*** HENRI RIEBEN, CLAIRE CAMPERIO-TIXIER, FRANCOISE NICOD (Eds.): A l'écoute de Jean Monnet. Fondation Jean Monnet pour l'Europe (Centre de recherches européennes, Ferme de Dorigny, CH-1015 Lausanne). 2004. 462 pp.
Jean Monnet as a child at his family's Cognac distillery; Monnet in Warsaw in 1927 during the negotiations for a loan to stabilise the Polish zloty; then in China in 1934 and Alger in 1943 (where he was a member of the National Liberation Committee) with Churchill and General de Gaulle. Monnet at the Commissariat for the Plan, with Léon Blum in 1946; during the preparations for the Schuman Plan in the spring of 1950 with Robert Schuman and Bernard Clappier; with Adenauer in Bonn in 1951. Monnet in 1953 alongside President Eisenhower and Foster Dulles when they met with the High Authority of the ECSC; with Erich Hollenhauer and Guy Mollet in Paris in 1956 for the third meeting of the Committee for the United States of Europe. In Paris again in 1958 with the members of his various teams: Hirsch, Fontaine, Uri, Rabier, Marjolin, Van Helmont... Photos summarising a long, extraordinarily packed life, coherent despite the huge number of different experiences. An exceptional career explained in two interviews of Jean Monnet - with Georges Suffert in May 1970, and Alan Watson in December 1971 - and illustrated by unpublished documents, political and personal notes Monnet wrote for his own use. Jean Monnet's memoirs have already been published, of course (by Fayard in 1976), and there have been remarkable biographies by François Duchêne ("Jean Monnet: The First Statesman of Interdependence", published by W.W.Norton & Cy in 1994) and Eric Roussel ("Jean Monnet", published by Fayard in 1996). But this rather large 'Little Red Book' in a series published by the Lausanne Foundation headed by Henri Rieben enables readers to discover new facets to Monnet's personality. As people who actually knew Jean Monnet will testify, the book acts as a kind of revelation. The Jean Monnet Foundation thought long and hard about publishing the book, and finally decided (to the reader's delight) to go ahead, asking Françoise Schonfeld, one of Monnet's secretaries (who could easily decipher his handwriting) to type up his handwritten notes.
Entitled "Jean Monnet se parle à lui-même" (Jean Monnet talking to himself), the book includes personal and political jottings and ideas. Readers can discern Monnet's characteristic qualities in the notes, his "force d'anticipation" (in the words of Prof. Rieben in the introduction), his determination to make progress as soon as he knew he was moving in the right direction, his discipline, his negotiating talents and his ability to keep in the background, putting his mission first. In his personal jottings, Monnet describes himself. In Algeria on 23 July 1943, he writes: "Your long view of things tends to be right (...). You have huge negotiating capacities (...). It comes so naturally that at times you abandon the overview and objective you started with, giving way to exercise this natural skill (...). For this reason, you must force yourself to always set objectives - and be wary of your natural negotiating skills an talent of persuasion". On 5 August 1953, aged almost 65, Monnet writes: "My life is only really beginning now. Everything thus far has only been a test, attempts, education". It was in 1968 that Jean Monnet decided to write daily notes, explaining: "I made this resolution while reading Che Guevara's book, which struck me by the regularity of his daily notes and the monthly summary he made of his observations". In his political notes, for example in Alger in 1943, Monnet restates the strongly held belief that inspired his activity throughout his life: "If European countries against protect themselves from each other, it will be necessary to create huge armies again (…).Europe would once more be created through fear". In April-May 1952 he writes in the style of synthesis that characterises these notes: "We will only preserve peace if we create Europe. Need to get a team working on Europe". Also: "JM to organise himself for preparing: a) history b) single market c) single currency d) Federation".
