*** VINCENT MARTINET: Un pacte pour réformer et refonder l’Union européenne. Fondation Jean Monnet pour l’Europe (Ferme de Dorigny, CH-1015 Lausanne. Tel: (41-21) 6922090 – Fax: 6922095 – Email: secr@fjme.unil.ch – Internet: http://www.jean-monnet.ch ). Débats et documents series, No. 8. 2017, 54 pp.
Evaluating a situation that you are not directly concerned by confers a double advantage – not being accused of defending one’s own point of view in a biased manner and having absolute freedom of judgement. This explains the full utility of the ideas put forward in this publication from the Jean Monnet Foundation for Europe by a professor at Lausanne University who chairs the Swiss Federal Competition Committee. This expert is passionate about the structure of powers within a State or a union of States and multilevel governance and knows the European Union inside-out but from the outside, which makes the advice he puts forward all the more interesting and less suspect.
Wearing the robe of a ‘lawyer for the European construction,’ Vincent Martinet knows that this case is burdensome. Rightly or wrongly, the democratic deficit, the ‘uncertain stability of the eurozone,’ ‘the excessive austerity’ forced on its member states and the way the Union is dealing with the refugee crisis are fuelling criticism and resentment. Unable to respond convincingly to these challenges, the ‘Union is navigating by sight or even going where the current takes it – the image of a macabre Mediterranean experience.’ It is therefore time to rethink the Union and, more importantly, to reforge it from a two-pronged evidence: i) it is already structured in concentric circles, its hard core being the eurozone; ii) wanting to reforge it without ‘above all, putting citizens and, effectively, the peoples of the member states’ at the centre would be wasted energy because these days, ‘a Europe against the people or on the fringes of them is inevitably bound to fail.’. Recognising this requires one to go off the beaten path and starting, at last!, to generate a great citizens’ debate about Europe across the whole of the Union.
In order to achieve this, the author puts forward two seemingly iconoclastic ideas. The first is to lay the foundations, which he says can neither be a clean slate nor a revolution, based on a new fundamental treaty, a brief and precise text that would take the form of a pact, in other words a ‘solemn or particularly important convention among two or more parties’ in ‘particularly solemn conditions.’ He points out that it should be signed by heads of state in the capital of Greece, the ‘Athens Pact’ thus renewing ‘the solidarity and confidence of the EU member states in their fellow member state that is suffering an unusually intense crisis and whose relations with the European institutions and some member states have been highly problematic in recent years.’ This would mark a clear return to Monnet’s founding idea of not coalescing States as such, but uniting citizens, who are assured by the Pact that all the decisions taken in the renewed Union will be (at last?) in their interest.
The second idea put forward to drive the debate forward is that it should be punctuated by a ‘European referendum’ to decide whether to validate the Pact. Vincent Martinet says that ‘the fundamental and inestimable contribution of a European referendum’ would be to send a ‘strong message that all the member states’ peoples count and will decide from now on’ in the Union. This argument may perhaps reflect a typically Swiss concern, but all the same it makes good sense for the author to rightly explain that a referendum campaign of this type would allow the political leaders favouring the European construction to get the better of populists who, in the current situation, occupy the communications high ground. It is with good sense that he explains that the question that European citizens are asked ,must be clear and concise: ‘Do you approve of the European Pact signed in Athens on (date)?’ – knowing that the text itself also needs to be understandable for the common citizen. His ideas about ‘unanimity of the consulted peoples, without prejudice to withdrawal from the Union, required for the Pact to come into force seem more questionable, as is his desire that member states’ citizens be defended via their national parliaments. Nevertheless, the points addressed in this booklet deserve the attention of both leaders and citizens! Michel Theys
*** GILLES GRIN: Shaping Europe. The Path to European Integration according to Jean Monnet. Fondation Jean Monnet pour l’Europe (Ferme de Dorigny, CH-1015 Lausanne. Tel: (41-21) 6922090 – Fax: 6922095 – Email: secr@fjme.unil.ch – Internet: http://www.jean-monnet.ch ). ‘Débats et documents’ series, No. 7. 2017, 34 pp.
