*** HENRI PAUL: Romania. At the crossroads of empires. Editions Nevicata (42 av. du Général de Gaulle, B-1050 Brussels. Tel.: (32-2) 647 83 78 - Internet: http://www.editionsnevicata.be ). Collection “L'âme des peuples”. 2018, 82 pp. ISBN: 978-2-87523-127-7.
“Romania, from the first day of its accession, has been able to take the lead in European integration”, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told Romanian President Klaus Iohannis on 23 October 2018, who was about to present his vision of the Union to MEPs. Although Romania was preparing to take over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union in January, Mr Iohannis saw the debate inevitably crystallize on the deleterious political atmosphere in Bucharest and the attacks of the social democratic government, with which it is in open conflict, against European values. This suggests that the Romanian power, which fell under the yoke of the populist left, has lost its European zeal and is no longer pretending to be the Union's model pupil, praised by Mr Juncker. More than ever, the spotlight remains on this country, which is seen as the new European conundrum, alongside Hungary and Poland, all young democracies in turmoil. Under the pen of the former French ambassador to Romania Henri Paul, this book comes at the right time to lift a corner of the veil on this country, “where the hopes raised by post-communism have vanished before a power confiscated by a superior class with neither scruples nor a culture obsessed by personal enrichment”.
Through the sometimes naive but curious and richly documented gaze of an outsider, thrust into Bucharest in 2007 when Romania was pushing the doors of the Union, the book reveals the culinary traditions, architectural jewellery, beauty and authenticity of wild nature, such as that of the Danube Delta, trying to dissect the soul of Romanians by the light of their history and geography. Located “at the crossroads of dead empires”, such as the Ottomans, Austria-Hungary of the Habsburgs or the old tsarist Russia, this country has always had one foot stuck in the Balkans, but its eyes turned to the West. Romanian, the only language of Latin origin in the region, which nevertheless has Slavic sounds, “bears witness on its own to the complexity of the identity of this people”. Romania presents "a profound European tropism", sums up Henri Paul. Even if, as the eminent historian Vintila Mihailescu explains - in one of the three interviews at the end of the book - it has experienced “two Europeanisations, two series of disillusions”. The first in the 19th century, when the rush of the Romanian intellectual elite towards the great European capitals - such as Paris, which "attracts well-born citizens like a lover" - did not succeed in turning Romanians into "old stock French and Germans", but only in feeding their complexes. In the aftermath of the fall of communism, the Romanians once again adopted “the West in all its aspects”, convinced, “one more time”, that they were going to develop, before these complexes came back at a gallop. And as example, the grotesque and gigantic Orthodox Cathedral of the Salvation of the People, “a Sagrada Familia in Romanian style, but without Gaudi and without genius”, which the government has chosen to place in the courtyard of the Parliament.
Nevertheless, this European tropism persists. It is fed by the diaspora of nearly three million people, envied and doubtless quickly joined by many young people who have remained in a country with which they do not associate their future - and who thus live the myth of Sisyphus, as summarized in another interview by the historian Lucian Boia. Romania is also “the story of long patience”. This said of a people who long had to bow down to Ceausescu, the most authoritarian dictator in Eastern Europe, whose regime fuelled Romania's disease: corruption, once adopted as a survival mechanism, now experienced as a deadly epidemic of democracy. It turns out that the bloody death of the Conducator, broadcast on television, was ultimately only “the staging of a brutal regime change”, while the real political changeover was far from accomplished. The Romanians therefore wait and wait, again and again, only obtaining the pleasure of seeing those corrupted fight each other like caged animals. When the authorities tire of reporting publicly and every six months on their progress in the fight against corruption, “citizens see the European Union as a powerful lever against their own distrusted political class”. With the idea that the European Union could prevent this gangrene, Romanians “persist in believing in Europe at a time when disillusionment is manifesting itself everywhere”, probably the main reason for the Social Democratic Party's failure to drag Romania into the furrows of the Eurosceptics.
Original version in French by Maria Udrescu
*** KOSTAS KOSTIS: Children Spoiled by History. The formation of the modern Greek state from the 18th to the 21st century. Editions Patakis (38 Panayi Tsaldari, GR-10437 Athens. Tel.: (30-210) 3650000 - fax: 3811940 - E-mail: bookstore@patakis.gr - Internet: http://www.patakis.gr ). “Social and Political Sciences” Series. 2018, 946 pp., 29 €. ISBN 978-960-16-7814-6.
The main axis around which this book is built is the transformation of a small province of the Ottoman Empire into a modern European state. In some respects, says Prof. Costas Costis, who teaches economic and social history at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Athens, the problems that arose during the formation of the modern Greek state could be assimilated to those currently encountered in the Western world's efforts to impose its political and cultural model in foreign societies, some of which are hostile to it. The difference is, however, that the Greeks of the 19th and 20th centuries were Christians, while Western societies were more likely to be undergoing Muslim experimentation, not to mention that the civilizational contribution of some in building the modern state is not necessarily equivalent to that of others. Moreover, argues the man who held the chair of studies for modern and contemporary Greece at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, it is also important to remember that Greek Christianity has never ceased to represent schism, a particular feature in comparison with Western attitudes that has not always aroused sympathy and even understanding even less so. Nevertheless, the subject of the book is Greece and, whether we like it or not, the Greeks have always been de facto associated with what Western Europeans consider to be the foundations of their culture. The friendly treatment enjoyed by the Greek populations when they rebelled against the Ottoman Empire is therefore perhaps explained less by a common belonging to Christianity than by a connection to a past in which Europe sees the roots of its own identity. It is for this reason, the author concludes, that the Greeks were awarded by the Europeans in the 19th century the reputation of being “spoiled children of history”, a status which, in the eyes of Athens' partners, remains relevant today... (AKa)
*** It Federalista. Rivista di politica. Edif (8 Villa Glori, I-27100 Pavia. Internet: http://www.ilfederalista.eu ). 2018, No. 1, 78 pp. Annual subscription: 25 € (Europe), 30 € (foreign).
