*** MARIO TELÒ, DONALD SASSOON, ANDRE SAPIR: La place de l’Europe dans le monde du 21e siècle. Académie royale de Belgique (1 rue Ducale, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 5502212 – fax: 5502205 – Email: info@academieroyale.be – Internet: http://www.academieroyale.be ). “L’Académie en poche” series, No. 105. 2017, 131 pp. €7. ISBN 978-2-8031-0627-1.
This book follows on from three conferences by the Collège Belgique at the Belgian Royal Academy. It is both an unusual but user-friendly format and is useful for providing a number of keys to interpreting ongoing global upheavals. For many, one of these signs of these far-reaching changes appeared with Brexit and the election of Donald Trump to the White House. The historians, economists and political scientists who contribute to this book, however, dig well below the surface and advocate the “long term” approach very much favoured by the historian Fernand Braudel in an effort to provide as an exact an assessment as possible of the changes to the political and economic landscape on the planet and also look at what role the European Union could possibly have in the future.
Donald Sassoon is Emeritus professor of contemporary history at Queen Mary College University of London and he, very thankfully, opens fire first of all, on a number of overly comfortable preconceived ideas held by Europeans. This includes, for example, what role Europe has played in history and whether it has always been a model and political and economic flagship and to what extent it has provided an appropriate value system given that: a) “before the 19th century it was certainly less dangerous to live in Islamic or Buddhist countries than in Christian Europe”; the way in which Europeans treated native American Indians, Aborigines in Australia, the inhabitants of the Belgian Congo or South West Africa under German domination. This is likely to tend towards a more cautious approach, "when we invoke, with a certain arrogance, the legacy of the Enlightenment", without even mentioning Auschwitz and the Gulag. The author is barely any more indulgent when he comes to his compatriots and overtly accuses his historian colleagues from previous centuries of arrogance for having presented British history “as a succession of intelligent reforms based on pragmatism”, the complete reverse of the “still revolutionary French”, “militarist” Germans, “desperately romantic" Polish and the “confused and incapable" Italians… The fact that they chose Brexit does not change things very much in his eyes but his tendency to think that European citizens do not want more integration - who asked them? - and that the only possibility left is “to attempt the difficult task of establishing the rules of coexistence” is obviously proof that this author also remains… British.
The contribution by André Sapir is also bound to to cause some consternation because it demonstrates that at an economic level we are experiencing a second “major transformation” after the one described by the Hungarian economist Karl Polanyi and that the west, “which accounted for the biggest part of global GDP over the past 150 years, is now being superseded by the emerging economies". This has resulted in a declining middle-class and an increasing number of those losing out in the globalisation in the US and Europe, which has led to Donald Trump, Brexit and the rise in populist and nationalist movements. This leads to the conclusion of the Emeritus Professor in economics at the Free University of Brussels, as summarised by Professor Mario Telò that, “it is possible that the EU can survive the economic and social crisis but only by following the Scandinavian models that reconcile international openness and social protection".
Will this opportunity be seized by European leaders? This is the question that the emeritus professor in international relations at the Free University of Brussels and LUISS in Rome provides an answer to by identifying the politico-institutional dimensions of current geo-political change and weighing up the strengths and weaknesses of the European Union. On the face of it, he does not have any illusions given that he quite rightly points out that despite, “the construction of the beginning of democracy between the states” the Union remains, above all, “an ensemble of inter-governmental regimes" that the immense majority of citizens fail to understand and that “the crisis has simply worsened the deficit in the legitimacy and effectiveness of European policies”. Nonetheless, he counts himself among those who think “that the European Union is not a federal State in formation”. This political scientist also considers that regional regroupings are the future of the world just as women are the future of mankind and he asks whether, “regional governance at a global level will reorganise in concentric circles around more integrated hard cores”. In his eyes, the European Union has a major role to play in this context as long as it agrees to accept within itself “five concentric circles" of the Eurozone, security/defence areas, internal security and social and tax unions. Professor Telò is of the opinion that international challenges require this response. The question remains, however, whether the respective member states will listen to this appeal and develop a renewed Union that is, “a strong and respected vector for the prospect of more stable and fairer global governance and regulated globalisation"?