Director of the Jean Monnet Foundation for Europe, Gilles Grin is at pains in this pamphlet to better discern the philosophy that inspired that Father of Europe’s action for European integraton. To this end, he dived into the archives to find Monnet’s own words about his vision of sovereignty and the role of the law; institutions and the importance of identifying the common interest; federation as the ultimate goal of the process of integration; phased identification of a path combining economic integration with political union; geographical opening up of the scope of integration in Europe; and his global vision linking the European Project with the rest of the world. After underlining that Monnet’s European project was eminently political right from the start, Gilles Grin points out in his conclusions that the main aim of his crusade was ‘to curb the excesses of intransigent national sovereignties,’ the ‘Community Method’ being nothing but ‘a tempered form of federalism that took account of national realities.’ Apparently it did not take enough account of the intergovernmental approach according to the people who, in recent years, have systematically sought to favour the intergovernmental approach... (MT)
*** MATHIAS DELORI: La réconciliation franco-allemande par la jeunesse. La généalogie, l’événement, l’histoire (1871-2015). Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (41 av. Maurice, B-1050 Brussels. Tel (41-32) 3761717 – Fax: 3761727 – Email: brussels@peterlang.com and order@peterlang.com – Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). ‘Géopolitique et résolution des conflits’ series, No. 18. 2016, 280 pp, €45, £36, $58.95. ISBN 978-2-87574-323-7.
An abridged and reworked version of a doctoral thesis, this book arises from an obvious fact and an observation. The fact is that European governments in the first half of the twentieth century competed in energy and ingenuity in a bid to get young people to go to war. They were undoubtedly successful since ‘from 1914 to 1918, young French and Germans massacred each other at the rate of a thousand people a day.’ The observation is that an exception to the rule came with the Elysee Treaty of 1963 that launched a public policy to arrange meetings between as many young French and Germans as possible.
CNRS researcher at Centre Emile Durkheim de Sciences Po Bordeaux, Mathias Delori looks in this book at the origin, meaning and effects of this policy of reconciliation of young people implemented by the Franco-German Office for Young People, which still implements it today. He also provides answers to why this public action was launched in 1963 at the scale of France and Germany although the European Commission was firmly up and running. Based on two first-hand resources, viz. the abundant archives and no fewer than 75 eye-witness interviews, the author bases his work on the genealogical method developed by Michel Foucault to examine ‘effective’ history and studies in turn the genesis (1871 to 1963), the implementation (1963 to 1973) and the review (1973 onwards) of this reconciliation policy through young people.
He thus shows that from 1871 to 1962, many players contributed to making youth a subject of collective public action, but with sometimes highly different motivations: ‘countering nationalist or militarist propaganda for youth people,’ symbolising ‘international peace,’ motivating young people to commit to French or German military structures, signifying the emergence of a new West Germany, etc.’ This search enables him, in passing, to consider from a highly critical viewpoint the interpretation of some situations and personages in the traditional historiography of Franco-German relations. He scratches at the figure of Jesuit priest Jean du Riveau, who became ‘a sort o mythical personage’ when he worked throughout the war in the Chantiers de Jeunesse in Vichy, and remained ‘faithful to his Petainist commitments until the end of his life.’ The author also explains why some substantial projects for educating young people in favour of the European cause never reached the governmental agenda from 1950 to 1954, although two ‘marginal initiatives’ did manage to cross the Rubicon, namely a review of school textbooks and international meetings of young people. (MT)
*** GEORGIOS SOTIRELIS: Quelle gauche? A la recherche de l'identité progressiste dans l’Europe de la crise. Editions Polis (33 Eolou Str., GR-10551 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3643382 – Fax: 3636501 – Email: info@polis-ed.gr – Internet: http://www.polis-ed.gr ). 2017, 168 pp, €14. ISBN 978-960-435-544-0.
