*** DUSAN SIDJANSKI, FRANCOIS SAINT-OUEN, CONSTANTIN STEPHANOU (Eds.): Union de valeurs? / Union of Values? La mise en œuvre des valeurs et des principes fondamentaux de l’Union européenne / Implementing the values and fundamental principles of the European Union. Centre d’impression de l’Université de Genève (24 rue du Général-Dufour, CH-1211 Genève 4. Tel: (41-22) 3797111 – Fax: 3791134 – Internet: http://www.unige.ch ). ‘Publications du Centre de compétences Dusan Sidjanski en études européennes’ series, No.1. 2018, 220 pp. ISBN 978-2-8399-2355-2.
Disciple and friend of Swiss thinker Denis de Rougemont, political scientist Dusan Sidjanski has had a long academic career in which he founded the political science department of Geneva University. It is therefore quite natural that it decided to set up a European Studies Skills Centre named after him in 2016. This tome, the first in a series connected with him, reports on a colloquium organised in May 2017 on the theme of values that the European Union wishes to incarnate.
But here’s the rub: is the EU really, as it claims, a union of values? If so, which values does it promote and, more importantly, is it capable of having them respected in all its member states? What is the situation, for example, of the key notions of solidarity and cohesion, particularly viewing them in the light of the migrant crisis or the austerity imposed on members of the eurozone for the past ten years? Hence also the question of whether the conditionality stipulated in agreements with third countries should be introduced for structural aid for member states like Hungary and Poland – a hot potato at this present time… These are queries to which answers are given in these pages, in contributions written in either French or English.
The book is divided into four parts. The first looks at values and identities and first sees Prof. Paul Taylor (London School of Economics) demonstrating that the European Union and the United States no longer share perfectly identical values in practice, Dusan Sidjanski noting from his ideas in his conclusions ‘a distinction of essence between respect for the ‘person’ in Europe and assertion of the ‘individual’ and individualism in America.’ Viviane Reding recalls the combat she led as ‘first European Attorney Sceaux’ at the Commission to ensure respect of fundamental values in all EU member states and comments on the instruments available to her for this end, notably for managing the Hungarian case back in 2014 already. François Saint-Ouen looks at the intermeshing of European values and national identities, stating notably that ‘European constitutional patriotism remains highly theoretical,’ with very few member states prepared to ‘dare to envisage committing themselves, and still less sacrificing anything for the benefit of the EU.’
Entitled ‘Solidarités et cohesion,’ the second part sees four authors address the current crisis through four axes: i) solidarity to be manifested vis-à-vis migrants; ii) the question of public debt and austerity policies with their various consequences, notably from the angle of the solidarities imperatively required to be able to build a living European ensemble (Prof. Constantin Stéphanou reaches the conclusion that if the eurozone doesn’t turn into ‘a genuine area of solidarity’ guided by ‘the demands of economic efficiency and democratic legitimacy,’ it will not survive); iii) the ‘European social model’ in which Nikos Scandamis (Athens University and former official at the European Commission) sees ultimate value, but of which advantage is taken when required; iv) the EU's strategy for post-2020, the main elements of which are presented by high-ranking European official Georges Kolyvas.
The third part centres on demos, authoritarian slippages and the rule of law. Initially, there is Dimitri Chryssochoou (Pantheon University in Athens) who defends the idea that the EU works less from a logic of State construction and national edification than from an original intermeshing of integration and sovereignties, which translates into what he calls ‘organised synarchy.’ Next, a severe eye is cast in turn over the crisis of the rule of law that is manifesting in Hungary and Poland. Finally, Prof. Nicolas Levrat (Geneva University) starts from the autonomisation of EU law on the one hand and the postulate of reciprocal confidence among member states about their respect for values to develop a reasoning that makes him doubt that one can say that the EU ensures the promotion of the rule of law in the classical sense. The final part of the book sees Prof. Christian Franck gauge in a critical manner the place reserved for values in the European Union’s external action.
In the conclusions that he draws, Prof. Sidjanski observes that federalism, properly understood, is in no way a threat for identities, the proof being provided by Switzerland which, ‘rather than homogenising identities, has been able to preserve the diversity of Cantons, languages, religions and minorities, without erasing their specific identities.’ He adds his voice to those raised in this book to stigmatise the slippages in Hungary and Poland, which leads him to judge as ‘indecent’ the way the European People’s Party still includes Orban’s party and to ask this biting question: ‘How can a democratic and European party tolerate such a virus in its midst?’ Finally to be noted is the following warning: ‘In its current state of decay, the EU and its eurozone cannot be rebuilt step by step in line with the model of Jean Monnet, but need a political leap that implies an ‘overturning of perspective,’ failing which the extremists and nationalists will end up winning the battle!
Michel Theys
*** THEODOROS GEORGIOU: Le crépuscule de l'Europe politique. Editions Sakkoulas (23 rue Ippokratous, GR-10679 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3387500 – Fax: 3390075 – Email: info@sakkoulas.gr – Internet: http://www.sakkoulas.gr ). 2017, 260 pp, €20. ISBN 978-960-568-702-1.