Jean Monnet, accompanied by his wife Silvia, related to journalist Alan Watson in 1971 the human adventure that had brought him to adopt this approach. The story started in his youth, when his father, the owner of a distillery in Cognac, had sent him, barely eighteen years old, to Egypt, the United States and Canada, and then to London (where, during the First World War, aged barely twenty-six, he was responsible for rations - an experience which was to prove highly valuable to him in 1939-40. Going on to the Society of Nations had reinforced his views ("mere cooperation between states in their existing forms" is not the way to solve the problems left to us by the war). Monnet explained to Watson the reasons that finally made him decide not to become a politician - again demonstrating the way he always moved towards his goal and how he viewed his own role. Politicians, he commented, "are not only concerned with reaching their goal, but also with how it is presented (...), with receiving accolades. With the work I myself am doing, I have to forget about accolades. The important thing is to know what has to be done". His years in the Resistance and difficult relationship with de Gaulle in Alger are well known, as are his meting with Schuman and then with Adenauer. Monnet also tells Alan Watson how he had stepped down from his post as President of the High Authority of the ECSC to return to Paris to pursue his European activity on the Committee for the United States of Europe. When the European Defence Community failed in 1954, he explained that it was "perfectly clear that the stops had to be pulled out to pursue the European project", and I resigned because at the European Coal and Steel Community, "my activity was limited" and the High Authority "only dealt with coal and steel". Monnet adds: "If I acted by myself, on my own, after a while I would have lost all authority. So I though that political parties and trade unions would form a good working basis. I set up the (…) Action Committee for the United States of Europe, which included most political parties in Europe and also non-Communist trade unions". "I did this with friends, especially a Dutchman called Max Kohnstamm", said Monnet. He asserted: "If this Committee had not existed, I don't know what the result would have been, but it cannot be doubted that its existence greatly helped in building Europe, and I am certain that it helped Great Britain join the Community, because the Committee took a very firm position on Great Britain joining (...). We publicly expressed our views, opposing the view expressed by General de Gaulle". The Committee is one more fine example of how Monnet worked, avoiding putting himself centre stage, but appealing to others, encouraging them to reflect and meet up.
In terms of the role of the English in Europe, Monnet told reporter and writer Georges Suffert, in an interview on 10 and 11 May 1970: "I was convinced, and I still am, that the English will not resist facts, and will come (...)and join the European Community". As far back as 16 June 1949, in London, Monnet drafted a "Statement of Union" proclaiming: "the two governments state that France and Great Britain will no longer be two nations in the future, but a single Franco-British Union", with a single war cabinet during the war and two "officially merged" parliaments. Who remembers this today?
Suffert asked him whether he would stand as a candidate "if there was an election tomorrow morning for the President of the United States of Europe", and Monnet replied: "No, certainly not. Never. (...) Firstly, I am too old (...). And it isn't in my character (...). I would be very happy that the election had proved possible and that somebody would be President of the United States of Europe"… Marina Gazzo
*** MADELEINE O. HOSLI: The Flexibility of Constitutional Design. Enlargement and the Council of the European Union. Institute for Advanced Studies (Stumpergrasse 56, A-1060 Vienna. Tel: (43-1) 59991-166 - Fax (43-1) 59991-171 - Internet: http://www.ihs.ac.at ). June 2004, 24 pp.
Selecting decision-making procedures at the Council always involves sensitive bargaining between eating away at government sovereignty and greater capacity to take action. This research takes a highly scientific look at the flexibility provided by the draft Constitutional Treaty in terms of weighting of the votes on the Council and analyses the subtle details of the system, comparing it with the Nice Treaty. The author concludes that the draft Constitution increases constitutional flexibility in terms of the daily decision-making process within the European Union, but does not provide adequate protection for citizens' interests in the small and medium-sized member states. By comparison, the Nice Treaty, which established a triple majority rule on the Council, would have weakened the Council's capacity to take action, but would have brought about a more even rebalancing with regard to the big member states. The book also demonstrates (along with calculations) that in the enlarged EU, intergovernmental agreements will be difficult to achieve and hence one of the challenges for the EU25 will be to ensure amendments to the Constitution are possible so that more areas are covered by qualified majority voting and to ensure that the Constitution itself cannot be amended on anything less strict than a fully unanimous vote. (STu)
*** FRANKLIN DEHOUSSE, WOUTER COUSSENS (Eds.): The hopes and limits of flexible integration in the future Europe. Institut Royal des Relations Internationales (69 Rue de Namur, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32 2)2234114 - Fax: 2234116 - E-mail: studia.diplomatica@irri-kiib.be - Internet: http://www.irri-kiib.be/Studia-Diplomatica.htm ). "Studia Diplomatica" series, Vol. LVI. 2003, No. 4, 77 pp. ISBN 2-9600353-7-2.
