*** SABINE MENU: Paul Collowald, pioneer of a Europe to be united. A life to go beyond borders. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (41 av. Maurice, B-1050 Brussels. Tel.: (41-32) 3761717 - fax: 3761727 - E-mail: brussels@peterlang.com and order@peterlang.com – Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). Collection "a Europe of Cultures - Living Stories", No. 17. 2018, 293 pp., 25 €. ISBN 978-2-8076-0762-0.
A teacher and researcher at the School of Integrated Management at the University of Strasbourg, Sabine Menu soberly recounts in these pages what it was like to be one of "those individuals" who, as Alfred Grosser writes in his preface, "contribute to making history without gaining notoriety ". However, this is not the case in the European microcosms of Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg.
Paul Collowald himself recounted his European career in his book J'ai vu naître l'Europe (see European Library No. 11198/1070 of 18 November 2014). Sabine Menu's merit is that this time she also focuses on the formative years of this young Alsatian born in 1923. At the end of the Franco-German War of 1870, his maternal grandfather was a customs officer to control the borders of the Reich Customs Union, but Alsace and Lorraine returned to the French fold at the end of the Great War. In his childhood, several borders stand as walls between the countries that border his native region. However, this "child who willingly goes to the Church to serve Mass" will never see the Germans as an irreducible enemy. Impregnated with values in line with the social Catholicism that emerged in France and Alsace-Lorraine following the publication of the Social Encyclical Rerum Novarum by Leo XIII in 1891, "he stands out from the legitimate Catholic right by accepting the democratic fact and social reform"; Alsatian Scouting allows him to participate in debates on totalitarian danger at a time when Hitler is engaging German youth. That is why, like the Christian-inspired Democratic political movement, he will very quickly "be inclined to the pacifist resolution of European tensions, while remaining patriotic". When war was declared, he participated in peaceful resistance actions, in particular opposition to the forced incorporation into the regime's activities before accepting, in order to spare his family, who risked deportation for re-education, the "fate of the Malgré-Nous, these young Alsatian and Moselle men forcibly incorporated into the Wehrmacht", which merited him a training in Poland.
At the end of the conflict, Paul Collowald may therefore feel that he "said 'no' to barbarism and then won the war"; he did not know then that he would then fight to "win Peace". While he dreamed "of preparing the competition for the Military School of Saint-Cyr " to become a "social officer" in his turn he must renounce it for reasons of age; it is now journalism that awaits him, after resuming his studies at the University of Strasbourg where he is very quickly active in the Foyer de l'étudiant catholique and among social Christian intellectuals. From then on, he would never stop building bridges so that, as Robert Schuman wrote in captivity in 1942, "the borders that separate us" would no longer be "the barrier between peoples fundamentally different from each other, but the link between men who, in the end, were never themselves at the origin of the conflicts". He did this first as a journalist, for Alsatian publications but also as a correspondent for the world and... the European Agency. As a senior European civil servant, the author brings new insights into the different stages of a career that has led him to be, among other things, hired by Jacques-René Rabier in the Press and Information Service of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community, and then acting as spokesperson for the Vice-Presidents of the Commission Robert Marjolin and Raymond Barre, acting Director General of DG X of the Commission, who "pulled him out" in May 1981, saved by the President of the European Parliament Pierre Pflimlin who called him to his cabinet before successfully pleading his case for the post of Director General of DG Information and Public Relations of the European Parliament.
In conclusion, Sabine Menu observes that Paul Collowald's action "is in line with that of a generation that has taken the responsibility to change Europe". The "message in a bottle" that he has been setting adrift since his retirement in the form of various contributions to newspapers and conferences is a testament to his tireless action to ensure that the current generation does not betray its predecessor and that European idea worthy of the name is imposed in the minds of citizens, which means that it is necessary to "devote a minimum of time to it before claiming that it is too complicated".
Michel Theys
*** JEROME JAMIN: Populism in the United States. A look for Europe. Editions of the Centre d'Action Laïque (Campus de la Plaine - ULB CP. 236 (access 2), B-1050 Brussels. Tel.: (32-2) 6276811 - fax: 627680 - E-mail: cal@laicite.net - Internet: http://www.laicite.be ). Collection "Liberté j'écris en ton nom". 2019, 96 pp. ISBN 978-2-87504-034-3.
Populists, often brandished as one of the main threats to the European Union, now seem so... popular that they could, according to polls, achieve significant results in the European elections next May. However, what is meant by this seemingly "catch-all" term, which can refer as much to extreme left-wing parties as to extreme right-wing parties? To answer this question, Jérôme Jamin, professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Liège, looks at the United States, where, "from a historical point of view, the first reference of populism appeared very early, at the end of the 19th century" and then returned, in the 20th century, at the heart of both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, thus remaining anchored in American political life since its origins.
