Dear subscriber,
We are delighted to present the first edition of our bi-monthly publication Kiosk, to replace our Bibliotheque européenne series, which was brilliantly curated by the late Michel Theys for nearly twenty years. We feel that the Bibliotheque européenne was Michel's and so have decided to launch Kiosk, to be headed up by Olivier Jehin, former editor-in-chief at Agence Europe. Twice each month, Kiosk will provide a round-up of the best books, works, publications and studies about the European Union.
Où va le Royaume-Uni?
In this work, Pauline Schnapper and Emmanuelle Avril, both lecturers in contemporary British civilisation at the University of La Sorbonne nouvelle-Paris III, analyse the process that led to Brexit and the consequences of this for the United Kingdom and, more widely, Europe, which has been affected in its entirety by a crisis of the political system of which Brexit is the symptom.
In reality, the Brexit ‘yes’ vote is far more than just a manifestation of the crisis of confidence found throughout Europe, the authors argue, considering it a “rejection of the traditional political system and its actors” (our translation throughout). Certainly, British Euroscepticism is nothing new and has been fed into over the years by the discourse of the major British political parties and the press, whose respective roles are carefully scrutinised in the work, but what makes the vote particularly irrational is the fact that it was the regions that benefit massively from European Union structural funds, such as Northern England, Cornwall and Wales, which returned a majority vote in favour of leaving. Brexit is thus the reflection of an identity crisis that has parallels in what is going on in other European countries. Furthermore, it is greatly paradoxical that the vote which the British intended to make them stand out actually let them to express the political malaise that other Europeans, who have not had a referendum, have so far been able to express only through various other elections.
Brexit has caused chaos. Is there still a chance of making a success of it, via a negotiated withdrawal, cancelling article 50 or holding a new referendum? Nothing is less certain. The mistrust towards British politicians is such that recent surveys reveal that more than half of respondents feel political parties are only interested in their votes, or even that “it doesn’t matter which party is in power, as nothing changes anyway”. In 2012, 71% of respondents agreed with the latter statement. In these circumstances, it would seem unrealistic to try to bring the process to a halt and it is easy to understand Boris Johnson’s stance when, by presenting himself as the only person determined to push through the will of the electorate at all costs, he seems to have every chance of being the Prime Minister who took the United Kingdom out of the European Union.
“The economic consequences of Brexit will depend on the agreement, if any, that can be reached with the European Union and the obstacles that may or may not be lifted to trade between the UK and the rest of the continent, which represents nearly half of its trade”, Schnapper and Avril note, going on to stress that all commercial options will unquestionably be less favourable for the UK than the status quo. As for the narrative of a “Global Britain”, a revival of the Commonwealth, free-trade agreements and/or a bolstering of the “Special Relationship” with the United States, these are largely illusory. It is by no means certain that the British public will agree to import American chlorinated chicken or hormone-treated beef, which are banned by the European Union, for instance, or, to take another example quoted in the British press, for American businesses to get their hands on the British health service, the authors note. They go on to point out that the “future of the special relationship, at least whilst Trump remains in the White House, is by no means necessarily bright”.
Without any obvious course to take, where can the United Kingdom go? Its leaders, Schnapper and Avril observe, have all “in one way or another helped to precipitate the Brexit crisis” and “are now claiming to be able to defend the interests of the country and its population, even though they are feeling their way through thick fog”. Schnapper and Avril conclude that “out of blindness or pure bad faith, they claim to believe that they can push through their political plans despite the new realities that Brexit will impose upon them. It therefore appears that in the short term, things are bound to get far worse before they have any chance of getting better. In some ways, the UK has not yet hit rock bottom. It may be necessary to wait until the effects of Brexit – devastation of already struggling regions, the rise of the far right, the collapse of the United Kingdom – really start to hit home before there is a burst of democracy and it once again becomes possible to talk about British exceptionalism”. Olivier Jehin
Pauline Schnapper, Emmanuelle Avril. Où va le Royaume-Uni ? Le Brexit et après. Editions Odile Jacob (http://www.odilejacob.fr ). ISBN: 978-2-7381-4853-7. 261 pages. €22.90
Le populisme en Europe centrale et orientale
If current affairs remind us every day that populism is not the preserve of a single country or group of countries, but a virus that, in various forms, affects a growing number of countries, Roman Krakovsky describes the history of this phenomenon in Central and Eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries and analyses its resurgence in the 21st.