The publication of this book echoes a conference organised in January 2003 by the Institut Royal des Relations Internationales on cooperation models within the enlarged European Union. The starting point is the need to use flexible forms of integration throughout the EU as a result of a series of weaknesses in the draft constitutional treaty combined with the institutional impact of enlargement. The concept of flexible integration covers a whole range of collective action in a specific area not involving all Member States because of lack of political consensus or participation capacity. The first essay, by Franklin Dehousse, judge at the Court of First Instance, and Wouter Coussens, researcher at the Institut Royal des Relations Internationales, describes integration such as it might be considered under existing treaties. Other essays make far more detailed analysis. For example, Didier Reynders, Belgian finance minister, looks at the concept of flexible integration with regard to Economic and Monetary Union, while another chapter looks at cooperation within the framework of the second and third pillars. (STu)
*** MIRIAM AZIZ: The Impact of European Rights on National Legal Cultures. Hart Publishing Ltd. (Salter's Boatyard, Folly Bridge, Abingdon Road, Oxford, OX1 4LB, UK). Tel: (44-1865) 245533 - Fax: 794882 - Internet: http://www.hartpub.co.uk ). "Modern Studies in European Law" series, No. 2. 2004, 206 pp, £35. ISBN 1-84113-309-4.
This book is a contribution to the debate surrounding the impact of European law on national constitutions and the culture of the EU Member States. The author is a researcher at the European University Institute in Florence. She examines the issue through the prisms of the doctrine of sovereignty and also uses the typology established by T. H. Marshall, namely political, social and civic rights. Although political decision-makers wanted to achieve democratic legitimacy through recourse to citizenship, in reality, political rights in the European Union is described as being a much wider issue, rather than being reduced to a dimension of culture or identity. The importance of the role of national elites - particularly public authorities and judges - is also highlighted for the establishment of political rights. In terms of social rights, Miriam Aziz explains how access to social justice, synonymous with the welfare state, is consequently strongly linked to the national dimension and has been challenged by the emergence of supranational authorities. The question of social rights is analysed from the angle of entitlement to healthcare. The book aims to demonstrate, through case studies, the underlying complexities of the adoption of a legal framework to reconcile the diversity of national legal cultures of the Member States. A highly specialised and informative book. (STu)
*** CHRISTIAN PHILIP: Rapport annuel sur la transposition des directives 2004. Délégation de l'Assemblée nationale pour l'Union européenne (see above).' Rapport d'information' No. 1709. 2004, 283 pp, 6.50 euros. ISBN 2-11-118442-X.
For the second year in a row, the French national assembly's Delegation for the European Union has published a report looking at the transposition of European directives into French law. The document is divided into two parts. The first draws up a balance sheet and makes suggestions for improving transposition. The picture is not very promising, and parliamentarian Christian Philip expresses concern at the situation in France: the deficit in terms of legislation to be transposed has grown by 4.1%; and all indicators put France among the laggards among Member States in terms of the transposition deficit and the number of infringement proceedings. In the light of this alarming situation, the author studied transposition procedures in other Member States in order to identify 'good practice'. Top of the league lies Spain, which monitors transposition on a weekly basis; Denmark, which uses parliamentary monitoring and good administrative organisation; the United Kingdom, which leads the way in terms of pragmatism; Ireland and Finland. At the end of the first part of the report, Christian Philip makes a number of recommendations to the French authorities, including greater involvement by the prime minister and changes in the way parliamentarians monitor the process.
