Compassion
In this novel, Isabelle Garzon takes the reader on a kind of parallel trip between Brussels and Kathmandu. The narrative cleverly weaves Caroline’s discovery of Buddhism, having initially gone on a trekking holiday in Nepal to relieve the stress of her life as a civil servant at the European Commission, and the investigation carried out by Nicolas into the meanderings of the European institutions to save his sister, under threat of being sacked for her authorised absence.
Although a disclaimer makes clear that the “author’s imagination prevailed” when making Kopan Monastery into the “Romanesque backdrop for her personal interpretation of Buddhist precepts”, the work brings us right inside the reality of everyday life in the Brussels bubble, with its procedural and technical complexity (specifically, the matter of endocrine disruptors and bisphenol A), its spheres of influence mixing the genres (from the Conservatives of the EPP to the chemicals industry lobbyists via Opus Dei), its politics, its diplomats, its trade unionists and the inevitable journalist, known as Jérôme Parmentier, who has a touch of his famous colleague from the Belgian daily newspaper Libération about him (our translation throughout).
It is a work of fiction, but it could be entirely real, as Garzon knows her subject inside out. She worked at the European Commission for 26 years within various directorates general, including Fisheries, and did a stint in Pascal Lamy’s cabinet. This gives a dimension of instruction to this novel, a must-read for anybody who has never experienced this particular microcosm. But there is much more. For as much of a European as she is in her heart and her career – she now works as director of studies at the Brussels-based think tank Europe Jacques Delors – Garzon pulls no punches and is comfortable drawing the reader’s attention to the opacities of the institutional system, its collusions, the “minefield of political institutional pressure” on which even – or especially – the most loyal and committed civil servants may end up burning out or drifting into alcoholism if, unlike Caroline, they do not have the preserving instinct to go and recharge their batteries somewhere else.
In Nepal, Caroline will come to accept herself; meanwhile in Brussels, Nicolas finds out how little he really knows his sister. With the help of Caroline’s friends, he manages to save his sister and even to fight the spheres of influence, paving the way to improve protection of health and the environment into the bargain. How? To find out, you will have to read this book, which incidentally offers the perfect transition between holidays and the return to the grindstone. (Olivier Jehin)
Isabelle Garzon. Compassion (available in French only). Éditions Vérone. ISBN: 979-1-0284-1548-8. 323 pages. €26,00
European Energy Security and Greece’s Key Role
In this analysis paper published in the most recent edition of the Südosteuropa Mitteilungen review, former Greek Minister for the Environment, Energy and the Climate (2009-2015), Yannis Miniatis, stresses that between now and 2030, the energy transition will require six times the current volume of critical minerals, a fourfold increase in investments in clean energies and a sizeable effort to gain independence from Russian gas and critical materials of Chinese origin. Against this backdrop, he argues that Greece has a pivotal role to play in securing Europe’s energy security, through the exploitation of its gas reserves in the Ionian Sea and off the coast of Crete (to an estimated value of 250 billion euros) and its interconnections (Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria, EastMed pipeline, EuroAsia Interconnector) with the Balkans, eastern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean.
“By 2040, according to the International Energy Agency, the demand for clean energy technologies will require six times the current volume of graphite, copper, lithium, cobalt and other critical minerals. This is about new energy security concerns, including in terms of price volatility and additional costs for the transition, if production is unable to meet growing demand. In total, the global economy will need an increase in low-carbon footprint hydrogen, from 0.4 million tonnes currently to 40 million tonnes in 2040. An increase in electric vehicles sold, from 2.5 million today to 50 million in 2030. An increase in investments in green electricity from 380 billion USD today to 1.6 trillion in 2030. Europe will have to manage its new dependency and energy security risks arising from importing raw materials and the metals required for green and digital infrastructure from third countries. At the same time, the EU must put together an exhaustive strategic plan, both to secure alternative sources and avoid over-dependency on countries such as China”, writes Maniatis, who also expresses concern at the risks of increased social inequality and poverty, instability and migration brought about by the transition, particularly in countries of North Africa (our translation throughout). He calls upon the EU to support an active policy of the international financial institutions (IMF, the World Bank, but also the central banks – the EDF, the ECB – European funds and the EBRD) in the form of loans, guarantees and grants to green energy and the digital transformation in these countries. More generally, he makes the case for a “Climate Bretton Woods”, to coordinate funding at planetary level by the international financial institutions of key circular economy and decarbonisation projects throughout the world.
