*** MICHEL AGLIETTA, NICOLAS LERON: La double démocratie. Une Europe politique pour la croissance. Editions du Seuil (25 bld. Romain-Rolland, F-75993 Paris Cedex 14. Internet: http://www.seuil.com ). 2017, 206 p. €20. ISBN 978-2-02-134269-7.
Here is a book that will warm both hearts and minds of all those who refuse to resign themselves to allowing Europe to be built in the negative way that certain member states would so wish. Emeritus professor at the Université Paris-Ouest and adviser at the Centre d’études prospectives et d’informations internationales, the economist, Michel Aglietta, has collaborated with researcher Nicolas Leron (Centre d’études européennes de Sciences Po) to trace the origins of the current European malaise. They identify these sources as “structural failings” such as the “absence of a public authority at a European Union level and the incomplete nature of the euro”. This intellectual expedition arms the reader with the conviction that Europe is, more than ever, “on the right track for responding to the major challenges of our time” but that it is time that the chrysalis transforms itself into the butterfly because if it fails to do so, it will remain nothing but historical larvae.
The two authors construct their analysis on the conviction that: the method of making small steps, dear to the heart of Jean Monnet, is obsolete because it is no longer appropriate now that, “economic interests are clashing with political identity and European rules with State sovereignty”. It will be on the basis of politics and democracy to judge and understand the economic crisis and identify an effective solution and through this book determine the imperative for “recasting the European constitutive political Pact”. To this end, the two authors develop a systemic and a multidisciplinary analysis of the crisis that highlights the economic dimensions (the organic link between currency and political sovereignty and debt and society), political (politico-institutional system of the Union and its effects on the respective national political systems) and legal (judicial sovereignty at state level and the problem of the different legal orders in the Union and the member states, the European Court of Justice and the supreme and national constitutional courts). This list could obviously create concern among certain potential readers if the academic ideas are left impenetrable. This is not at all the case and everything remains scientifically robust in this publication with Aglietta and Leron calling a spade a spade and, above all, ensuring that their economic explanations do not make “the question of political legitimacy” abstract, which is, unfortunately, the case in a majority of studies and when great minds formulate, “proposals incorporating institutional engineering without any major intrinsic scope of a Eurozone parliamentary nature and a minister of finance for the Eurozone”.
Aglietta and Leron, on the contrary, want to get back to the roots of the problem, namely, “the question of politics within the European political system”. It is this problem that causes the “political anaemia” within the Union and its member states and which is responsible for “public impotence” and the dissolution of “sovereignty” in relation all “democracy, whether this is at the local, national or European level. This requires a parliament with a genuine budgetary power and the power to vote on taxation and public spending and which effectively provides citizens with the possibility of expressing themselves on major macro-economic and societal alternatives”.
When they tackle issues such as the budget and debt they ensure that they are taken into account in the context of “the ownership and participation of citizens within a political order that is perceived as legitimate”. They provide a highly critical but well argued denunciation of the “rupture between the organic link between political and monetary sovereignty” prevailing in the Eurozone and the “vicious circle” that leads to both countries and citizens losing themselves within the situation and which “gradually corrodes democracy in Europe”. The authors emphasise that it is because of this that it is imperative to transform the European constituent pacy and develop “a European budget” of 3.5% of GDP which would come out of own tax resources and would help to “pave the way to operational lending and investing as a last European resort”. The European Parliament would subsequently obtain the status of a full “democratic body” because it would have genuine budgetary power which would ultimately provide Europeans with, “the possibility of developing a society by creating debt that is collectively arranged on the basis of the common production of goods for themselves and future generations”. The authors believe that political Europe and European democracy will be created with this as a price or they will not be created at all. Who would dare to contradict them? Not many people, that is for sure, except those, obviously, who frequent the European council and other bodies where the member states essentially impose the law of their respective national interests... Michel Theys
*** MILENA APOSTOLAKI: La fin de la période d’après la junte. Le temps du redémarrage. Editions Patakis (38 Panayi Tsaldari, GR-10437 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3650000 – fax: 3811940 – Email: bookstore@patakis.gr – Internet: http://www.patakis.gr ). " Sciences sociales et politiques" series. 2017, 228 pp. €9.90, ISBN 978-960-16-7428-5.
The crisis continues to deepen in Greece, which highlights the deep-rooted problems and difficulties in the national political system that result from both European construction and Greek society. The political forces called on to manage the crisis in 2015 sought to introduce a number of necessary reforms but proved incapable of recognising their own responsibilities or finalise a national strategic development plan to enable the country find a way out of the crisis. This is the observation made by the lawyer, Milena Apostolaki, who was, on a number of occasions a minister in respective Pasok governments. She is currently an editorial writer and does not pull her punches when it comes to Europe and its failings because it was not sufficiently well prepared at political and institutional levels, which resulted in punitive and unproductive responses. With regard to Greek society, it continues its agonising descent into hell and its painful anxiety about the future, which means that it is trapped between the cult of nationalism and ethnic division. Today, the collapse in the demagogic anti-memorandum discourse and the end of illusions are the painful substrata of the end of epoch that followed the fall of the colonels’ junta. The new historic cycle to be written, according to the author, will be through an indispensable social consensus and change in the dominant model conducting politics, so that responsibility and truth become the watchwords of political life. Is this the sign of Greece entering an apolitical era? Milena Apostolaki does not think so at all and for whom the protection of the majority of those who have worked hard and created opportunities for all, particularly the most vulnerable, remain the master cards for those who wish to make a fresh start. (AKa)
*** THIERRY RONSE: Les compétences de l’Union européenne. Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles (26 av. Paul Héger, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 6503799 - fax: 6503794 – Email: editions@ulb.ac.be – Internet: http://www.editions-universite-bruxelles.be/ ). "Commentaire J. Mégret – Ordre juridique de l’Union et contentieux européen" series. 2017, 362 pp. €60. ISBN 978-2-8004-1612-0.
