*** MICHEL ROCARD, NICOLE GNESOTTO (Eds.): Notre Europe. Editions Robert Laffont (24 av. Marceau, F-75008 Paris). 2008, 394 pp, €22. ISBN 978-2-221-11098-0.
In "Notre Europem" nineteen writers working with Nicole Gnesotto and Michel Rocard uncompromisingly teasel out the state of play in the European project and have their say about Europe. "The European construction paradox is that it is not what you think. It is not where citizens expect it to be. When it comes to education, innovation and research - areas that we are told are crucial for Europe's competitiveness and success in globalisation - the European Union has no powers. The famous Lisbon Agenda is a pipedream - Member States keep all their powers at national level and only delegate the right to Europe to make recommendations to them, but of course not binding recommendations!" explain Nicole Gnesotto and Michel Rocard. They same goes for energy and many other domains, like social policy, the economy and foreign policy. It is this "optical illusion of Europe,"as journalist Jean Quatremer puts it, that has caused the feeling of disillusion among citizens about unification of the European continent.
Faithful to his task, former EU research Commissioner Philippe Busquin assesses the scale of the objective decline of the EU27 due to lack of a European strategy and European synergy. He calls for an updating of universities to attract researchers from outside the EU. Dutch parliamentarian Wim van Velzen regrets the detours that have turned social Europe into the Common Market's poor relation. In one of his last articles, Bronislaw Geremek stresses why enlargement and the deepening of Europe should not be opposed, and describes the debate about the borders of Europe as sterile and dangerous. He also writes that "unfinished it may be, but Europe is asserting itself as a power, homeland and community despite inauspicious conditions".
As far as Gnesotto is concerned, "globalisation forces limits on national sovereignty that nations can only ignore through blindness or arrogance". The former Director of the European Union's Institute of Security Studies in Paris asks which European country or coalition of countries is powerful enough today to take action on the international stage to try to solve the new challenges (energy, global warming, health and food risks, regional conflicts and terrorism) that are threatening international stability and prosperity. Gnesotto calls for "a Europe that is able to reconcile force and law, normative power and political power, European identity and Western solidarity".
The former French prime minister, Michel Rocard, sums up: "Responding to people's concerns, bringing Europe close to the citizens, building a Europe of projects - these hackneyed phrases are more than schematic slogans: they express the urgency for an overhaul of the theoretical bases of the European project, a massive re-injection of politics into the EU's economic logic (...) The European Commission has a major responsibility in this respect. Under the treaty, it is the depositary of the general interest, which is greater than the constitutional interests of the Commission or the proper functioning of market rules. Will it dare to move up a notch and fully tackle the question of European national interest and provide an interpretation of the world where Europe can demonstrate its value added?" Michel Rocard fears that if it fails this test, political Europe will be well and truly dead.
Olivier Jehin
*** CHRISTIANE TIMMERMAN, DIRK ROCHTUS, SARA MELS (Eds.): European and Turkish Voices in Favour and Against Turkish Accession to the European Union. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (1 av. Maurice, B-1050 Brussels. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "European Policy" series, No. 38. 2008, 149 pp, €28.90. ISBN 978-90-5201-428-9.
The idea of a “European Turkey” has a long history, even existing at the time of Byzantium whose two-headed eagle expressed the idea of belonging to two different worlds and the desire to be a bridge between them. The idea was pushed to its heights by Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey. This desire, however, to be part of Europe is now showing signs of running out of steam in the face of reluctance on the part of Europe. With public opinion growing more sceptical on either side, both players now have to get down to serious talks. In theory, it would be enough for Turkey to meet the accession criteria for the road to EU accession to be open to it, and various scenarios and roadmaps have been drawn up to this effect, including by the European Commission. In practice, however, there is a highly emotive issue that is problematic here, namely the question of difference. Mistrust of the unknown is found on both sides. On the one hand, part of Europe finds it difficult to forget the past and fears the Islamic issue now that the AKP has come to power. On the other side, Turkish society, which is Muslim, is wondering whether it would be wiser to look eastwards given the European Union's mistrust and the distancing by the United States.
In order to get the debate moving, the St Ignatius University Centre in Antwerp (Belgium) organised a conference in 2006 attended by academics and diplomats from Turkey and the European Union. The book publishes the discussions on the pros and cons of Turkey joining the EU from three angles - socioeconomic issues; cultural and religious history; and politics. The authors cite issues like size, the prominence of farming and Turkey's macroeconomic instability as barriers to Turkey joining the EU, but they point out that the EU's ageing population, for example, could benefit from new blood in the form of the much younger Turkish population. They also warn against the message of exclusion that refusal would send to a whole swathe of European Muslims and, to an extent, Muslims elsewhere in the world as well. The book looks at the question of human rights, of course, which is one of the tricky areas in Turkey's candidacy, and the danger of a loss of cohesion and greater identity problems in the European Union. These approaches make it a very interesting book, aiming to stimulate debate on a tricky question to which the European Union will have to find a solution.
(NDu)
*** MAGALI GRUEL-DIEUDE: Chypre et l'Union européenne: mutations diplomatiques et politiques. Editions L'Harmattan (5-7 rue de l'Ecole Polytechnique, F-75005 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 40467920 - Fax: 43258203 - email: diffusion.harmattan@wanadoo.fr - Internet: http://www.libraireharmattan.com ). "Aujourd'hui l'Europe" series. 2007, 249 pp, €21.50. ISBN 978-2-296-03490-7.