The author is disappointed that the European Commission decided to go no further than to put together a toolbox consisting of a list of the measures already taken by the member states to combat the gas crisis and reiterates the proposal he made during the Russian-Ukrainian gas crisis in 2014 to establish a compensation fund at European level to help member states which, with the exception of Germany, struggle to match the prices paid by other importers such as Japan, China and Korea for consignments of liquefied natural gas. He considers that this fund should have an envelope of 30 billion euros. (OJ)
Yannis Maniatis. European Energy Security and Greece’s Key Role. Südosteuropa Mitteilungen. 02/2022. ISSN: 0340-174X. 112 pages. €15,00
Occident-Russie: la fracture
The latest edition of the Revue générale devotes its dossier to the war in Ukraine and Francis Delpérée, the author of the editorial comment piece, reminds his readers, particularly those who continue to harbour doubts as to the responsibility of the West, that the facts speak for themselves: “a State – Russia, as we must call it by its name – has deliberately brought war to another State – Ukraine. It has denied its independence. It has violated its territory. It has acted as if it were on conquered land. It has had no regard either for people or things. It has been a mix of carnage and plundering”. He considers that the Ukrainian citizens have “sacrificed themselves – the word is not too strong – to preserve the integrity of their country as much as possible [and] promote the conception, to and against everything, that they are acting on the basis of democracy and freedom”. Delpérée goes on to make a wish: “May their message, however simple, give us inspiration. May it wake the European citizens from their sleep. May it disabuse them of their articles of faith: that, sheltered as they are by the boundaries of Europe and the protection of America, they have nothing to fear, democratic society is here to stay and their rights are sacrosanct. May they open their eyes. Liberty is fragile. Not just 2000 km away, but everywhere”.
“Will the unprecedented scale of the (restrictive) measures and the economic harm they have caused act as a deterrent?”, asks Tanguy de Wilde (UC Louvain). He sees the situation as a failure compared to the recent past, plus a hope, with a touch of complexity, for the future: “the sanctions were announced, but the prospect of them did not deter Moscow. It is a blow to the restrictive threat contained in the announcement effect. The sanctions are now in place and the prospect of lifting them should therefore have a persuasive effect. Persuading Russia to change its attitude with the promise of the gradual lifting of the measures. We are a long way from this. And any development in the situation on the ground, moving towards a ceasefire and negotiations, could bring about its own problems: how can the diplomatic process, assuming it exists, be supported whilst maintaining or removing the pressure?”
“In a bid to justify his invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin and his Foreign Affairs Minister, Sergei Lavrov, have invoked, amongst other reasons, the ‘defence of the orthodoxy’ and the protection of ‘persecuted Christians’. A long-standing supporter of the Kremlin’s foreign policy in the past, the Russian Orthodox Church has, in the person of its Primate, the Patriarch of Moscow, Kirill I (Gundyaev), blessed the soldiers as ‘defenders of the mother country’ against ‘foreign forces’ wishing to ‘destroy the unity of Holy Russia’. Kirill I, whose canonical territory includes Ukraine, even spoke of a metaphysical clash between Christianity and ‘Satanic manifestations’, such as support of LGBT rights. Other Orthodox clerics and laypersons in Russia are repeating this crusade rhetoric and, in churches, the media and the social networks, denouncing the ‘Ukrainian apostasy’, the ‘pathological Russophobia of the West’ and even the ‘US-NATO’ aggression against the ‘last bastion of the faith’”, Theodoros Koutroubas and Serge Model state by way of introduction to an article entitled: “Et Dieu dans tout ça? (Where’s God in all this?)”.
