*** OLLI REHN: Europe's Next Frontiers. Nomos (Baden-Baden) and the Center for Applied Policy Research (21 Maria-Theresa Strasse, D-81675 Munich. Tel: (49-89) 21801300 - Fax: 21801329 - e-mail: cap.office@lrz.uni-muenchen.de - Internet: http://www.cap.uni-muenchen.de ). "Münchner Beiträge zur europäischen Einigung" series, No. 14. 2006, 123 pp. ISBN 3-8329-2417-5.
Like all major projects, the European Union has given rise to its fair share of uncertainty. The doubt which has perhaps given rise to the greatest sweep of contradictory emotions, suspicions and hot debate is the question of the EU's frontiers. Some see them as a fixed, defensive limit, like a kind of Maginot Line. The EU Enlargement Commissioner, Olli Rehn, however, says they should not be viewed as 'borders' (rigid state limits between countries) but rather as 'frontiers' (dynamic zones on the edges which, like the Wild West during the conquest of the western USA, certainly contain some challenges but also a range of opportunities to be seized). Olli Rehn writes that: 'Borders limit our minds, chain actions and reduce our influence… Frontiers free our minds, stimulate action and increase our influence".
Although matters connected with EU enlargement and the EU's connections with its neighbours and its position in the shifting sands of the current world form the backbone of his work, Olli Rehn does not restrict himself to his own backyard. A convinced European, he sets these themes against a wider backdrop and a broader vision of what the European Union is these days and what needs to be done to get it to move forward. When he tackles the topic of frontiers, for example, he goes beyond simply defining the physical frontiers to address the three great challenges facing the EU, areas where he feels the EU has to provide tangible outcomes if it wants to restore citizen confidence in the European project. These are restoring confidence in the economy, turning the EU into a healthy, functioning political body and striking new consensus over enlargement. As in all walks of life, it is not possible to make effective progress if one sticks to received ideas, so Olli Rehn is at pains to rectify certain persistent myths attacking the EU and EU enlargement. He debunks the myth of the infamous Polish plumber which gave rise to suspicion of EU enlargement in many countries, and still does today, particularly in France where it has become, as reporter Stéphane Marchand described it, "French people's social affairs nightmare". The Commissioner argues that the roots of this fear are to be found in the population's lack of confidence in the EU economy, leading him to warn against the temptation of pulling up the drawbridge: there can be 'no treat to fortress Europe.' The same goes for Turkey's accession to the EU, which Olli Rehn compares with the Clash's famous song "Should I stay or should I go", because it has generated such contradictory reactions. He says there is a simple guideline for the EU with regard to Turkey: 'Simply, we should be both fair and firm. We should be fair and uphold our commitment to give Turkey to chance to show that it can meet the accession criteria to the letter. We should be firm by maintaining rigorous conditionality, which is the driver of reforms and modernisation in Turkey". The links between the West and the Islamic world are another of the big issues discussed in this book. The Commissioner can see the challenges, of course, but feels there is no need for pessimistic fatalism, warning of the dangers of the false dichotomies that abound in much discourse on the issue.
Whether in terms of the EU's geographical frontiers, its absorption capacity, the balance between integration and enlargement, or the EU's "soft power", Olli Rehn provides clear, user-friendly reflection in this book which is not only the reflection of a Commissioner well acquainted with the multiple layers of reality in Europe but also the reflection of a citizen wanting to see the European Union which he is a part of become a body which will both take up its full role on the world stage and also act to improve its citizens' living standards.
Frederik Ronse
*** RENAUD DEHOUSSE, FLORENCE DELOCHE-GAUDEZ, OLIVIER DUHAMEL (Eds.): Elargissement. Comment l'Europe s'adapte. Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques (Centre d'études européennes, 117 bld Saint-Germain, F-75006 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 45498367 - Fax: 45498360). "Evaluer l'Europe" series, No. 1. 2006, 127 pp, €10. ISBN 2-7246-1020-2.
