Travellers in Transit
It wouldn’t be Kiosk without a good novel now and again. To travel, enjoy a change of scenery, get far away from the European bubble. This is precisely what Helena Buckinx has to offer with her debut novel, the original Dutch version of which was published in 2021 with the title Reizigers op doorreis. This English translation came out just a few days ago and its title is widely evocative. A traveller for a day, or forever. Just a tourist, an expat, an artist, a civil servant, a soldier… moving from one geographical location to the next. But are we not also in transit in our lives? Making choices, consciously or subconsciously, good or bad? Choices that we would dearly love to change, or not, it we could go back in time…
For the author is actually taking us on a journey inwards. A journey inside a family that has moved apart and come back together again. The two main characters are a young woman, Cassi, and her half-brother, Paul, who know each other without really knowing each other and meet, despite themselves, for a tête-à-tête in a room with ‘no exit’, reminiscent of the Jean-Paul Sartre play of the same name. The scene is set in a large empty house where memories and dreams, joy and pain, misunderstandings, nostalgia, suffering and interrogations pass before them one by one. Recollections of an entire lifetime. Of several lifetimes. A room with no exit in which past and present become the same, where masks fall away, revealing fragility, faults and lies, but also everything that is most beautiful about humanity.
Obviously, the novel is not just about two people locked up together in a large house. They both have lives elsewhere; lives that will change profoundly over the course of a week. There is a succession of scenes in which Cassi and her cat, Clarabella, almost always appear. The fictional human, Cassi, always takes a major role, but does that mean that Clarabella’s is therefore minor? Certainly not in the eyes of the author, a painter and head of PR for a major commercial bank who is grieving the loss of a cat of the same name. This strongly suggests that some characteristics might… But no, as we all know only too well: any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental…! (Olivier Jehin)
Helena Buckinx. Travellers in Transit. Troubador Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-8051-4501-1. 245 pages. €19,15
The European Union at a Crossroads
In this work, the Jean Monnet Foundation combines the texts of two conferences chaired by former President of the European Parliament, the Irish Liberal Pat Cox, and the Director of the Foundation, Gilles Grin, respectively. The contributors stress the scale of the challenges the European Union will have to face in the coming years and the efforts it must make to succeed. We would like to share a few extracts with you.
Discussing the challenges of future waves of enlargement, Pat Cox observes that “events in Poland in recent years and persistently in Hungary recall how a slippage from EU standards in respect of rule of law, media freedom, respect and minority rights reveal an adhesion to the EU as a vehicle for prosperity but an aversion to the unity of shared value”. “The Prime Minister of Hungary proudly proclaims his to be an illiberal democracy”; yet “whatever margin of interpretation one might have regarding Article 2 of the TEU self-evidently it is not a charter for an illiberal democracy”, he adds, going on to stress that “this [the values set out in the Article 2: Ed] was part of the EU membership deal and is written into all accession treaties and was agreed to by all acceding states [at the time of their accession]. The attitude of keep your values but send us your money is not a sustainable basis for mutual respect – something which should not be lost on current candidate states as they seek to navigate their eventual EU accession. I expect that the Copenhagen Criteria will play a more fundamental role in future negotiations, possibly with accession treaty clauses that offer the EU more robust capacity to defend rights and values from lapses. The EU is not just a market, and material progress, desirable though it is, is not its only or even its essential raison d’être”. As regards Ukraine, the former President stresses that “a settled territorial outcome and stable peace – in which EU membership can play a role – will be an essential precondition to accession. The EU needs stability and not chaos on its eastern flank and embracing Ukraine ultimately is in the collective EU’s as well as Ukraine’s interest”.
Gilles Grin, who uses a SWOT analysis to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats at play, argues that “the recent crisis of values, in which Viktor Orbán’s Hungary has been central for several years, is a crisis of Europe’s weakness, not because it is doing anything wrong, but because it is too poorly equipped to tackle a derailment in a member state” (our translation throughout). He adds that “Poland has been a huge factor of concern in recent years. However, the change of government in Warsaw at the end of 2023 seems to mark a return to normality in the country. At the same time, other fronts of concern are opening up. Currently, we might think of Robert Fico and Peter Pellegrini’s Slovakia in particular. It is very much in the EU’s interests to make it far clearer that we are talking about the rule of law and how infringements of it are dealt with to avoid a situation in which one state, or a small group of them, can block the subtle and complex mechanism of the EU”.
“There are still some powerful inter-governmental hurdles within the EU. The fact that a single state can, in some cases, block an entire decision is enormously problematic: the EU’s capacity is undermined; there is a huge mathematical risk that there the EU will always be a member state or two short of being to make a decision; this risk automatically becomes greater as the number of member states increases; an uncooperative state might be tempted to sell its support over a given issue in return for other concessions from its partners; states might be tempted to place the burden of the decision on the shoulders of its partners alone”, Grin observes, stressing that “another related hurdle lies in the need for unanimity to revise the treaties”. He goes on to say that “as regards its most essential aspect, the decision on how to decide, the EU has remained a confederacy. If we consider that political legitimacy belongs to member states alone, that is as it should be. If, on the other hand, we consider that there are common interests that surpass each individual country, this is a denial of democracy at the level of the continent”.
Furthermore, the EU depends very heavily on the United States for its security. Within NATO, Europeans have failed to build a true common pillar. “Fears of European powerlessness are considerable. But equally considerable are fears of a division of Europeans, who may be tempted to seek national solutions, for instance in exchange for commitments to buy American equipment”, Grin argues, adding that “a credible defence Europe, if American support were not available, should include augmented national budgets, common armament programmes based on a European armament industry, multilateral security guarantees and the greatest possible deterrence for potential aggressors. In other words, we need joint battle plans and rules of engagement”.
