La réparation du monde
With this novel, the Croatian novelist and playwright Slobodan Snajder plunges us into the history of central and eastern Europe, a history of empires in which extremely diverse peoples lived side by side and a history of nationalism, populism, fascism and communism, with its phases of uprooting peoples and ethnic cleansing. “La réparation du monde” (The repair of the world), which was published in Croatian in 2016 under the original title “Doba mjedi” (The Age of Bronze) and in French in 2021, is the tale of a Swabian family, the Kempfs, who were ‘recruited’ by the Empress Maria Theresa to colonise Slavic, Romanian and other territories neighbouring the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The story starts in 1770, when the young Georg Kempf sets off for Transylvania. He will end his journey and put down roots in Slavonia, modern-day Croatia, but the main character in the novel is another Georg Kempf, who was born some 150 years later and fated to be a Volksdeutscher. A medical student, he was enrolled in the Waffen SS when Hitler called up the Volksdeutsche, ethnic or “external” Germans, to join his troops. Kempf thus experienced the very specific fate of the “forced volunteers” or “Freiwillige-gezwungene” in southern Poland in 1943 and 1944, not far from the death camps.
When the German army suffered its final defeat in the East, he managed to escape into the Polish forests and, after many different encounters, join a Resistance group. One of the aforementioned encounters involved a Jewish mystic, an escapee from Treblinka, who tries to convert Georg in a long discussion about creation and Man’s responsibility, even drawing on the Kabbalah and the concept of “tikkoun olam”, which lends the novel its French title.
After Liberation, with a Soviet fighter certificate in his possession, he returns to his native country, a Yugoslavia in the midst of revolution. There, he meets Vera, alias ‘the frog’, a communist militant and a love story unfolds between these two individuals whose backgrounds are as different as they are full of tragic memories. A child is born of this union, but even before his birth, he serves as narrator.
The old German legend of the Pied Piper of Hamlin also runs through the novel like a warning about charlatans and hucksters, but a caution against conformism. “It looks like the Pied Piper who led the children away along with the rats could make a comeback anywhere on earth”, notes the author, reminding us that we will never be safe from the ravages that are the inevitable end point of the gregarious instincts of human beings (our translation).
The narrative is quite clearly based on serious documentary work and Snajder succeeds not only in recreating the atmosphere, but also in delicately recreating the full complexity of the psychology and social and political interactions of the darkest period in European history. (Olivier Jehin)
Slobodan Snajder. La réparation du monde (available in Croatian and French only). Translated into French from the original Croatian by Harita Wybrands. Éditions Liana Levi. ISBN: 979-10-349-0349-8. 620 pages. €24,00
L’Europe contre l’Europe
The title of this work, Europe versus Europe, is as obscure as it is intriguing and therefore likely to sell. Its author, the French General Jean-Yves Lauzier, who ended his career in charge of 23 military training colleges, sets out to show how the antagonism between two radically different visions of political organisation, imperial perspective and national solidarity criss-cross and, to a certain extent, shape European history.
With this objective in mind, the author offers us a grand overview of history from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 to the current-day European Union dealing with Brexit and internal identity crises. The written style is fluid and the arguments relatively objective, as when the author writes: “this clash between the imperial dream and the national dream runs all through the centuries, seeding fratricidal European wars, but also interior political and philosophical debates. As men are never entirely unbiased, and are apt to hide their personal ambitions underneath philosophical or doctrinal cloaks, they will choose between the imperial dream and the national dream on the basis of their own interests. On occasion, some will support a particular vision out of pure intellectual speculation or total idealism. However, the circumstances of the time and the people who will support them, all of whom will be more or less ambitious for themselves, will unavoidably deflect the ideal supported by these minds, frequently brilliant and generous, towards personal or collective benefit” (our translation throughout).
The General, for his own part, is national and traces back the French “first national sentiment” to the election of Hugues Capet in 987. Over the course of the book, he also shows himself to be increasingly critical of a European Union he perceives as mercantile. He argues that “European integration drew on the suffering experienced by European players in two world wars, on nostalgia for a holy Empire that was more or less dreamt up, on the prospect of an open market economy, but also on supranational interests of benefit to the United States”. He adds: “initially, European integration would hesitate between these two paths, seeking common ground between them, all the while progressively moving towards an assumed confrontation between national sovereignties. Against the backdrop of American interests and the power of the financial lobbies, the European Union would soon take the path of financial and trade cosmopolitanism, without paying too much mind to the underlying identity of its people”.
