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Europe Daily Bulletin No. 12594

4 November 2020
Contents Publication in full By article 33 / 33
Kiosk / Kiosk
No. 024
Brussels, 03/11/2020 (Agence Europe)

Wij kennen Amerika helemaal niet

 

This book, which makes a very timely appearance, deserves to be translated into other European languages, as it is all too true that the Europeans do not really know the United States. Many of them, like the Dutch, dream of a mythical, Hollywood-style America. By way of a reality check, Mark Verheijen, a member of the Tweede Kamer of the Dutch Parliament between 2012 and 2015 for the Liberal party VVD, takes us to meet grassroots America with seven months to go until the presidential election. He takes us through the states, including a number of swing states that played a pivotal role in the election of Donald Trump, from Washington to Chicago. This trip, which began in February 2020, forms the backbone of the book and adds the flavour of personal experience, comments of “ordinary” Americans he met along the way, cultural elements, a bit of folklore, a few anecdotes. It is also set against the backdrop of the Democrats’ primaries campaign, the first wave of Covid-19 and police violence. But it is far more than a travel book with a few topical events thrown in. The author, who studied history and philosophy, takes the opportunity to draw the reader back into the history of the United States.

 

We often look towards the other side of the Atlantic with our Western European glasses on, as if it were just a variation on our own country. But it is a world in its own right with a completely different culture. A culture that is full of paradoxes. The Americans set the tone at planetary level in the fields of culture and innovation, but at the same time, parts of the country are backward-looking and conservative. Americans are proud of their freedom and independence, but at the same time, bureaucracy is everywhere and, in many cases, far beyond anything we would recognise, for instance in the fields of consumer protection and product safety. The country is called the United States, but in many areas, America is less centralised and less united than the traditionally divided Europe. The greatest difference between them and us lies in the need for autonomy and appeals to personal responsibility”, stresses the author, before going on to lay emphasis on the current deep gulf in the United States (our translation throughout). This gulf, which has grown consistently in recent years, is very much on a par with the one being experienced by Europe. United States is profoundly marked by the campaign against federal powers and Washington is, at least as much as Brussels on the other side of the Atlantic, the “perfect scapegoat” for politicians voted into power in the individual states, for “anything in the country that isn’t working”.

 

Taking us on a trip to Washington, Verheijen takes the opportunity to present the American political system. He then provides many further clarifications, at every stage of his journey. After mainly a tourist visit to Pittsburgh, he takes us to the “dying mining town” of Wheeling in a West Virginia that “looks like a developing country”. Europe has also known its share of regions in crisis following closures of mines and factories, the author points out, stressing that Bruce Springsteen is the best at depicting these tragic situations and that it is no surprise that his best-known Dutch fan is Frans Timmermans. Currently the European Commissioner with responsibility for the Green Deal, Timmermans comes from Heerlen, in the former mining region of Limburg. With infrastructure frequently in a lamentable state in the United States, Wheeling’s suspension bridge, which was built in 1849 and was the town’s pride and joy, is currently closed to traffic. Like Detroit’s railway station, which has been abandoned to squatters, the bridge is a symbol of the crises and deindustrialisation that have been exacerbated by globalisation, but also by chronic under-investment in infrastructure. The author stresses that the railway system, which once provided connections between Americans, is now a mere shadow of its former self, with obsolete rolling stock and slow, perpetually unpunctual trains.

 

A journey across Ohio prompted observations on: - American prisons and their 2.3 million inmates, most of them black (one in three black men has been in prison at some point in his life and 10% of American black men aged between 20 and 34 are currently doing time); - the 1994 Crime Bill, authored by none other than Joe Biden, which has ramped up the rate of incarceration; - the prison economy, with its employees and suppliers (there are no fewer than 184 companies employing 192,000 people that are economically dependent on prisons in the State of Ohio alone). Ohio is also a State that is notorious for its poverty, social inequality and lack of access to healthcare.