In this short text, a man who lectures on the epistemology of social sciences at Pantheon University in Athens develops thoughts about Europe, refusing to expose them as a theoretical system: they being, in his view, fragmentary because Europe s not an entity in itself, having being transformed into something particular that is partly inserted into the international financial system. According to the methodology of critical theory, it is consequently the thematic subject itself that dictates its theoretical and epistemological treatment. This essay contains individual texts which all try to understand Europe’s current situation, the author noting at the start: ‘Let us first clarify what we call political Europe. We’re dealing here with an entity that was fashioned in specific historic contexts. It was shaped in post-war Europe and was institutionalised by the Treaty of Rome in 1957. Political Europe formed after the war then gradually changed in the direction of a new entity called a ‘technocratic Europe.’ Here is what leads to the current ‘twilight of political Europe,’ the transition from political Europe towards technocratic Europe having progressed very notably during the past thirty years, 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the communist regimes being the key turning point in this development. Consequently Europe uniting is not what it used to be, new realities having emerged both in the economic subsystem and in the political subsystem in Europe and internationally. (AKa)
*** Fedechoses… pour le fédéralisme. Presse fédéraliste (Maison de l'Europe et des Européens, 242 rue Duguesclin, F-69003 Lyon. Internet: http://www.pressefederaliste.eu ). April 2018, No. 178, 68 pp, €6. Annual subscription: €30.
Having recently become a four-monthly publication now beginning with a few articles in English, this highly combative French federalist review looks in this issue at the challenges to be taken up by the eurozone (Prof. Dévoluy says it will not be possible to address them without a ‘political federation’), and Brexit, with several contributions also looking at the current migrant crisis, while various specifically federalist subjects also have a place. Let us select in particular the lessons in European wisdom given by Robert Toulemon. This former high-ranking Commission official, ‘guilty’ of federalist leanings also feels that ‘the social question impose two demands today: limiting poverty through solidarity, and limiting wealth through taxation,’ which leads him to consider that the substitution of own resources in place of national contributions should be at the top of the European agenda ‘along with abandoning unanimity for fiscal and financial matters, at least in the eurozone.’ Under the pen of Catherine Vieilledent, who reports on a debate held in Brussels, MEP Alain Lamassoure agrees with her, feeling that it is ‘in perfect violation of the treaties’ that European policies are no longer financed by own resources, but by national contributions. This member of the European People’s Party in defiance of his national party expresses indignation in passing that the current European budget has been reduced by a third in real terms compared with twenty years ago ‘due to political decisions not translated into finance,’ which leads him to call for a… tripling of the EU's budget. Finally, let us mention the contribution that Jean-Guy Giraud devotes to enlargement, pointing out that account has never been taken of the ‘fourth Copenhagen criterion,’ namely the fact, enacted by the European Council that ‘the EU's integration capacity to assimilate new members while maintaining the European integration impetus is also an important element responding to the general interest of both the EU and candidate countries.’ While accession negotiations are being carried out with the six Balkans states, it would be good to remember, exhorts this former president of the French section of the UEF, that ‘history teaches us that the break-up of empires is often caused by their over-extension, which leads to a lack of unity and control over the whole…’ (MT)
*** MICHALIS CHRISSOMALLIS: Gouvernance économique européenne. Construire, approfondir les questions de démocratie et la primauté du droit. Editions Nomiki Bibliothiki (23 rue Mavromichali, GR-10680 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3678800 – Fax: 3678922 – Email: info@nb.org – Internet: http://www.nb.org ). 2018, 328 pp, €30. ISBN 978-960-622-369-3.
In this monograph by Prof. Michalis Chrissomallis (European Union law at the Pantheon University in Athens) he tries to map out the system of rules, mechanisms and procedures gradually put in place for coordinating and supervising EU member states’ economic policies. He examines the legal and institutional dimensions of the development of European economic governance from the creation of economic and monetary union with the Maastricht Treaty to the present day. In this way he of course analyses the failings of a system that revealed itself incapable of preventing the crisis in the eurozone, and that also prevented the debt crisis in the member states from being dealt with, which translated in fine into a crisis of European economic governance. To this end, he dissects the rules contained in the ‘package of six legislative measures,’ the financial pact and the European Stability Mechanism, along with recent developments in the setting up of Banking Union. Over and above the presentation of a system with an extremely complex configuration (treaties, European Union derived law, non-binding legal provisions, intergovernmental agreements among eurozone member states…) usually adopted as a matter of urgency, the author is at pains to discern and understand the points of friction that the latter naturally encountered with democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights, before reviewing and assessing alternative scenarios for democratic governance of the eurozone. (AKa)
*** KYRIAKOS KENTROTIS: Football de l'Union européenne. Plus qu'un jeu et qu’une Union. Editions Gutemberg (37 rue Didotou, GR-10680 Athens. Trl: (30-210) 3642003 – Fax: 3642030 – Email: info@dardanosnet.gr). 2017, 15216 pp, €15IN 978-960-01-1776-9.
In this book, the European Union is presented as a ‘football team that has been playing for decades in all categories of tournaments in all stadiums of Europe and the world.’ Its path is traced out in the context of a football match, with all the ritual and required protagonists. Thanks to the unchallengeable attraction of football, a different view of European integration is sketched out and explored well beyond the treaties, EU acquis and the bureaucratic management of the European Union. Professor at the Balkan studies faculty of the University of Macedonia, where he lecturers in EU external relations, Kyriakos Kentrokis views the ‘strange group’ associating politics and international relations from the prism of the shapes and examples of football illustrated lyrically by Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano and his overevaluation of the Barcelona team. Starting with the ‘slogans’ of the EU and the Catalan team respectively, ‘United in Diversity’ and ‘More than a group,’ the author observes changes that have taken place in the nature and content of their identities over time. As Galeano notes, ‘football occupies an important place in the Latin American reality - and often the most important place - although this is ignored by ideologues who love humanity but don’t love people.’ (AKa)
*** The next European Library, issue 1227, will be published on Tuesday 4 September