In 1989, the fall of communism was hailed as a victory of democracy over authoritarianism. 30 years later, this part of the continent, which has barely completed its return to liberty and democracy, is a hotbed for the most virulent and effective forms of European populism. To understand something that appears paradoxical, historian Roman Krakovsky, lecturer at the University of Geneva, invites us to revisit the history of this part of Europe.
To do so, having pointed out that the “rise of populism is always a reaction to a situation of systemic crisis” (our translation), the author reminds us that populism emerged in the Imperial Russia of the second half of the 19th century, with the Narodniks, who idealised the village and the values of the present community to develop an economic model that was different from that of the Western powers, in a Russia that was still almost exclusively agricultural. “Western individualism and rationalism would be alien to the ‘brilliance of Russia’, based on community spirit and religious belief, guarantors of social and spiritual harmony. For Russia to recover its grandeur and its place in history, it needed to return to its traditional values” (our translation), which can be found in the figures of the peasant and the village, the author summarises. This confluence of rural people with superior traditional values as a crucible of the national identity would be central to the development of agrarian movements in all countries born of the dismantling of empires after the First World War. The 1930s saw radicalisation, with (para-) military parades, including those of the Orange Guard in Bulgaria, the Iron Guard in Romania and the Hlinka Guard in Slovakia. After the Second World War, Communist populism depicting “the working people” locked in a struggle against capitalist imperialism replaced the populism of the agrarian movements.
This history makes clear that populism has deep roots in Central and Eastern Europe, but this fact alone does not explain why these countries have moved over to “illiberal” forms of democracy, particularly as most of these states, which have benefited so greatly from the structural funds since joining the EU, have enjoyed a period of economic upturn since the 2000s. Populist leaders have come to power in the Czech Republic, even though the country has one of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe (2.9% compared to a European average of 7.6% in 2017), and Poland, with its growth rate of 4.2% and unemployment at its lowest level (4.7%) for 25 years. Krakovsky argues that the cause lies in the fears fed into by globalisation and geopolitical insecurity on the rise, with the perception of the Russian threat a particular reason for the upsurge in populism. Terrorist attacks and the waves of immigration of 2015-2016, against a backdrop of demographic crisis, have heightened these fears still further. In addition to a stagnating fertility rate (1.43% in the Czech Republic, 1.33% in Poland and 1.25% in Hungary in 2011), these countries are all experiencing net migration in excess of 10% of the population, far more than is observed in Africa. Since 1989, Romania has lost 14% of its population, Bulgaria and Lithuania 21% each and in 2015, nearly 1 million Poles were living in Great Britain alone. According to the author, this is all it takes for the migrant to become “a figurehead of a realistic and hypocritical liberal democracy that is prepared to abandon part of its population in return for maintaining its superior image of the universal homeland of human rights” (our translation). The migrant is perceived as a reckless drifter and a danger to the Christian values of the local community. In his speech on the state of the nation in February 2018, Viktor Orban was thus able to position himself as a bastion against the danger of the “great replacement”: “if this mass of several hundred million young people is allowed to travel north, then Europe will soon come under horrendous pressure (…) And our culture, our identity and our nations as we know them will cease to exist. Our worst nightmares will have become reality”. In March of the same year, he continued on the same theme: “Europe is now under invasion (…). The western half of Europe looks at all this with its hands raised in surrender (…). Unless we protect our way of life, the meaning of everything we have achieved will be lost”.