 

In neighbouring Michigan, the former flagship of the automotive industry, Detroit, has seen its population drop by two thirds, from more than 1.8 million inhabitants to around 650,000, against a backdrop of poverty, but also endemic crime, with 39 murders a year per 100,000 head of population, which is higher than Chicago (21), New York (3) or Amsterdam (1.6). In total, in 2019, there were 417 mass killings in the United States at federal level and 15,000 deaths caused by firearms. Back in Detroit, however, Verheijen volunteered to take part in the campaign trail on behalf of Bernie Sanders, because he respects people with such passion, although he acknowledges that he himself is further to the right, politically. Even so, based on opinion polls, he did not hesitate to predict that: “a uniquely American version of social democracy is emerging”; it will not, however, complete its materialisation during the 2020 presidential campaign. Although young people tend to be more left-leaning these days, the Democrats ended up selecting Biden, who represents the establishment and business interests and who, in the opinion of the author, could ultimately struggle more to win than a Bernie Sanders who is effectively a “kind of left-wing Trump”. The author considers that America deserves better than Biden and the latter’s election victory would be more than anything else the result of the last months of Donald Trump’s presidency, which provided a “permanent demonstration of his incompetence”. (Olivier Jehin)

 

Mark Verheijen. We kennen Amerika helemaal niet – Op reis door het land van de Trump stemmers (available in Dutch only). Prometheus. ISBN: 978-9-044-64492-0. 240 pages. €19,99

 

Gran balan

 

“Gran balan”, a Creole expression whose meaning will be revealed to the reader around halfway through this book, is the first novel of former Member of the European Parliament and French Minister for Justice, Christiane Taubira. It is a novel that makes her native Guiana sparkle, sing and dance. It is a book full of vitality, enthusiasm and passion. Just like Christiane, in fact.

 

The book begins with a trial hearing and ends just before the sentence is delivered, so that the reader alone passes judgement or, who knows, to set the scene for a sequel. Between the two events, the author takes us on a voyage of discovery and rediscovery of Guiana, its men and women, flora and fauna, languages and cultures, with Guianese Creole (with translation provided) dominant. There is a charming description of Cayenne, of escapades along the banks of the River Maroni (in the West) and of the River Oyapock (in the East) and in Surinam. There is plenty of storyline, but it is nestled in an enormous fresco of Guianese social life, its protagonists young people who want to be the “authors of their own lives” (our translation throughout). “Youth surrounded by risks, abandonment, not even sure what the point is of anything. Whose differences, courage and singularity are sapped of their energy. The very people who tone the social fabric”, the author writes. There is also a trial, in which young people are both the victims and the accused. But the real trial is actually that of local politics, French public authorities, economic development failures, but human development failures as well, the malaise of the country.

 

The subsequent prosecution case is the main focus of the battles brought to life by Taubira, with, principally, women, young people and the freedom and dignity that require the recognition of slavery, in all its forms and at all periods of history, as a crime against humanity. French, but also Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish colonists and slave-masters presented on the Guiana Plateau and surrounding area, all come in for criticism. Beside this memorial, all the ills from which Guiana suffers are paraded in front of us: a remodelled carnival for hypothetical tourists in a vain attempt to give Rio a run for its money; the lack of roads (barely 300 km for a territory of 83,846 km²) and public works, the least that can be said about which is that their efficiency leaves much to be desired; predatory multinationals; the management of natural resources; the conditions for the establishment of the space centre and pollution; and finally, insecurity, the account of which takes us back to the “Nou gon ké sa” (enough is enough) movement of February 2017.

 

Gran balan gives the reader as much to think about as it inspires them to sing, smile and dream. It is a book for everyone, Guianese and otherwise, with emotions and memories for some and pure armchair travel for others. (O. J.)

