*** STEPHANIE HENNETTE, THOMAS PIKETTY, GUILLAUME SACRISTE, ANTOINE VAUCHEZ: Pour un traité de démocratisation de l’Europe. Editions du Seuil (25 bld. Romain-Rolland, F-75993 Paris Cedex 14. Internet: http://www.seuil.com ). 2017, 95 p., 7,50 €. ISBN 978-2-02-137275-5.
This book didn’t help Benoît Hamon whom it advised on how to win the Elysée, but it is, all the same, a useful cat amongst the pigeons. With Stéphanie Hennette (professor of public law at Paris Nanterre University), Guillaume Sacriste (senior lecturer in politics at Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne University) and Antoine Vauchez (director of research at CNRS and Centre européen de sociologie et science politique), economist Thomas Piketty makes a difficult-to-refute diagnosis, but the treatment prescribed by the foursome to save the patient can rightly leave one in doubt...
The observation is that the government of the eurozone has over the years and in the torment of the crisis developed ‘in the blind spot of political controls, in a kind of democratic black hole.’ The authors are not wrong in considering that Eurogroup and its avatars (Troika, Economic Policy Committee, Economic and Financial Committee etc) are nothing, at the end of the day, but the powerful and protected-from-seizure sum of ‘national and European economic and financial bureaucracies.’ Functioning in an opaque manner in interconnecting closed circles, this ‘government of the eurozone’ – rightly described by Jurgen Habermas as a ‘post-democratic autocracy’ – cultivates a rare form of ‘democratic denial’ that allows it to close its ears to anything that does not resonate with this credo, which in the face of everything overestimates ‘the issues relating to financial stability and the “trust of the markets”’ and systematically underestimates themes such as employment, growth, fiscal convergence, social cohesion, solidarity, all questions that are at the heart of citizens’ concerns... Hence, how could one be surprised if a ‘far right populism’ is growing just about everywhere in Europe?
For Piketty and his accomplices, ‘it is therefore urgent to raise the democratic guard and restore representative democracy at the heart of European economic policies.’ They are clearly right a thousand times! But surely they go off track when they recommend forming a Parliamentary Assembly for the eurozone which they hope will mainly be formed of representatives of… national parliaments of nations in the single currency. ‘Directly connected with the political life of the member states, they alone have the necessary legitimacy for democraticising the powerful bureaucratic intergovernmental network that has formed over the past ten years,’ they argue. Does this mean that for them, the European Parliamentary Assembly that preceded the appearance of the European Parliament in 1979 was more democratically credible and legitimate than MEPs chosen every five years by European citizens? In reality, this is a very curious concept of democratic legitimacy, proving that the way some see it, it can only be demanded in the national area alone. A thousand reproaches could be made of the European Parliament and of the not very European nature of what claim to be the European elections, but considering that an Assembly composed again of delegates from national parliaments would be ‘progress’ is simply a wrong idea. Those who share this opinion, feeling rattled, will view with reserve or even suspicion the arguments, sometimes of a judicial nature, developed by the authors to demonstrate the legal feasibility of a treaty for democratising governance of the eurozone, their ideas about the composition – mostly from the left, the way they see it – of the Assembly or the scenario that would arise from a rejection of the treaty by France’s partners – read Germany – and, finally, the draft treat that they put forward. They claim that the draft treaty ‘looks like the code name for a wider cultural and political combat to democratise the “European project”.’ It is not certain that for this combat, there would be any more volunteers in Europe than there were people in France who voted for Benoît Hamon... Michel Theys
*** BRUNO COLMANT: L’euro: une utopie trahie? Un piège infernal. Renaissance du livre (1 av. du Château Jaco, B-1410 Waterloo. Tel: (32-2) 2108914 – Fax: 2108915 – Email: editions@renaissancedulivre.be – Internet: http://www.renaissancedulivre.be ). 2017, 159 pp, €14.90. ISBN 978-2-50705494-6.