Rightly or wrongly, the European project in its current form has 'become a problem, both for governments and as far as the governed are concerned". But was this right or wrong? - therein lies the rub. In order to distinguish between true and false and help readers navigate among what it describes as the unjustified twisting of properly based criticism and the ever repeated cliches of deserved criticism, the 'Centre d'études européennes de Sciences Po' in France recently established a European institutions monitoring centre, which published this book - the very first in what is intended to be a prolific series providing an annual assessment of each of the EU institutions and the various actors working there. It is the result of a resolutely empirical scientific approach based on a quantitative approach relatively little used in academic circles, with the monitoring centre's international team of experts on institutional issues deciding for this first volume to collect as much objective, verifiable objective information as possible along, where necessary, with qualitative information more likely to be subject to discussion but always based on rigorous, forthright observation of the facts, as the monitoring centre explains. It has decided to produce tools of analysis to detect false paths and over-brief or deceptive opinions in order to encourage well-based and argued opinion. The approach for the subject selected for this volume, the impact of 'big bang enlargement', has led to unexpected, surprising, conclusions because the gathered information tends to demonstrate above all else, the EU's persistent capacity to adapt. The authors reveal that the EU is not experiencing any deadlock. It is probably producing less legislation than in the past but the falling number of legislative proposals unveiled by the European Commission probably has less to do with enlargement than with the desire to do less, but do it better, as José Manuel Barroso's team puts it. While it is legitimate to query this, the information gathered by Olivier Costa, Renaud Dehousse and Florence Deloche-Gaudez tends to show that the European Commission's capacity to feed the decision-making process with new draft legislation is as strong as ever. Another, even more surprising, finding is that the EU has speeded up the decision-making process! Irrespective of the voting rules used (unanimous voting or qualified majority voting) or the procedures (the Council deciding alone, codecision or consultation), the average time it takes between publication of legislation and its adoption by the Council has fallen from 459 days before the most recent round of enlargement to 331 days (from May 2004 on). What miracle has achieved this? Firstly, in the absence of any formal institutional reforms, European decision-makers have made informal changes as evidenced by improved dialogue between the Council and the European Parliament. Although continuing to favour consensus decision-making, the Council is reported to be more open to voting these days, speeding things up for legislation backed by majority coalitions. On the other hand, explain the authors, by forcing each side to choose which side of the fence to come down on, the process of being more likely to proceed by voting will actually lead to the emergence of vetoing minorities which could lead to other legislation failing to get through. While demonstrating that the EU is a functioning body, the question of whether it is operating well or badly, as far as citizens are concerned, is a entirely different issue …
(PBo)
*** SYLVIE GOULARD: Le coq et la perle: cinquante ans d'Europe. Editions du Seuil (Paris). 2007, 187 pp, €12. ISBN 978-2-02-092628-7
Now I know what to recommend. I am often asked to recommend a book for young people or teenagers wanting to learn something about the European project, the political construction that is so widely misunderstood and criticised. Until yesterday, I was not sure what to say but my hesitations have all gone now. I recommend this book by Sylvie Goulard, the President of the 'Mouvement Européen - France', lecturer at the politics section of Paris University and the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium). It could easily be used as a higher education text book, I suggest. Two highlights stand out. Firstly, the author believes in what she writes and her enthusiasm is contagious. Secondly, the great minds that created Europe have been dusted off and now look like lively, daring and generous personalities, which deals a fatal blow to the myth that they were over-ambitious, scheming bureaucrats. We witness the actions and battles of people who believed it was time to end the centuries-long sorry history of wars in Europe to rediscover what unites the continent and brings Europeans together, not through force or the domination of the strongest but through fraternity, community of culture and common roots and ideals, respecting differences and the identity of all. Readers will have understood by now that this book is not a dry list of dates, successes and failures, of forward and backward moves. Instead, as the author sets out at the beginning, the book hands the microphone to the people that are commonly called the founding fathers, whose ideas tend to be largely unknown today.