Following on from research for a doctoral thesis in European studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris III University in 2006, this rather dense book looks at the Cypriot question in the light of the positions of Greece and Turkey of course, but also from the German perspective (drawing a parallel between the territorial divides experienced by both Germany and Cyprus), the French perspective and, finally, the European Union. A useful toolkit, although it does not really help develop clear prospects.
(PBo)
*** JEAN-MARIE THIEBAUD: Dictionnaire biographique des pays baltes. Le personnel politique, diplomatique et militaire de 1918 à 2007. Editions L'Harmattan (see above). 2007, 281 pp, €25. ISBN 978-2-296-03750-2.
The three Baltic States are clearly some of the least understood countries of the European Union, hence the genuine utility of this impassioned book by a genealogist, who starts by briefly explaining important stages in the history of the Baltic States along with their political and administrative structures, the connections between the three countries, relations with Scandinavian countries, and connections between the Kaliningrad region of Lithuania with NATO and, more importantly, Russia, in the light of issues like minority rights and energy independence. The author also briefly addresses questions like the return of the diaspora, reduction in the ageing of the population, the Baltic States' view of France, and the prevailing political culture in the Baltic States. Most of the book, however, describes key figureheads in the past and present in political, diplomatic and military life in the Baltics. The biographical dictionary starts with Jaak Aab, (formerly Estonia's social affairs minister and currently a parliamentarian and mayor of Vohma), ending with Lithuanian parliamentarian Manfredas Zymantas.
(PBo)
*** L'Europe en formation. Revue d'études sur la construction européenne et le fédéralisme - Journal of Studies on European Integration and Federalism. Centre international de formation européenne (10 av. des Fleurs, F-06000 Nice. Tel.: (33-4) 93979397 - Fax: 93979398 - email: europe.formation@cife.eu - Internet: http: //http://www.europeenformation.eu ). 2008, No. 349-350, 280 pp, €24. Annual subscription: €30.
The rejuvenation over several months of the review set up by Alexandre Marc, the eulogist of unadulterated personalist federalism, is fully bearing fruit, as shown by this issue focussing on a special report with no fewer than fourteen different articles. All fourteen were needed to assess the question of the contemporary Balkans region "between Nation-Building and Europeanisation". In this connection, some welcome new writers should be noted, along with distinctly more scientific advice than in the past, which suggests that the review has many more fine years ahead of it…
(PBo)
*** CHRISTOPHER S. BROWNING: Constructivism, Narrative and Foreign Policy Analysis. A Case Study of Finland. Peter Lang (see above). 2008, 328 pp, €53.30. ISBN 978-3-03910-519-9.
Lecturer and researcher at Warwick University in the United Kingdom, the author of this book has come up with a novel approach to international relations. He develops a theory that includes the concept of identity to explain the development of foreign policy, using Finland as a case study. Thus far, it has been the materialist and rationalist approach that has prevailed foreign affairs analysis, seeing a country's identity as a given and assuming that all states are 'maximisers' of power, only being concerned with their own interests. The materialist and rationalist approach therefore fails to take into account that players are evolving and their attitudes and action are motivated by different paths and tests. The book studies Finland's foreign policy by focussing on its historic identity and the subjective factor in order to explain what lies behind various attitudes - this is impossible using the rationalist approach.
(NDu)
*** ROMAIN YAKEMTCHOUK: La politique étrangère de la Russie. Editions L'Harmattan (see above). 2008, 435 pp, €39. ISBN 978-2-296-06018-0.
Emeritus professor of the 'Université de Louvain' in Belgium and former editor-in-chief of Belgian review Studia Diplomatica, Romain Yakemtchouk - who was also a scientific advisor to the 'Institut Royal des Relations Internationales' in Brussels and an expert on the European Union's TACIS programme - unpicks the new rise to power of Russia twenty years after the collapse of the old Soviet Union. He analyses how Moscow is using fossil fuel as a weapon to win back influence abroad and examines how it is strengthening its position in countries in the post-Soviet area. In the same spirit, the author weighs up relations between Russia and the United States, diagnosing the introduction of a Cold Peace rather than a return to Cold War in the context of expansion of NATO and the installation of US anti-missiles systems in Europe, which are seen as a threat by the Russian government.
(MT)
*** HERTA DÄUBLER-GMELIN, EKKERHARD MÜNZIG, CHRISTIAN WALTHER (Eds.): Afrika, Europas verkannter Nachbar. Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel.: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Afrika, Europas verkannter Nachbar" series, No. 1. 2007, 207 pp, €18.50. ISBN 978-3-631-55543-9.
The title of this book, 'Africa, Europe's misunderstood neighbour,' is also the name of a whole new series of publications, of which this is the first. It is a collection of essays published by friends of the Otto Suhr Insitute of the Free University of Berlin in Germany. Named after a famous mayor of Berlin, the institute is the university's school of political science, where the subject of Africa was on the sidelines for a long time. It was a through civic initiative by friends of the institute that interest in Africa was revived with a series of conferences from October 2005 to February 2006, the contributions to which are published in this book. They include addresses by politicians and more scientific essays, mixing theory and practice on key issues for the African continent. Starting with a speech by the president of the erstwhile Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) to the Pan-African Union in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, the essays aim above all to demonstrate West Germany's interest in the role it can play in Africa and what Africa can contribute to Germany and Europe in general. The book is designed to be political as well as academic, with the aim of generating interest in key issues in international relations in this part of the world. It achieves this admirably.
(GFr)