With a preface by Herman Van Rompuy, the first holder of the post of continuous president of the European Council, this book by a recognised beligan economist was designed to ‘transport fragile figments of ideas’ that the author puts forward for criticism and meditation. Member of the Royal Belgian Academy and lecturing in a number of universalities, Bruno Colmant provides a ‘sketch of situations’ which, he says, arise more ‘from doubts and hesitations’ than strongly held convictions. There is an important one, however, that runs throughout the book, each of the seven chapters being thought out to substantiate it: ‘Whatever the angle of approach, one arrives as the implacable fact that the euro will only survive it a real aggiornamento is envisaged.’ Initially, the author explains the contextual modalities of the creation of the single currency, this ‘political project of an unheard-of level of ambition’ to the point that it overshot the capacity of comprehension so that the euro was, in a way, ‘the last price to be paid by Germany for Nazism, whose destruction had led to partition of the country’; sacrificing the Deutschmark was the price to be paid for making reunification acceptable... In reality, Berlin has since then largely benefited from the change because ‘the euro has comforted a population of retirees’ by leading young people into unemployment. Is everything to be taken as gospel in this book? No: as shown by the way Bruno Colmant decrees that the principle of subsidiarity ‘is based on the idea that public policy comes from the national and not supranational level’! In the following two chapters, he explains what currencies do before usefully looking at the ‘antagonistic religious imprints that clash in the eurozone’ between Catholic and Protestant countries. In the fourth chapter, he looks in a convincing manner at the ‘vices of fabrication of the single currency,’ not the least of which is the fact ‘the euro has become a gold-standard system without any reference to gold,’ which means that the currency’s reference ‘has become the currency itself.’ What arises from this is that it is no longer possible to withdraw from this monetary system because ‘while the euro is no longer a currency suited to Southern European countries (…) the exit of these countries would come at the price of massive hyperinflation.’ The author then goes on to look at public debt and the possibility of civilian state defaults, before taking a critical look at the action of the European Central Bank, adept at ‘the solitary exercise of monetary power’ following Germany’s initial influence. One of the conclusions he draws is that one day or other it will be necessary to ‘follow the euro through to the end, in other words, renouncing independence of the ECB by including it in the heart of the economy, requiring it to refinance loans to the economy itself.’ In his view, ‘a right of inventory will need to be exercised one day’ against the euro’s founding fathers; it is not certain that their distant successors will emerge any better from this exercise, as Bruno Colmant says that there is no guarantee that they will show themselves to be better up to the challenges to be faced in order to stop the euro from ending up by exploding... (MT)
*** GEORGIA KAPLANOGLOU, STELLA LADI (Eds.): Comprendre la crise grecque. Réponses à des questions clés sur l'Etat, l'économie et l'Europe. Editions Papazisi (2 rue Nikitara, GR-10678 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3822496 – Fax: 3809020 – Email: papazisi@otenet.gr – Internet: http://www.papazisi.gr ). 2017, 276 pp, €19. ISBN 978-960-02-3344-5.
A deep and prolonged crisis, like the one undergone by Greece in recent years, raises many questions about cause and effect, not to mention effective management. The twenty-or-so authors in this volume, all academics and researchers brought together by Prof. Georgia Kaplanoglou (economics department of Athens University) and Stella Ladi, senior lecturer in Europeanisation and public policies at the political science and history department of Pantheon University, were invited to answer eleven questions that dominate public debate about the crisis, covering the sustainability of the Greek public debt, the capacity to achieve high primary budget surpluses over a long period of time, the level of taxation, the scale of the public sector, the effectiveness of the structural reforms that have been promoted on the labour and product markets, and the solidarity with Greece displayed by its European partners. In this connection, they were asked whether this solidarity was imposed by the need to save their own banks using the funds lent to Greece under aid programmes. The European Central Bank’s attitude to Greece is the subject of interrogations. These are scientific analyses that try to synthesize positive and negative aspects of the action taken to deal with the crisis, against a realistic framework based on data, international comparisons and ex-post awareness. The authors also wanted to contribute to a level-headed, documented public debate, the main objective of the Hellenic European and Foreign Policy Foundation, which is behind this book. (AKa)
*** MIRANDA XAFA: La dette publique. Editions Papadopoulos (9 Kapodistriou, GR-14452 Metamorphosi. Tel: (30-210) 2846074-5 – Fax: 2817127 – Email: info@epbooks.gr – Internet: http://www.epbooks.gr ). 2017, 112 pp, €10.99. ISBN 978-960-569-736-5.