The first outcome of this is a radical demolition of the idea that from the outset, the European Community was set up for business reasons. The author selects a series of enlightening quotations and comments: "Reading what was written by the founders shows the extent to which their innovation broke with the old order, while recent practices by the EU refer back to the old order". She expresses surprise that some lecturers and students know perfectly well who the first pharaohs of Egypt were but haven't a clue about the first courageous founders of unity in Europe. She observes that the falsehoods about the European project have been so amplified by the English-speaking press and so carefully listened to in Brussels that they are now assumed to be true. There follows a passionately argued, lively and intelligent description of the reality of the European Union, which is respected and listened to everywhere when it speaks and acts as a unified whole (on trade policy and the euro, for example) but is otherwise an empty rhetorical shell. The EU institutional system is described by Sylvie Goulard as a revolution that happened without anyone noticing but nothing has been definitively won. Goulard says that neither the single market nor the euro can survive if the crisis of confidence continues for any length of time.
This book calls for readers to regain faith and confidence - not claiming to merge states, which are a historical reality, but understanding that a free decision to share sovereignty does not mean abandoning sovereignty but rather another way of exercising sovereignty, in the author's words. Those who understand this will move forwards together because if one wants to make sense of the European project, the countries and peoples that share a common vision will have to get together.
(FR)
*** EMMA CREWE, MARION G. MÜLLER (Eds.): Rituals in Parliaments. Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - E-mail: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.de ). 2006, 209 pp. ISBN 3-631-51993-1.
Parliaments are essential aspects of a country's democratic life although some analysts believe their influence is diminishing because of their subordination to international treaties or because the executive is taking on greater powers in some countries. Plenty of studies have been made of parliaments but there is one area that escaped attention in the past, namely the nature and role of ritual in parliament. One could easily be surprised at this and react the way the House of Lords did in the UK when it learned it was the subject of an ethnographic study. But Emma Crewe points out that 'rather than being a mere cultural expression or tool used by politicians, rituals in the Lords is the everyday way of doing politics. As Spencer points out, politics is a cultural process, embedded in ideologies in wider society, rather than an isolated activity above culture". The House of Lords is one of many fields of study in this book, which also looks at rituals at the US Senate, the Scottish parliament and the Hungarian parliament and the French Assembly.
(FRo)
*** L'Europe en formation. Les cahiers du fédéralisme. Centre international de formation européenne (10 av. des Fleurs, F-06000 Nice. Tel: (33-4) 93979397 - Fax: 93979398 - E-mail: europe.formation@cife.org - Internet: http: //http://www.cife.org ). 2006, No. 4, 200 pp, €11. Annual subscription: €30.
Opening with an obituary of the recently deceased European activist and lecturer Guy Michaud, this issue of a review founded by Alexandre Marc includes a dossier on European social models. It starts with an analysis of recent scientific literature in this domain, with Hartmut Marhold commenting that what makes some writers hesitate to talk about a European social model is probably the fact they are not able to meet the challenge of defining the idea of the coexistence of unity and diversity. Writers, however, who start from the idea that the European social model exists, are all of course perfectly aware of the existence of various variations of common groups of fundamental elements. The publication's editor also points out that the social impact of the economic and monetary integration policies (the single market and the euro) are not taken into account by researchers in this field, any more than they take account of the redistribution policies of regional policy, cohesion policy and the Common Agriculture Policy. Other essays shed light on the issue by looking at it through the current shortfalls and problems that can be laid at the door of neoliberalism and financial globalisation, and the way it is experienced in different countries of the EU, particularly the ones which joined the EU club three years ago. The dossier continues with reflection on a new approach to guaranteed social minimums (also known in the movement of federalists close to Alexandre Marc's ideas as universal benefits) in the light of the reprint a decade on of a ground-shaking book by US writer Jeremy Rifkin, "The End of Work", with Mireille Marc-Lipiansky welcoming the fact that one man's pragmatism can be more effective than another man's call for revolution - while both take the same path.
(MT)