Michel Theys
*** SOTIRIS DALIS: L'Europe « difficile ». A la recherche de la nouvelle solidarité européenne. Editions Papazisi (2 rue Nikitara, GR-10678 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3822496 – fax: 3809020 – Email: papazisi@otenet.gr – Internet: http://www.papazisi.gr ). 2017, 162 pp. €9.54. ISBN 978-960-02-3319-3.
During the process of European integration, Europe has only managed to confirm the value it holds when it has been able to respond to historic challenges. On the 60th anniversary of the signing of the treaties of the European Economic Community, the member states have been keen to provide a positive vision of the Union and have presented it as a source of opportunities and rampart that protects against the threats against them. Everything has been done to defend the social and political ties that have been developed since the Second World War, the most recent act of nationalist evil. Thanks to the project of a united Europe, European citizens have a right to an area of peace where mutual respect prevails. Sotiris Dalis, a professor of international relations and Mediterranean studies at the University of the Aegean, considers it necessary, however, to admit that today this unity is a struggle that needs to be carried out and continued on renewed foundations. In order to genuinely continue to work in the spirit of the preamble of the Treaty on the European Community of Coal and Steel in 1951, it is again necessary to see European integration as a concrete utopia and locate the areas where European solidarity can complete national interest. This essay is in fact an invitation to take into consideration once again that we are Europeans and that it is in everyone's interest to be even more European in the future by promoting a kind of solidarity that is worthy of the name. A vast bibliography also accompanies this book. (AKa)
*** JEAN-FRANCIS BILLION, WILFRIED LOTH, JEAN-PIERRE GOUZY, DANIELA PREDA, ANGELICA RADICCHI, FABIO ZUCCA (Editors): Les fédéralistes en Europe des années 1930 à la fondation de l’Union européenne des fédéralistes (Paris – December 1946). Annexe: soixante-dix ans de campagnes fédéralistes pour une Europe unie et fédérale (1946-2016). Presse fédéraliste et UEF-France (Maison de l'Europe et des Européens, 242 rue Duguesclin, F-69003 Lyon. Internet: http://www.pressefederaliste.eu ). « Textes fédéralistes » series, No. 16. 2018, 186 pp. €20. ISBN 978-2-9558710-5-8.
This book is dedicated to 4 French federalists that have recently passed away. It was devised as an introduction to the history of modern federalist movements in Europe and the foundation in Paris of the European Union of Federalists (UEF) on 15 December1946, an historic moment and subject of a colloquy which is this book describes. In the first part, historian, Daniela Preda (University of Genoa) identifies the way in which the British federalist school has influenced the birth of this organisation and returns to its genesis in Italy. Other contributions subsequently clarify the way in which the federalist and European idea evolved in the 1930s up to the Liberation (Jean-Francis Billion), Professors Wilfried Loth (University of Duisburg-Essen) and Fabio Zucca (Université of Insubria) do likewise with regard to Germany and Switzerland. This part is completed by a testimony from the journalist Jean-Pierre Gouzy who attended this inaugural meeting and points out that this, “would probably never have taken place without the repercussions from the 1941 ‘Manifesto of Ventotene’ , and the European resistance of figures such as Henri Brugmans, Henri Frenay and Altiero Spinelli”, as well as the action taken by intellectuals such as “Jaspers, Spendler, de Rougemont and Lukacs”. The specialist, Angelica Radicchi (University of Pavia) highlights the “supranational vision" contained in UEF publications between 1948 and 1953. In the second part of the book portraits are drawn of the three founding members of the UEF: Jean-Francis Billion and Jean-Luc Prevel, who describe the trajectory of Henri Frenay, the founder of the Combat resistance movement; Professor Danièle Lochak (Université Paris X) also very usefully extricates from oblivion the figure of his father, Pierre Lochak, born in Bessarabia and who also highlights the fact Spinelli had previously illustrated, that a large number of the future European federalists were former Communists and finally, Jean-Pierre Gouzy returns to the emblematic figure of comprehensive federalism, Alexandre Marc. (MT)
*** DIMITRIS TSIODRAS: L'euro-patriotisme ou l'ethnocentrisme. Les concurrences internes, les menaces externes et les limites de la coopération dans l'Union européenne. Editions Minoas (34 rue Korinthou et Davaki, GR-14451 Metamorphosi. Tel: (30-210) 2711222 – fax: 2776818 – Email: info@minoas.gr – Internet : http://www.minoas.gr ). 2017, 276 pp. €16.99. ISBN 978-618-02-0875-7.