Europe has always been, and remains to this day, despite the emergence of new great powers on the global scene, not only the avant-garde but also the matrix of progressive ideas. Therefore in this epoch of crisis, it is time and even highly urgent to put the work back on he loom in order to forge a new progressive identity for the continent that will allow the principles and salient values of the European legal and political culture to be updated. Prof. Georgios Sotirelis (constitutional law at the political science and public administration faculty at Athens University, and also a lawyer and leader of the Greek Parliament’s research and studies department) says that only a new left – democratic, pluralist and revolutionary – will be able to achieve this. As he sees it, only a left that respects the best traditions of social democracy, eurocommunisim and political ecology will be able to find political ideas of a scale to meet the challenges of the present day, as long as it is socially aware and open to the new trends that are emerging. This ‘new’ left may act as a bulwark against the threat of the oligarch of markets and, in parallel, develop answers that will enable humanity to escape from the clutches of the multiform crisis that is not going away. Prof. Sotirelis says that in the very depressing reality of ‘market fundamentalism’ and ‘wild capitalism,’ true freedom can only come from a deeply humanist message carried by this ‘new’ left at national and supranational level. (AKa)
*** NIKOLAOS SEVASTAKIS: Les fantômes de notre temps. La gauche, la critique, la démocratie libérale. Editions Polis (33 Eolou Str., GR-10551 Athens. Tel.: (30-210) 3643382 – Fax: 3636501 – Email: info@polis-ed.gr – Internet: http://www.polis-ed.gr ). 2017, 136 pp, €12. ISBN 978-960-435-541-9.
This book contains documents on democracy and the battle of ideas during the years of crisis that have led to European melancholy in Greece. The Left, the impasses of anti-memorandum radicalism and the political ills that Greece is suffering from today are some of the issues addressed by Nikolaos Sevastakis. Lecturer in social and political philosophy since 1999, first in sociology at Aegeus University and then, from 2005, associate professor at the political science department of Aristotle University in Thessalonica, he combines in these pages political analysis and cultural criticism, not hiding the fact that we are in a transition to the unknown. To facile interpretations of the crisis, he opposes complex answers to the specific problems facing Greece in terms of polarisation of ideas and collective orientations. He analyses the traps connected with the demands of public morality that lead to demands for a review of policy, which leads him to reflect on their possible links with the totalitarian spectres that have haunted Europe’s past and that these days take the form of the challenge posed by radical islam in all European communities. Finally, the philosopher addresses the culture of the crisis, recommending a process of self-recognition, far removed from any recycling of national idealism into European melancholy in the sea of global problems. (AKa)
*** PANAGIOTA ARNOU: La mondialisation, le néolibéralisme et la crise. Effets sur l'acquis démocratique. Editions Papazisi (2 rue Nikitara, GR-10678 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3822496 – Fax: 3809020 – Email: papazisi@otenet.gr – Internet: http://www.papazisi.gr ). 2017, 370 pp, €23.32. ISBN 978-960-02-3271-4.
Modern representative democracy is not the result of a linear history or the automatic resultant of capitalist development. It is the fruit of demands, conflicts and struggles. Modern representative democracy must therefore be considered as a fragile social acquis, under permanent tension from preservation of democratic gains and resistance to oligarchic temptations. Panagiota Arnou, professor of political science and history at the Pantheon University in Athens, devotes this book to this never-ending struggle. His research seems him revisiting Hegel, Marx, Habermas, Gramsci and Poulantzas before comparing them with the latest theoretical approaches developed by thinkers such as Agamben, Sasken, Bensaid and Urbinati, which lead to completely different conclusions. With the prevalence since the 1980s of the neoliberal ideology, representative democracy and its instruments – parties, parliaments, elections... – affect their own legitimacy and themselves fuel challenges to themselves, undermining democratic and social acquis such as the welfare state and labour rights. The author says the danger is that the scale of this generalised crisis will ‘naturally’ engender authoritarian phenomena, which would mean no less than the suicide of the modern democratic state... (AKa)