Between Brexit, global instability, geopolitical insecurity and migration flows, the European Union is undoubtedly facing an existential crisis today, but this is felt most sharply in the East, where the populations experienced an era of great cultural homogeneity in the 20th century. The populism shot through with nationalism that is at work there has certainly led to a reinforcement of the power of the State, with various forms of media control and, in certain cases, of control over the judicial authorities and cultural institutions, but these “illiberal democracies” have as yet only moved in the direction of authoritarianism. The Union is struggling to react effectively to these tendencies and finds itself in the paradoxical situation of having to financially support governments that are attacking democracy. “Making the granting of these funds conditional on upholding democratic and liberal principles and reinforcing control mechanisms would lead to reversing the balance of power currently at play in favour of authoritarian and corrupt governments” (our translation), Krakovsky argues. He goes on to add that “the passionate debates being sparked by attempts by Budapest or Warsaw to rewrite history so as to reinforce the nation or to better legitimise their actions could be an opportunity to reiterate our commitment to truth and freedom. This heritage of the Enlightenment is still topical today and should light us the way in era of ‘fake news’ and identity crises in which the future will be a return to the past”(our translation). O.J.
Roman Krakovsky. Le populisme en Europe centrale et orientale. Un avertissement pour le monde ? Fayard. ISBN: 978-2-213-70596-5. 341 pages. €22
No Guts, no Glory
The title of this self-published work suggests that one requires the former (or, to put it less decently, something else) if one is to aspire to, or achieve, the latter. Brian McDonald, a European civil servant from 1973 to 2010, does not mince his words in his descriptions of the world in which we are living. Leaving the political language he was no doubt forced to speak for (too) long, the diplomat (whose previous postings include Geneva, the OECD, the United Nations, Hong Kong, Taipei and the Republic of Korea) is able to let himself go. The result is 600 pages of analysis, strong convictions and virulent criticism, against the backdrop of the need for the European Union to have a strong foreign policy, built on a robust system of defence.
Making the case for a political Europe, McDonald deplores the institutional weaknesses of the European Union, with member states putting their national interests above the general interest. He condemns the continued existence of the intergovernmental system and argues that even for the CSDP, “qualified majority voting will become inevitable in the long term, if only due to the decline in capacities as a result of budget cuts”. Responding to Donald Trump’s calls for the European allies to invest up to 4% of GDP in defence spending is, he believes, possible with an integrated European army and common armament systems within the framework of the EU, which is the only arrangement capable of offering the legal apparatus necessary for joint acquisitions.
Criticism is levelled at the external action service, the way it has been structured, the influence of national diplomats within it, the neo-colonialism of certain member states, nationalism and populism. Nor do Trump, Putin, Johnson, Farage, Orban and many more besides escape his scorn. Only Macron comes out quite well: “he at least talks about the future with hope, clarity and a constructive attitude”. O.J.
Brian McDonald. No Guts, no Glory. A Foreign Policy for the European Union. ISBN: 978-0-244-47537-6. 602 pages. €33
Accrochons-nous aux étoiles
With the stars it is suggesting we hang on to, the title sells the dream and the hope of a creative argument in favour of European integration that is very real, but which is still incomplete and is struggling to find a convincing narrative at the beginning of the 21st century. The dream was not really delivered and one is in fact very soon tempted to hang up on this collective work, which owes much to the pen of Jean-Paul Picaper, deputy president of Paneurope France, former lecturer in political science at Berlin, and then correspondent for the French daily newspaper Le Figaro in Germany. There is, admittedly, a preface that sheds some useful light on the effects of the simultaneous spread of the euro and the Internet and a well-documented article on the cultural, historical and political differences between Germany and France, which explain the many failures of the much-vaunted “Franco-German engine”, but one struggles to find any overall consistency in this compilation of articles. For fans of the genre, a vibrant plea in defence of the Strasbourg seat of the European Parliament is made, which ignores the costs and the environmental and political consequences of keeping it in place, together with an argument in favour of a European financial transactions tax. O.J.
Paneurope. Accrochons-nous aux étoiles. L’Europe hier, aujourd’hui, demain. Jérôme Do Bentzinger Editeur. ISBN: 978-2-849-60702-2. 225 pages. €24