However, “since 2022, Europe has seemed to be moving to a different trajectory, sometimes described as a war economy”, Grin observes. He goes on to state that “if it is constant and consistent, it cannot afford not to increase its military spending massively to take account of the new global geopolitical context and a return to war between states on European soil. More than half of European NATO members are currently spending more than 2% of their GDP on defence, but there is still a long way to go. More money spent on defence, in other words on cannons, is at the heart of the dilemma which means that all things being equal, there will necessarily be fewer resources available for the ‘butter’, in other words to finance the provident state and the various public services. However, this spending is at the heart of the social contract for many European countries, or is by way of being a necessity to maintain a form of social ease. This was perfectly illustrated by the ‘at any cost’ policy adopted in France in 2020 during Covid-19, which the country now seems to be struggling greatly to abandon. Tax increases at national level often seem like an explosive prospect. Against this backdrop, the European level could give struggling member states a bit of breathing space. To borrow a phrase from Alan Millward, there could be a new form of European rescue of the nation states. Joint actions in the military domain could get the most out of every euro spent on defence. Even for the social states, the creation of unemployment insurance at European level, for instance, could reduce the burden on individual countries. Additionally, European unemployment insurance would be a good way of making European citizens more aware that there is also a supranational element to their identity”.
On the subject of migration flows, Gilles Grin takes the view that the “absorption limit is not justified from a demographic or economic point of view, but from a political and/or cultural one”. “Africa has a young and dynamic population, who aspire to greater prosperity. In comparison, Europe is ageing and seems prepared to accept relatively little migration overall. Will complementarity or conflict prevail? Anything is possible”, he adds.
The United States and China heavily subsidise their national industries. The EU should therefore “do more to stimulate innovation and competition by investing more in the strategic sectors, but also by creating an entrepreneurial European culture and establishing a genuine capital markets union that would put European savings at the service of European production”, Grin notes in a comment that is entirely in tune with the ‘Draghi’ report. He goes on to call for the structural indebtedness of many member states to be corrected, pointing out that these states are not minnows: “the most indebted countries of the EU are Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and France. France is the greatest military – and possibly still political – powerhouse of the EU. But the way it manages its public finances is a sword of Damocles in its capacity to bring the other states with it, in particularly Germany and the so-called frugal states. France makes the case for new European borrowing to boost its capacity for common action. It is doubtless necessary for any and all discussions on this matter also to deal with the question of how this borrowing is to be paid back. There should be no taboo on discussing European taxes. Eventually, and increasingly indebted Europe would be the antithesis of sovereign Europe. In economics, as well as politics, there is no such thing as a ‘free lunch’”. (OJ)
Pat Cox and Gilles Grin. The European Union at a Crossroads. Jean Monnet Foundation. Débats et Documents 36, June 2024. ISSN: 2296-7710. 50 pages. The text can be downloaded free of charge from the Foundation’s website: https://aeur.eu/f/duu . Please note that Gilles Grin’s section is available in French only.
États-Unis: élection présidentielle
The most recent edition of Futuribles is given over primarily to the United States and the potential consequences of the presidential elections of 5 November.
Laurent Cohen-Tanugi, a lawyer at the bars of Paris and New York, explains that if he were to be re-elected, Donald Trump could jeopardise the entire transatlantic relationship and what remains of the international order, by focusing on preserving American interests and tensions with China. This possible weakening of links with Europe should, the author argues, prompt it to take its security and defence back in hand and seek to grow its influence on the international stage. This it has by no means done.
The result of the elections “could turn, under the American indirect electoral system, on a few tens of thousands of votes in a handful of pivotal states, as was the case in 2016”, the author points out, also stressing that the “majority voted into the Senate, one third of which is to be renewed, and the House of Representatives is just as uncertain”.
Although he considers it unlikely the United States will leave NATO, the author argues that there is a distinct possibility of a “reduction in Washington’s military and financial support to Ukraine, leaving it up to the Europeans to take over the baton financially, and pressure for a settlement of the conflict favourable to Moscow”. “Such a hypothesis would only weaken a transatlantic relationship that would – beyond a doubt – be far more tense than under a Biden administration, with a return of trade wars – Trump has already announced universal customs duty of 10% on all imports – regulatory conflicts around new technologies, tension over relations with China and support for populist and anti-European movements within the member states of the European Union, that his re-election could not fail to make worse”, Cohen-Tanugi writes.
In any event, and whoever ends up occupying the White House, the Europeans must “continue to unite to become collectively stronger, but also to show new generations of American political leaders their added value and the importance of transatlantic relationship to the United States itself, in a world in which the political and economic weight of the West will continue to decline”, the author argues.
Antoine Bouët, director of the French Centre D’ Études Prospectives Et d’Information Internationales (CEPII), analyses the economic prospects of the United States, on the basis of the potential effects of the Inflation Reduction Act, but also of 60% taxation on all products of Chinese origin (or containing Chinese components) entering United States territory, according to Trump’s manifesto promise. This tax will come in addition to a 10% increase in customs duty on all products from all of the United States’ partners. This mega-trade war could entail risks to the United States, but to other countries as well. In 2035, the global trade in goods is expected to be less than 6% by volume, combining the effects of American measures and the responses applied by the other states. According to CEPII calculations, US GDP would fall by between 1.5% and 2.5%. If the reduction in GDP is low to the European Union, it would see Chinese exports redirected to its market (+6.9%) and a drop in its exports to China (-2.9%), worsening a bilateral trade deficit that is “already substantial”. (OJ)
Hugues de Jouvenel (editor). États-Unis: élection présidentielle (available in French only). Futuribles. Edition 462, September-October 2024. ISBN: 978-2-8438-7477-2. 136 pages. €22,00