The second part of the report is a series of factsheets for each directive which has not yet been transposed within deadline by the French authorities. (STu)
*** The EUROPEAN COMMISSION (Official Publications Office of the European Communities, L-2985 Luxembourg. Internet: http: //publications.eu.int) has published the following document:
*** Rapport sur la mise en œuvre de la Stratégie pour le marché intérieur (2003-2006). 2004, 28pp. ISBN 92-894-6990-0.
We discussed the internal market strategy last week. This week, we are writing about the report on the implementation of the internal market published by the Commission, eight months after the strategy was established. It points out that various indicators of the state of the internal market are in the read. (Price convergence has been stagnating since 1998 and gaps are still far greater than in the United States, and foreign investors are losing interest.) Some progress has been made, however, and more than half of the recommendations have been established (and are listed in this report). It points out the importance of quickly getting down to work on the big legislative dossiers which have fallen behind (like the Community patent) and applying "better governance".
*** L'Environnement pour les Européens. DG Environment - "Communications Unit" (200 rue de la Loi, B-1049 Brussels - Fax: (32-2) 2969560 - e-mail: envinfo@cec.eu.int - Internet: http: //europa.eu.int/comm/environment/mailingregistration/main/mailing_reg.cfm). September 2004, No. 17 + Supplement, 16 pp + 16 pp.
This magazine reviews the five years' term of the office of Commissioner Margot Wallström, along with her priorities, achievements and characteristics. Other articles look at the Kyoto Protocol and the international carbon trading system, along with the urban environment thematic strategy and the Dutch Presidency's environment priorities. This issue comes with a supplement looking at the Green Week in June 2004.
*** SüdostEuropa Mitteilungen. Five Years of the Stability Pact: Regional Cooperation in Southeast Europe. Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft e.V. (49 Widenmayerstrasse, D-80538 Munich - Tel: (49-89) 212154-0 - Fax: 2289469 - e-mail: suedosteuropa-gesellschaft@t-online.de - Internet: http://www.suedosteuropa-gesellschaft.com ). 2004, No. 4 (special issue), 128 pp, 10 euros. Annual subscription: 50 euros.
This special issue looks at the five years of the Stability Pact for South-East Europe. The pact was signed in June 1999 by more than forty countries and organisations with the aim of helping the countries of the region in their efforts to promote peace, democracy, respect for human rights, and economic prosperity, in order to achieve price stability throughout the region. The repercussions of the pact and the situation in the region are assessed on the basis of the opinions of the former special coordinator for the pact, experts from the German foreign ministry and the Commission, and members of think tanks.
*** OECD Economic Surveys: Poland. OECD Publications (2 rue André-Pascal, F-75775 Paris Cedex 16 - Internet: http://www.oecd.org ). June 2004, No. 8, 220 pp. ISBN 0376-6438
The authors of this survey went further than simply collecting business data - they also carefully studied the data and drew assessments and detailed recommendations for several areas of the Polish economy. They describe the challenges Poland faces in its efforts to return to rapid, sustainable growth, along with the macro-economic adjustments to be implemented and the employment situation (burdened by an inappropriate social welfare system) and the challenges of convergence, etc.
*** Rapport annuel 2003. Ligue Européenne de Coopération Économique (2#8 place du Champ de Mars, B-1050 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 2198250 - Fax: 2190663 - e-mail: elec@easynet.be - Internet: http://www.elec.easynet.be ). 2004.
Economic cooperation has made huge leaps forward in Europe over the past fifty years, but the European Economic Co-operation League's work remains topical, both in terms of extending cooperation and extending it to neighbouring countries, writes the President of the League. This report outlines the League's views and recommendations on key issues like the Galileo programme, the Governing Council of the European Central Bank and managing public expenditure.
Review in brief
***Benelux Newsletter. Union économique Benelux - Secrétariat général. 2004, No. 3, Brussels. This newsletter describes activity in the Benelux area and interviews Mr. Simons, the new Director of the Bureau Benelux des Marques and the Bureau Benelux des Dessins ou Modèles.