What role did France’s fear of Germany play in the construction of Europe? Is the European Union an area for co-operation or a new zone of national level competition? Should we really be talking about a German Europe? Is there a real risk of the Union dissolving and the return of fully sovereign national states? Can the Union evolve without a new alliance between France and Germany? In this book, the journalist Dimitris Tsiodras, the current spokesperson for the To Potami (The River) political party provides an outline of the European Defence Community, the debate regarding the nature of monetary union, the problems linked to German reunification and the prevailing competition in the Eurozone. He draws on a number of valuable analytical tools to assess the history and theory of international relations and evaluate some of the decisions taken by leaders such as Adenauer, Churchill, De Gaulle, Kohl, Mitterrand, Thatcher and Merkel. The theoretical analyses of competition, the position of the state in the global system and the limits of cooperation are posed by taking into account the support provided by wise men such as Thucydide, Kant, Morgenthau, Kar, Valse and Haas. The author therefore succeeds in clarifying a number of unknown aspects of the events and explains how the borders of the nationstate were constructed and that the political unification of the European Union remains more crucial than ever as the best way of meeting new major challenges and preventing Europe returning to the darkest moments of its past. (AKa)
*** YANNIS LOULIS: À la racine du mal. Comment et pourquoi la période post-dictature a déraillé. Editions Kastaniotis (11 rue Zalongou, GR-10678 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3301208 – fax: 3842431 – Email: info@kastaniotis.com – Internet: http://www.kastaniotis.com ). 2017, 400 pp. €17. ISBN 978-960-03-6276-3.
The political analyst, Yannis Loulis, has for a long time been a correspondent with the US Wall Street Journal (1980-1996) and is now a regular contributor to several Greek newspapers. In this book his preface begins with the following, "the history of political transition after the dictatorship is like a thriller. The French described it as “noir” or “hard”. Therefore, a happy ending was impossible. It begins radiantly, then clouds over and is soon to be followed by the darkness of the night and crisis”. At the outset, Constantin Karamanlis describes a democratic transition that became a model for other countries beyond the European continent. Nonetheless, this is where the good news ends. Greece in fact found itself in the hands of a group of politicians that dominated before the hideous dictatorship (1967-1974) and political life has not recovered. Yannis Loulis is referring to all the political leaders that Greece has experienced over the past 40 years: Constantin Karamanlis who, in the 1980s, abandoned the centre-right political party of New Democracy that he founded, to a far from fortuitous situation; Andreas Papandreou, the most talented politician who, in the 1980s and 90s turned into a populist and sent the economy crashing; Constantin Mitsotakis, the inadequate and anachronistic Prime Minister; Costas Simitis and Costas Karamanlis who both embodies lost opportunities, whereas George Papandreou will be downright fatal when he has to confront crisis and Antonis Samaras, the demagogic politician of the past who would be just as much a failure. With regard to Alexis Tsipras, whose attempts to become a political grown-up, have cost the country dearly, it is quite clear that all the different political leaders and parties are not spared this critical analysis and the author bitterly denounces the existence of the “failed state", which suffers from inadequate political personnel and the culture of self-destructive polarisation. (AKa)