Koutroubas and Model argue that for “historical, canonical or political reasons, Orthodox Ukrainians are currently divided into three competing branches”, namely: - the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC-MP), which is autonomous but retains a link to the Patriarchate of Moscow; - the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), established in 2018 with the support of the Patriarch of Constantinople; - the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kiyv Patriarchate (UOC-KP), a dissident group of the second church with links to the controversial figure of the self-proclaimed patriarch Filaret. While the last of these, which accounts for just 2 to 4% of all Orthodox Ukrainians, “is likely to disappear when its 90-year-old prelate dies”, the authors stress that the OCU, which “awoke Moscow’s wrath and caused an intra-Orthodox schism”, has seen its popularity increased by the Russian invasion: “it is reported to have risen from 35% of Orthodox Ukrainians to more than 48%”. “Although we have not yet seen any rapprochement between the three Churches, their reactions to the Russian invasion are an indicator of the national unity of the country”, Koutroubas and Model observe, pointing out that “half of all UOC-MP bishops have stopped praying for the Russian Patriarch and [that] a number of parishes have joined the rival Churches”.
“In his support of the invasion of Ukraine, Kirill I has unquestionably lost much of his legitimacy in the country. He has also made the situation of Ukrainians who are members of the autonomous Church untenable under his patriarchate: Ukrainian politicians are considering legally banning this jurisdiction, while the OCU is calling on all Orthodox Christians in the country to break ties with those who continue to name the Patriarch who supports the enemy in the holy liturgy”, the authors explain, adding that “even though Russian victory would force certain parishes to rejoin the UOC-MP, its continued existence in the Ukrainian State is now looking very difficult, and a recomposition of orthodoxy in Ukraine inevitable. As the parishes of Ukraine make up a third of the Russian church, losing them would be a commensurate loss to the Patriarchate of Moscow. It is interesting to note, in this context, that the Greek Catholic Church, the traditional rival of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, could also come out of the conflict stronger”.
It is worth noting that the review also contains an interview with Jean-Claude Juncker, in which the former President of the European Commission rejects both the idea that the European Union could be a “sort of federal United States” and the prospect of “European sovereignty”, even though he takes pains to stress that this is linked to a “national meaning of the word”. When reading this interview, I wondered why senior political figures such as the former prime minister of Luxembourg wanted to name what they considered should be nothing more than a large market the “European Union”. Why waste so many words on integration, values and European citizenship if cooperation within the Council of Europe was broadly sufficient? Why expend so much energy on the concept of European strategic autonomy and why even go so far as to raise the idea of a European army if all European sovereignty is illusory and the vassalisation of the immutable nation-states of a piecemeal Europe is so much more beneficial? (OJ)
Frédéric Saenen (edited by). Occident-Russie : la fracture (available in French only). Presses universitaires de Louvain. Revue générale. N° 2022/2. June 2022. ISBN: 978-2-3906-1243-8. 251 pages. €22,00
La Boussole stratégique de l’UE répond-elle aux énigmes existentielles de la défense européenne?
In this analysis paper of the ‘Strategic Compass’, Federico Santopinto points out that over the last 20 years, “the member states had already tried to kick-start European defence by drafting flagship strategic texts, but without ever moving beyond the starting line”. This exercise may therefore “remain in vain, as the Europeans have never really managed to solve the existential conundrums accompanying their common defence policy”, the researcher argues, adding that “before we can understand what the EU should do (…), we have to understand what it is. And the new Strategic Compass will certainly not give us the answer”. In other words, the European defence come as part of a logic of cooperation or integration? Santopinto hammers home his point: “as long as Europeans do not clarify to themselves, and to their allies, what their common defence policies are supposed to represent within the European political construction, they will not be able to understand what they should and should not do. And, by the same token, they will not be able to distinguish the role of the EU from that of NATO”. (OJ)
Federico Santopinto. La Boussole stratégique de l’UE répond-elle aux énigmes existentielles de la défense européenne? Groupe de recherche et d’information sur la paix et la sécurité. Éclairage. 11 July 2022. This analysis note can be downloaded from http://www.grip.org