Thierry Ronse is an associate member of the European Law Centre at the Free University of Brussels. He is also first honorary auditor at the Belgian Court of Auditors. In this book, which is now in its third edition, he seeks to retrace the history of the competencies of the European Union. Some of these were the political goals of the member states, whilst others were obtained through the action of the European institutions, such as the European Court of Justice. This history is also characterised by the goal of the member states, some more than others, to maintain as much as possible their sovereignty and, subsequently, restrict the development of European construction. It is this permanent tension that is the subject of this particular study in this book, which is also illustrated in light of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice. The first chapter involves a presentation by the author on the dynamic arising from the Schuman declaration: after a comparative analysis of the notion of sovereignty in international public law and in the law of the European Union, the author demonstrates that the sharing of sovereignty characterising European construction and four thematic areas: membership of the Union, extending or reversing of the transfer of sovereign rights, the Community method and financial sanctions. In the second chapter he examines the principle of the allocation of competencies and the demarcation of these competencies between the Union and member states and demonstrate this scope in light of other fundamental institutional principles such as respect for national identity and the principle of fair cooperation. The principles governing the exercise of the competencies allocated are also examined. In the third chapter, Thierry Ronse seeks to develop a typology of the different competencies allocated, in an effort to determine how they help to develop the integration process that started with the Schuman declaration and assess the extent of these competencies left in the hands of the member states themselves. The specific intrinsic characteristics of the Union’s competencies are also analysed. (MT)
*** TAKIS THEODOROPOULOS: Dans le pays de l’à peu près. A peu près moderne, à peu près européen, à peu près riche. Editions Metaixmio (118 rue Ippokratous, GR-11472 Athens. Tel: (30-211) 3003500 – fax: 3003562 – Email: metaixmio@metaixmio.gr – Internet: http://www.metaixmio.gr ). 2016, 208 pp. €14.40. ISBN 978-618-03-0728-3.
How did Greece become over the 200 years of its existence a country that has proved incapable of creatively tackling its relationship with classic antiquity? Why is Greek identity so confused and has made it citizens a mixture of being a little Greek, a little European, a little European, a little Balkan and a little Mediterranean? In an effort to provide answers to these questions, Takis Theodoropoulos uses this publication to provide his readers with a visit to the collective unconsciousness of Greek society that is very much removed from the traditional economic analyses and political stereotypes. He is a recognised writer and chronicler in the Athens newspaper, “I Kathimerini”, in which he describes a collective psychodrama through a number of moralistic aphorisms, which he describes as “more sarcastic than necessary” but which also sometimes take “things too seriously”. The texts of Takis Theodoropoulos discuss the cities, refugees, language, education, ancient Greece, the favourite subjects that provide a kaleidoscopic vision of the situation in Greece and which exposes a society full of contradictions. (AKa)
*** DIMITRIS EVANGELIDIS: Les néo-gauchistes du nouveau régime après la dictature en Grèce (1974). Editions Infognomon (14 rue Filellinon, GR-10557 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3316036 – fax: 3250421 – Email: info@infognomon.gr – Internet: http://www.infognomon.gr ). “Alternance politique” series. 2017, 177 pp. €16. ISBN 978-618-5219-21-5.
After the fall of the Colonels’ junta in 1974, Greece witnessed the emergence of a new kind of “left” electorate. It is this phenomena in this book that the ethnographer, Dimitris Evangelidis, seeks to assess and the development of a genuine climate of confidence and security this produced. Even though it did not have to confront the real difficulties or persecution, it did, nonetheless, embody an ideal that provoked admiration and a new vocation. The author explains that these people then began to identify themselves in their declarations as “leftists” haloed by their “resistance” against the “junta”. They subsequently laid claim to the contributions they had made to the “poster war” or their participation in the political party meetings of the underground left. This effectively produces the author’s question and lightning conductor throughout his book, “What relationship can a communist in the 1930s the 1940s, who had put his life in danger, who lived every day under the threat of imprisonment, exile or execution, etc., have with a communist of the post-junta period, who turning from one television screen to another, sells old-fashioned ideas as new who dresses up these ideas as their own”? (AKa)
*** ANDREAS ANDREOU, GEORGIOS KOKKINOS (Editors): L'histoire publique en Grèce. Les utilisations et les abus de l'histoire. Editions Epikentro (9 rue Kamvounion, GR-54621 Thessaloniki. Tel: (30-231) 0256146 – fax: 0256148 – Internet: http://www.epikentro.gr ). 2016, 392 pp. €22. ISBN 978-960-458-531-1.
In Greece, the current crisis and uncertainty about the future provoke urgent questions regarding the past. There is therefore a significant demand for knowledge about history at the very time that university historiography is losing its monopoly due to the appearance and proliferation of different tools such as historic culture, cognitive awareness and research tools, which are becoming much more available and are having a radicalising effect. The division, therefore, between academic history and the vision of the public at large is becoming ever deeper. The existing fallout can be located within the public history domain. This book is the result of research carried out by around 10 different researchers supervised by Professor Andreas Andreou (University of Aristotle in Thessaloniki) and Georgios Kokkinos (University of the Agean Sea) and seeks to familiarise the public at large about this discipline and the scientific results that stem from it. They therefore help the reader to revisit the past, so that they are able to consolidate memory and link identity to the real history resulting from this matrix. (AKa)