The premise of this book is that populism is not an ideology in itself, but a rhetoric, a mobilising strategy, which can be grafted onto all ideologies and which consists in presenting a dichotomous vision of the world. At the bottom, there would be the majority and homogeneous people, a hard-working people who do difficult physical work and contribute to the collective wealth with the sweat of their brow. At the top, the elite, whose "defects correspond to the qualities of the people", and would thus be a heterogeneous, lazy and greedy minority. In this struggle, which constitutes the very essence of populism, comes a providential man "who knows what to do to fight the threats facing the people by the elites", who comes from the people, who has made himself alone without the help of the elites and who denounces the representative dimension of democracy by demanding more direct forms of democracy. From then on, according to the ideologies that populism espouses, the people, the elite and their opposition take on particular figures. The author then develops "historical populisms", such as the People's party, born in 1892 in Missouri in the wake of the industrial revolution, or Huey Long, the governor of Louisiana who inserted himself during the economic and financial crisis of 1929. He also mentions the examples of Jesse Jackson on the 'left', Arnold Schwarzenegger and Donald Trump on the 'right', Ross Perot and the Tea Party (tax populism), and finally Pat Buchanan on the far right.
To understand populism is to understand why the European Union, explains Prof. Dr. König. Jamin, suffers from it today: "Populists have found in the European Union and more particularly in the European Commission fertile ground to illustrate the strength of their interpretation grid: the peoples of Europe are subjected to an 'unelected' elite, technocratic and arrogant, 'vagrant and stateless', would add an extreme right-wing populism". It goes without saying that it is on this register that all the populists in Europe play, waiting for the next month of May with high hopes... (MU)
*** KOSTAS BOTOPOULOS: Anti-populism. An international bet focused on Europe. Papazisi Publishing (2 Nikitara Street, GR-10678 Athens. (30-210) 3822496 - fax: 3809020 - E-mail: Papazisi@otenet.gr – Internet: http://www.papazisi.gr )..2018, 328pp., 15,90 €. ISBN 978-960-02-3415-2.
In recent years, the international community and the Greek political scene have been under attack by a kind of "postmodern populism". In addition to the classic claims of supposedly unintermediated representation, the phenomenon has mainly resulted in the distortion of the popular will and a simplistic discourse according to which political parties have used the state for their own profits. The "populism of the 21st century", on the right or left, in power or by claiming it, has been enriched by new concerns, namely the repulsion of globalisation in the name of the return to nation states, the decline of the rule of law and the eviction of the classical tension between right and left. Focusing on two major events that have changed the face of international politics in recent times, the election of Donald Trump in the United States and Brexit, the author of this book, legal adviser to the Bank of Greece, which teaches comparative European law at Panteion University, examines the aspects underlying populism in a number of countries today, paying particular attention to the Greek case. He thus comes to the conclusion that the populist bet is centred on Europe. As a European parliamentarian between 2007 and 2009, the author explains that, as understood, the political project of the peoples and countries of the European Union would have the tools to overcome the current international trend that threatens the basic democratic achievements, namely populism that closes borders and souls. Europe's historic debt requires it to find a way to convince people and member countries to play the card of unity and openness in order to consolidate democracy. (AKa)
*** ISAIAHS KONSTANTINIDIS: The crisis. How Greece fell into the Hades memorandum. Editions Themelio (81 rue Solonos, GR-10680 Athens. Tel.: (30-210) 3605305 - fax: 3605325 - E-mail: info@hilektron.gr – Internet: http://www.hilektron.gr ). 2018, 152 pp., 12,78 €. ISBN 978-618-5254-42-1.
On 23 April 2010, on the small remote island of Kastellórizo, a few metres off the Turkish coast, Greek viewers saw surrealist images appear on their screens, as if they had come out of a dream. Those of a Prime Minister, Georges Papandreou, taking over from Homer and announcing, from a small quiet port, that Ulysses, incarnation of the Greeks, began his journey there in order to one day reach his "Ithaca", his exit from the obstacles of the Memorandum into which he fell dramatically on that very day. This was therefore the beginning of the modern Greek Odyssey, with a crisis that was to leave nothing in Greece as before, it plunged into a history of death and resurrection decided in advance. Philosopher, Isaiahs Konstandinidis analyses in this book the main causes that led Greece, and George Papandreou in particular, to seek help from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and its Central Bank. Also responsible for the "Vega" geopolitical analysis group, which is composed of young Greek and foreign researchers, the author refers to examples of other countries that have used IMF assistance before explaining how the conditions of the first memorandum were perfectly intolerable, critically examining the programmes that existed to ensure its compliance and analysing why this protocol could not and would not have been respected. (AKa)