 

Christiane Taubira. Gran balan (available in French only). Plon. ISBN: 978-2-2593-0501-3. 360 pages. €17,90

 

Espace judiciaire civil européen

 

The European civil judicial space is today a complex reality and any lawyer ought to be familiar with the texts and case-law that constitute it. It is therefore mainly at legal practitioners that this extremely accomplished tome is aimed. As an extremely useful work tool, it is the fruit of the labours of a team of eminent specialists led by Guillaume Payan, lecturer at the University of Toulon.

 

The book lists and analyses no fewer than 347 judgements of the Court of Justice of the European Union, putting them in the context of the regulations to which they apply, thereby making them easier to interpret. As Hélène Gaudemet-Tallon, emeritus professor of University Paris 2 and member of the Institute of International Law, points out in the preface, this case-law relates to a set of subjects that has been on a steep growth curve since the appearance of “legal cooperation in civil matters” with the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992: recognition and execution of judgements in civil and commercial matters; insolvency proceedings; recognition and execution of judgements in matrimonial and parental responsibility matters; European payment injunction procedure; settlements of small claims, etc. Historically, legal cooperation in civil matters “swiftly proved essential for the construction of Europe” and it was on “27 September 1968 that the Brussels Convention on the competence, recognition and execution of decisions in civil and commercial matters was adopted”, since modified by two regulations, in 2000 and 2012 (our translation throughout). These texts and all those subsequently adopted form part of a “logic of determining common rules of private international law in Europe, designed to provide citizens and economic players with greater legal security”, Gaudemet-Tallon explains, adding: “it is a difficult undertaking, the results are not always perfect, but they undeniably have positive aspects”. (O. J.)

 

Guillaume Payan (editor). Espace judiciaire civil européen – Arrêts de la CJUE et commentaires (available in French only). Bruylant. ISBN: 978-2-8027-6595-0. 1224 pages. €95,00

 

L’organisation et le financement public du culte islamique

 

With the brutal murder of a French teacher recently causing the public authorities in France to relaunch their ambitions to regulate the framework and funding of the religion of Islam against a backdrop of international tension, this study provides a reminder that Belgium was the first country in Western Europe to recognise Islam as a religion, in 1974, and to try to apply to it legislation on the management of the secular affairs of recognised religions, which dates back to an imperial decree of 30 December 1809 and fleshed out by a law of 1870. This legislation, which was initially introduced throughout the French Empire in the wake of the Concordat of 1801 organising the Catholic religion and the State provision of the salaries of bishops and priests and now largely regionalised, has subsequently been extended to Judaism (1808), the Anglican (1839), Protestant (1876) and orthodox (1985) churches and to Islam.

 

The study emphasises the problems encountered by Belgium and other European states in identifying any party capable of speaking for the Islamic faith, as all attempts to set up a “representative body” have foundered due to the absence of a hierarchical clerical structure within Islam, the centrifugal forces constituted by the various strands of Islam and the different cultural and national origins of individual Muslims. While it is perfectly legitimate for any European state to try to ensure local financing for the construction and maintenance of places of worship and local funding for the religion as such in order to avoid any foreign political interference and to ensure compliance with the democratic rules and laws in force on their soil by means of adequate training for senior clerics within the religion, it appears, as the conclusion by Caroline Sägesser observes, that the “separation of the Church and the State, which is considered an achievement of modernity and a democratic breakthrough, is a major challenge for the organisation of the public funding of the Islamic religion in Europe”. (O. J.)

 

Caroline Sägesser. L’organisation et le financement du culte islamique. Belgique et perspectives européennes (available in French only). Weekly newsletter of CRISP, edition 2459-2460. ISBN: 978-2-87075-241-8. 71 pages. €12,40

Contents

EU RESPONSE TO COVID-19
ECONOMY - FINANCE - BUSINESS
SECTORAL POLICIES
FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS - SOCIETAL ISSUES
COUNCIL OF EUROPE
EXTERNAL ACTION
NEWS BRIEFS
CORRIGENDUM
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