Public debate on the crisis in Greece is characterised by inaccuracies and erroneous assessments that lead to equally erroneous conclusions. One often hears, for example, even from official sources, that the memorandums have fed into and worsened the crisis, that debt alleviation would have put an end to austerity, and that imposing austerity on a country in crisis was a major error. This book is designed to refuse these claims. Member of the board of administrating of the International Monetary Fund from 2004 to 2009, Miranda Xafa revisits the history of the evolution of the Greek public debt since the dictatorship. Currently a researcher at the Centre for Innovation in International Governance after lecturing at Pennsylvania and Princeton Universities, she looks at the causes of fhe crisis, analyses the 1980s, deals with the unregistered debt of 1990-1993, the country’s march towards economic and monetary union (1995-1999) and the golden age of the years from 2000 to 2007. She then presents and analyses the global financial crisis (2008-2009), the first memorandum (2010-2011), the controversy surrounding the 2009 deficit, restructuring of the debt in March 2012 and then the episodes that followed. In conclusion, she asks whether there will a further restructuring of the debt in 2018 and traces out various conditional paths for the country to finally leave the crisis behind. The book is enriched with a wide bibliography. (AKa)
*** MICHALIS KACHRIS: Quitter la zone euro et passer à la monnaie nationale. La transition nécessaire vers notre monnaie nationale. Editions Arnaouti (42 rue Charilaou Trikoupi, GR-10680 Athènes. Tél.: (30-210) 3630271 – fax: 3615209 – Courriel: arnaoutisbooks@gmail.com – Internet: http://www.ekdoseis-arnaoutis.gr ). 2017, 172 p.,19 €. ISBN 978-618-5247-43-0.
This book is written for those tempted by the idea of seeing Greece exiting the eurozone and the European Union, and to all those who wonder whether the development of an independent national monetary policy wouldn’t be the best solution. These hypotheses are addressed without prejudice or dogmatism, the author’s aim being to help readers forge an opinion in this connection. Economist and lawyer Michalis Kachris believes that leaving the euro and the EU is an unavoidable necessity, but he does not neglect the problems that would arise from this, for example for issues relating to protection of the single currency, monetary planning, the single currency’s convertibility, monetary guilt, etc. For the author, it remains necessary for Greece to leave the eurozone and the EU as soon as possible in order to be able to give the country economic recovery that will enable it to survive as a nation and an economy. He makes an incisive plea: ‘Do we want to wake up from lethargy and realise that the road we’re taking is leading us inexorably to the decline of our economy and continual deterioration in people’s living standards, or will we continue to live in a ‘conspiracy of silence’? (AKa)
*** CLAUDE BLUMANN (Ed.): Introduction au marcher intérieur – Libre circulation des marchandises. Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles (26 av. Paul Héger, CP 163, B-1000 Bruxelles. Tel: (32-2) 6503799 - Fax: 6503794 – Email: editions@ulb.ac.be – Internet: http://www.editions-universite-bruxelles.be /). "Commentaire J. Mégret" series. 2015, 542 pp, €80. ISBN 978-2-8004-1581-9.
Written by leading French academics, this Commentaire Jacques Mégret relates to two different but complementary themes, namely an introduction to the Single Market and a study of the free circulation of goods. In terms of the Single Market, it explains that it is not set in stone but a ‘permanent creation’ since it must be ‘regularly protected from attempts by States to go backwards and even from public and private operators wishing to introduce new barriers.’ It is then presented as a group of rules covering the four fundamental freedoms of circulation, before a review and commentary are made of the general principles, such as freedom and non-discrimination, which govern economic activity there. As for the free circulation of goods, the focus is on techniques introduced to combat old and new obstacles that could hold back the free movement of trade among the member states. It is clearly demonstrated that primary barriers such as customs duty and quantitative restrictions have gradually disappeared with taxes and measures of equivalent effect having since moved to the front of the stage, along with national trade monopolies. The book notes that it is not only a matter of fighting against obstacles, but also of preventing them, for which reason the European Union has developed a large-scale arsenal of measures to enable it to act upstream. (PBo)