“However, the European people did not relate to trade zones or values that are so vague that anybody can define them as they please. The current tension with the Yellow Vests in France, beyond their material demands, unconsciously feeds off these ambiguities and the refusal of senior political figures to return to any relationship with national identity”, argues Lauzier, continuing with a summary that is intriguing, although questionable: “with its difficulties in protecting its inhabitants from Norman, Magyar and Sarrasine invasions, the Carolingian Empire contributed to the rise of local identities, which swiftly became national ones; similarly, the Holy Roman Empire, with its aims of hegemony, helped to arouse local identities which opposed its desire for domination. The Napoleonic Empire, based around French hegemony and its claims to bring the Enlightenment to the rest of Europe, provoked about steadfast national opposition. In its turn, the European Union, which combines mercantile cosmopolitanism and universalist moral demands, has prompted an increasing identity-related rejection among the people it aims to guide to material and ideological well-being, but disembodied and lacking roots”. This syllogism, cleverly blending facts (the difficulties of the Carolingian Empire, the hegemonic ambitions of the Napoleonic Empire and the growing rejection, partly for identitarian reasons, of the European Union) and incorrect interpretations (local identities existed before the very brief Carolingian Empire – 124 years in its broadest interpretation – and, more to the point, survived it; domestic divisions and continual weakening contributed in particular to the growth of feudalism and it was much later on, and often under duress, that local identities were forged or merged into new national identities), would have us believe that the European Union is destined to grow ever weaker or vanish.
Islam “shakes to its core the materialistic comfort which proponents of supranational-ism used to banish the identitarian awareness of their public”, according to the author, who goes on to declare his faith in the salvatory powers of the nation: “the eruption, frequently bloody, slowly wakens these sleeping consciences, which all at once feel that their basis in civilisation is wavering and could even disappear together. And in view of this terrible danger, European citizens understand that their nation may possibly constitute the only, and the final, barrier capable of saving what has been passed down to them from previous generations and which they would like to pass on to their own descendants. This is why, far from being obsolete, like an unwanted legacy, the nation still represents a response to the challenges of tomorrow”. (O J)
Jean-Yves Lauzier. L’Europe contre l’Europe (available in French only). L’Herne. ISBN: 979-1-0319-0398-9. 246 pages. €14,00
Union européenne et protection des investissements
This collection of works, published in the “Droit de l’Union européenne” (European law) collection edited by Fabrice Picod, a mix of opinions from French, Japanese and Vietnamese academics and European Commission experts, offers a comparison between the different investment laws and dispute settlement arrangements between investors and States. Christine Guillard (University of Tours) explains that the scope of the European Union’s sole competence is limited to direct investments and that indirect investment are subject to shared competence with the member states.
“For some time now, we have been seeing trade pivot towards the Asia-Pacific, where the emerging economies, principally China and the ASEAN countries, are prospering. For instance, Chine’s share in global exports of goods has risen from 5% in 2000 to 15% today, an increase slightly below that recorded by the European Union, but greater than the level achieved by the United States (11%) and Japan (4.5%). In view of this reality, Europeans in Asia-Pacific have faced two major challenges: to defend themselves against global competition on the most fruitful markets of this region on the one hand and to set in place, at bilateral level, new international trade rules with certain strategic partners on the other”, observes Michel Trochu (University of Tours), going on to stress that relations with China are by no means a long, tranquil river, in view of Beijing’s reluctance to guarantee “market access and equal competition conditions” to European businesses operating in China (our translation throughout).
Nicolas Pigeon (University of Côte d’Azur) discusses the protection of geographical indications in the field of wine-making in free-trade agreements between the EU and the Asia-Pacific states. “As far as the EU is concerned, the purpose of this bilateral conventional practice is obvious for at least two main reasons. Firstly, the states of the Asia-Pacific region, as is the case with most of the major wine-producing states, have not abided by the Lisbon arrangements (on designations of origin and geographical indications: Ed). This means that they are not bound by the international system for the registration of designations of origin in which the EU is, for its own part, an active participant. Secondly, setting in place these registers of protected geographical indications at bilateral level makes it possible to circumnavigate the difficulties of negotiating on this subject in the framework of the multilateral trade system. Indeed, despite the EU’s insistence on implementing article 23, paragraph 4 of TRIPS on the establishment of a multilateral notification and registration system, negotiations are currently at deadlock”, the author notes, adding that the “bilateral agreement option offers the EU real advantages”. After negotiations with South Korea and Japan, the EU secured the recognition and protection of around 200 geographical indications, around half of which were in wine. The order of magnitude is similar in agreements concluded with Singapore and Vietnam.
The work also takes a good look at Japan’s investment policies and Japanese legislation on foreign investments. (OJ)
Abdekhaleq Berramdane and Michel Trochu (editors). Union européenne et protection des investissements (available in French only). Bruylant. ISBN: 978-2-8027-6919-4. 411 pages. €80,00