*** PHILIPPE HERZOG: From One Revolution to Another. Memories. Editions du Rocher (Groupe Elidia, 28 rue Comte Félix Gastaldi, BP 521, 98015 Monaco. Tel.: (33-377) 99996717 - Internet: http://www.editionsdurocher.fr ). 2018, 393 pp., 21.90 €. ISBN 978-2-268-10095-1.
A beautiful person and an independent mind, former MEP Philippe Herzog suggests, in these pages, "an original memory of the past that allows us to see the present differently". The approach is fruitful in that this intellectual engaged in politics has, against all odds, insisted on playing "a role in a collective with a singular status", which has led him to prefer fidelity to his ideas to the comfort of belonging. Thus, as a polytechnician and professor of economics at the University of Nanterre, he joined the French Communist Party, i.e. "a party that was committed to a peaceful transformation of French society" and which, consequently, resonated with his desire to encourage French citizens to get involved in building a country that suits them; he left it in 1996, ashamed today to have covered up the crimes of Bolshevism by his silence...
Herzog is also leaving the PCF because the European ideas of the MEP he became in 1992 are disturbing a party which, like the whole of France, has clear reservations about the European project. However, for him, "Europe is THE political project of our time" and there is no question of lowering our flag on this point. The PCF will have the elegance to allow him to continue to sit in the European Parliament, which will allow him to become a reference among European parliamentarians.
With his Memoirs, it is an awareness of Europe that is expressed. Friend of Michel Rocard (and, for a time, adviser to Michel Barnier, which must have led some of his communist companions to consider that his resignation was decidedly timely...), the author now has a freedom of thought and expression that makes his book indispensable for those who do not resign themselves to the idea of seeing Europe and democracy wither. In his opinion, the crises from which they suffer are linked: "Downsized to be nothing but technocratic when its founders wanted to make it a work of civilization, the European Union serves as a scapegoat for our own ills", he asserts, which is perfectly normal in his eyes since the current Union is currently failing "by abusing rules and objectives that make no sense to citizens, which also contributes to worsening the crisis of national democracies".
The revolution toward which he is inviting today is therefore aimed at enabling representative democracy in Europe and its States to lose its inappropriate sufficiency in his eyes and for the emergence of a European civil society fully participating in the affairs of the European City. Rather than a federal state, he prefers "a hybrid system, much more attentive to the diversity of nations and much more based on the initiative of pro-European economic, social and cultural actors, who are never called upon today when they are the breeding ground and the hope for renewal!" Undoubtedly, this free spirit will be judged too free by all those that, many of whom are in the circles where Europe is (un)made, accept the return in grace of nationalisms. Some of the reforms he advocates will probably also be considered inappropriate by those who remain committed to the European project. Nevertheless, everything in these Memoirs is usefully thought-provoking!
Michel Theys
*** The State of Democracy. The 96th Social Week of the Christian Workers Movement. ASBL Politique (9 rue du Faucon, B-1000 Brussels. Tel.: (32-2) 5386996 - E-mail: info@politique.eu.org - Internet: http://www.revuepolitique.org ). "Politics" Series, No. 2. 2018, 101 pp., 8 €.
Almost everywhere in the world where it is allowed to live, democracy is sick, causing the growing disenchantment of more and more citizens. The complexity of the world opens the decision-making space to unelected technocrats or political leaders presented as such (like, in the eyes of some, European Commissioners...) while, in counterpoint, populisms are simplistic and demagogic. Everywhere too, interaction with organised civil society (which is the exact opposite of public opinion!) is showing itself to be seized up. Reporting on the 96th Social Week to have been organised by a social movement bringing together left-wing Christians in Belgium, this publication provides a useful overview of this democratic evil and the pathologies that cause it. The focus is on the situation in Belgium, but the themes addressed are borderless, since they include reinventing social citizenship, clarifying the relationship between the decision-maker, the expert and the citizen, considering democracy in the face of populism, seeing whether conspiracy is a disease or a symptom, understanding the power of algorithms, confronting participation and power, gauging civil disobedience and radical democracy, while leading to the conclusion that "a fragile democracy and a state of law". (PBo)
*** SOTIRIS DALLIS (under the direction of): European Integration, Greece and the World. 60 years since the 1957-2017 Treaties of Rome. Papazisi Publishing (2 Nikitara Street, GR-10678 Athens. Tel.: (30-210) 3822496 - fax: 3809020 - E-mail: papazisi@otenet.gr - Internet: http://www.papazisi.gr ). 2018, 522 pp., 24.38 €. ISBN 978-960-02-3386-5.
In recent years, European leaders seem not to have listened carefully to what citizens have tried to say. Hence the obvious disenchantment of the current citizen, and even anger at the European Union. The question today is whether it will be able to meet the challenges of the 21st century, with a new international agenda and transatlantic relations in turmoil. However, as European integration has proved so far, it is when it is pushed that the European Union reaffirms its value and regains its ability to meet the challenges of history. Will it be the same this time? This question is answered by the forty or so authors gathered in these pages, all members of the academic community, journalists, specialists in European issues, politicians, journalists, specialists in European issues or leading politicians (among others Jean-Claude Junker, Guy Verhofstadt, Jacques Delors, Barak Obama...). Under the direction of Prof. Sotiris Dallis who teaches the international relations and Mediterranean studies at the University of the Aegean, all argue that we are called upon to defend the historical, social and political ties established since the Schuman Declaration against an obscure ideology that offends what Europe has achieved since the Second World War. We must believe, more than ever, that unity is a struggle and show that we are determined to pursue it, respecting the spirit that permeated the preamble of the Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community in the early 1950s. In other words, this message in multiple voices is that we should continue - or rather, restart... - to see European unification as a positive utopia and build new European solidarity by ensuring that national interests no longer hide the common interest, which is much more important. A discordant message these days, but one that feels good! (AKa)
*** PANAYIOTIS IOAKEIMIDIS: Greece-European Union: three mistakes and five myths. A new interpretation of the Greek economic crisis. Editions Themelio (84 rue Solonos, GR-10680 Athens. Tel.: (30-210) 3608180 - fax: 36112092 - E-mail: info@themelio-ekdoseis.gr - Internet: http://www.themelio-ekdoseis.gr ). 2018, 158 pp., 11.66 €. ISBN 978-960-310-399-8.
This brief study is the result of a new approach to identify and interpret all the reasons that may explain the crisis that has hit Greece, as well as its inability as a Member State of the European Union to introduce the reforms and adjustments required by its membership. Professor of International Relations at the University of Athens, whose European Studies Research Centre he heads, Panayiotis Ioakeimidis identifies three basic mistakes and five myths that have functioned as the main obstacles to the necessary adaptation process and which, if not overcome, will condemn Greece to remain a failing Member State. The three faults he identifies are the fact that: (i) Greece would be "by definition Europe"; (ii) Europe is perceived as a substitute for "protective forces"; (iii) Greece would be considered as a "special case", the author analysing each fault committed in this respect. Then come the five myths: (a) the European Union would be neoliberal; (b) Europe is not in solidarity; (c) the Union has benefited more from Greece's accession than the opposite; (d) Germany dominates Europe; and (e) it is not Europe that the Greeks want. After critically analysing the arguments that are supposed to support these myths, the author attempts to discern what Greece's prospects and future within the Union might be. Annexes provide a useful overview of the economic aspects of the economic crisis and Greece's strengths, references to the EU Treaties and an extensive bibliography further enriching the book. (AKa)