This issue of the publication linked to the Movimento Federalista Europeo devotes its editorial to the crisis which, for Maastricht's Europe, that of the marriage between the Community and the intergovernmental, inexorably leads to its “agony”, as it is true that “the enemies of European unity”, the populists and the nationalists, are now both outside (Trump, Putin...) and inside the Union. This proves Altiero Spinelli right, who, in the Ventotene Manifesto, had urged the political forces not to allow the “incandescent lava of popular passions to solidify once again in the old mould” and lead to the same murderous absurdities. Forgetting that the Maastricht Treaty was a “provisional model”, the Member States did not take it into account, “leaving politics and democratic legitimacy” to their own level, which gives rise to the current deep disenchantment between Europe and its citizens. The whole point of this editorial writer's remarks is therefore to convince that the only antidote is to “build a European sovereignty” by creating without further delay a “decision-making mechanism that is no longer the hostage of the Member States”, which must be, he concludes, “a moral duty for all democrats”. It should also be noted, in this issue, a more pertinent question could not be asked than that by Franco Spoltore: “Who is sovereign in an era of global interdependence?”. (MT)
*** The Federalist Debate, Papers on federalism in Europe and the World, The Einstein Center for International Studies (26 via Schina, I-10144 Toronto, Tel./fax: (+39-011) 4732843 - E-mail: info@federalist-debate.org - Internet: http://www.federalist-debate.org ). 2018, n°2, 64 pp. Annual subscription 15 € / Internet: 8 €
“There is only one political actor in the world who can promote the patient search for a peaceful coexistence in the Middle East - the EU - provided that it learns to speak with one voice”, notes Lucio Levi, criticising the policy pursued by US President Donald Trump in Syria, in the editorial opening the July 2018 issue of The Federalist debate. The political scientist also joins the head of European diplomacy Federica Mogherini, who believes that only the Union can push the world to abandon the mentality of confrontation in favour of cooperation. The review also looks at the Union's internal challenges, such as its lack of sovereign powers, the need to provide the euro zone with a new architecture, the European elections and the issue of transnational lists. Paolo Ponzano, a former adviser to the Commission's Secretariat-General, then defended the idea of a European Marshall Plan for Africa, recalling the Roman adage that tua res agitur paries cum proximus ardet (Your interest is at stake when the neighbour's house burns), while MEP Marie-Christine Vergiat argued for another European migratory rhetoric, criticising the EU's anachronistic tendency to “To turn itself into a bunker”. Among a host of other topics, "The Federalist debate" also addresses the elephant in the room of the failure of the reform of the UN Security Council, recalls the Genocide Convention, little used but so relevant to the fate of the Rohingyas in Myanmar, and wonders whether “Can we unite for peace ?”, at a time when the “The genie of the universality of human rights is out of the bottle and cannot be forced back”. (MU)
*** MICHEL FAUQUIER: A History of Europe. At the roots of the world. Editions du Rocher (28 rue Compte Félix Gastaldi, BP 521 - 98015 Monaco. Tel.: (377) 99996717 - Internet: http://www.editionsdurocher.fr ). 2018, 747 pp. ISBN: 978-2-268-09636-0.
With this book, the professor Michel Fauquier proposes to return to the "Sources of our world", telling on more than 700 pages what has made Europe since its emergence. At a time when it is “going through an unprecedented crisis”, this exercise would be useful, it seems, to regain the foundations and meaning of European integration. Except that this book seems to have a Eurosceptic tendency - the author presents “the European structure” as “without history or geography, disconnected from the peoples it considers to be foolish masses” - a tendency that is accompanied by an ultra-religious look at eleven "nodes" of history, or eleven moments “when Europe has moved in a new direction”. It is interesting to learn, for example, that Europe and the East began to distinguish themselves, at least mentally, one morning in August 480, when “a tiny part of tiny Greece stood up against the Persian giant”, the first "knot" of the book. But the author sings the praises of the Middle Ages, where “the sap of Christianity (...) has nourished an original civilization that still marks the European consciousness”, vilifying those who consider this period as a shadow of history. This praise would not be questionable in itself if it did not contrast with the description of the modern world, nicknamed “the era of disenchantment”, which would have had “the pretension of rebuilding the world by putting it under the control of human reason alone”. In Michel Fauquier's story, the Enlightenment would not be philosophers, but a “formidable media success” and the origin of many of the world's evils. Pope John Paul II is quoted as saying that “the Enlightenment did not only produce the atrocities of the French revolution”. In his epilogue, the author attacks the architecture of the Strasbourg Parliament which, by seeking to express openness and transparency, would make us “think of it as a joke when we know what the majority of Europeans think of the institutions” of the Union. The claim to consider this predominant opinion does not depend on the reality of the figures: according to the latest Eurobarometer, only 21% of citizens have a negative image of the European Parliament. As a result, it casts doubt on the objectivity of this apparently richly documented book. (MU)