne. La création, l’évolution, les perspectives. Editions Kritiki (4 rue Papadiamantopoulou, GR-11528 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 8211811 – Fax: 8211026 – Email: biblia@kritiki.gr – Internet: http://www.kritiki.gr ). 2016, 544 pp, €35. ISBN 978-960-586-114-8.
Professor of macroeconomic analysis and European economic integration at the Political Science and Public Administration Department of Athens University, Napoléon Maraveyias got his team of thirty or so economists involved in this book, which provides answers to deep and highly topical questions. How could the European Union become more democratic and better understand the needs of the majority of its citizens? In what way could the eurozone be turned into a genuine Monetary Union with a common fiscal policy that can ensure fair equalisation for all, rich member states and poor alike? Are there these days any economic, social and political forces with an interest in European integration continuing? Can the common trade policy and competition policy satisfy all member states? Will the European Union one day be able to have common foreign and defence policies? Is it illusory to want to give the EU an immigration policy that satisfies all member states? It is to these questions, and many others besides, that the authors provide scientifically backed answers. (AKa)
*** ANASTASIOS-IOANNIS METAXAS (Ed.): La science politique, enquête interdisciplinaire et transversale sur le fonctionnement de la politique. Politique comparée: convergences et différences (Vol 6). Editions Sideris (116 rue Solonos, GR-10681 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3833434 – Fax: 3832294 – Email: contact@isideris.gr). 2016, 533 pp, €25. ISBN 978-960-08-0718-9.
This sixth volume of a ten-volume study, all edited by Anastasios Metaxas, emeritus professor at the Universities of Athens and the Peloponnese, sees no fewer than twenty experts from the academic world look at the comparative policy that is the focus of political science, and is often the matrix of the main conclusions drawn from political phenomena. They pave the way for secondary interventions, going beyond individual cases, not to mention the fact that, as the researchers point out, they can embrace all categories of political phenomena, be it nationally or supranationally. The book allows readers to understand the various comparative approaches, their characteristics and differences, and the divergences that they can sometimes lead to. (AK)
*** KIRIAKOS KENTROTIS: L'Union européenne de football. Editions Gutenberg (37 rue Didotou, GR-10680 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3642003 – Fax: 3642030 – Email: info@dardanosnet.gr). 2016, 226 pp, €15. ISBN 978-960-01-1776-9.
In these pages, the European Union is presented as a ‘team that has been playing football for years in all categories of tournaments in stadiums in Europe and around the world.’ Its path is considered within the framework of a football match, with all the ritual and protagonists characteristic of this type of sporting event. Thanks to the undeniable attraction of football and its popular aura throughout the world, the author has found a way of intelligibly exploring European integration beyond treaties, Community ‘acquis’ and the bureaucratic and managerial governance of the EU. According to Prof. Kiriakos Kentrotis (Department of Balkan Studies at the University of Macedonia), it is possible to gain greater understanding of the UFO that is the European Union using examples and symbols from football, particularly when considered by the lyric pen of Eduardo Galeano and his over-assessment of the Barcelona team. Guided by their respective slogans, ‘Unity in Diversity’ and ‘More than a Club’ (Mas que un club), the European Union and FC Barcelona have made temporal changes to the nature and content of their identities.
In the epoch of instrumentalising each activity and seeking perpetual profit, the magic of football images could (re)enchant the new political stadiums by awakening memories of childhood and growing up beyond any possible of discrimination or exclusion. As Galeano so eloquently notes, ‘football has had an important place in Latin American reality, sometimes the most important, even though this fact is ignored by ideologues who love humanity but hate people.’ (AKa)