*** HENRI MALOSSE, BRUNO VEVER: Il faut sauver le citoyen européen. Un "plan C" pour rendre l'Europe aux citoyens. Etablissement Bruylant (67 rue de la Régence, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 5129842 - Fax: 5119477 - email: jean@bruylant.be - Internet: http://www.bruylant.be ). 2008, 237 pp. ISBN 978-2-8027-2617-3.
Some books might not look very promising from the outside but within the reader will discover veritable intellectual delights. This is one of those books, as one might expect when one considers who the authors are. Henri Malosse, for example, is a highly proactive member of the European Economic and Social Committee who lectures in European affairs at Robert Schuman University in Strasbourg, while Bruno Vever is secretary general of the "Europe et Entreprises" association, following a stint on the Economic and Social Committee, where he was a member of the Single Market Monitoring Centre. These two men so close to the world of business have surprised their readers exactly where they least expected it - in this book, technicians give way to two citizens with a bee in their bonnet, who are chagrined by the battering inflicted upon the EU, slamming these attacks with eloquent, plain-speaking verve that comes straight form the heart, pointing the finger at those responsible, no matter where they might be, whether in the European institutions themselves or (more frequently) national politicians and civil servants in the Member States. Nobody escapes from the highly pertinent remonstrations of these two disillusioned Europeans from France who have certainly not resigned themselves to the situation. These 237 pages contain plenty of jolly good reasons for 'keeping up the good fight' for Europe in another manner (in other words, in a better way). Anyone fearing that voters will stay away en masse from the European elections in June of this year should take note that reading this book will encourage many Europeans to buck up their ideas and probably even to take action!
The tone of the book is clear from the introduction, which delivers a startling “state of the union” address. Are a mere eight hundred thousand Irish people to bring down an entity of nearly five hundred million? It's as if Ireland had reincarnated as Asterix's village (that managed to hold the Roman Empire at bay). How on earth did we come to this? Rejection of the constitutional treaty played on the fact that since the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957, the European Union has been playing more attention to freedom of trade and freedom of circulation, monitored by the EU institutions, than to economic and social freedoms, which tend to be left to the Member States, and this gap has taken on a new and unpalatable significance against the backdrop of free-for-all globalisation. From this standpoint, the authors point out that that the no vote by ordinary people in referendums was actually a sign that they felt there was too little Europe rather than too much. People, they explain, have become over-demanding of their leaders, having an EU before them that they expected to provide greater solidarity, greater protection, an easier life and greater comfort. They clearly wanted a sturdy house of solid stone, double glazing and central heating to protect them against globalisation but all they were offered was a half-built, flimsy shack made out of wood that they were told was much better than the mud-huts of the past! In this sense, the Lisbon Reform Treaty simply endorsed constitutional innovations without improving upon them, and scrapped the symbols, reducing them to the equivalent of supermarket ultra-cheap 'value' brands because the 'European brand' was taken off the shelves. Worse still, the Lisbon Treaty breathed new life into the approach of a bygone era when the question of Europe was considered too important to be delivered up to public debate, and the Member States have taken advantage of the French and Dutch no votes to implement a political clamp-down on debate over the European project, even at the expense of citizens' rights. This led to the Irish no vote, which returned to them like a boomerang, because people no longer accept the idea of a European Union being built solely from above and whose leaders award themselves the right to decide on policies without concerning themselves about the views of those they rule. The authors write that the people are left deeply demoralised by the lack of vision and the prospect of a European project that is no more than removing borders, consisting of little more than opening the economy left right and centre.
It is against this backdrop, which will disturb only people who do not want an ambitious Europe, that the authors look in turn at eight areas to give people back the role they deserve in tomorrow's Europe - centre stage. Whether they be culture, governance, the Single Market, the European development model, the euro, the integration model that is to be exported elsewhere, the regions or greater citizen involvement in constructing the European project, the authors come up with detailed, practical suggestions, explaining the utility of each. Some of these suggestions will send a shiver down the spines of leaders in the Member States, some more than others of course, and even people in some of the institutions. Nobody escapes from the authors' criticisms, not even the European Commission, which they slam for its excessive red tape. They urge the Commission, for example, to buck up its ideas, writing that by dint of seeing the policies being implemented as ends in themselves rather than means to the end of greater integration of communities, the Commission is losing the fundamentals that lie at the heart of the real European challenges. Are the authors overstating the case? Possibly, but they have solid arguments to back up their case. They explain that the European Commission recently put forward new regulations on cosmetics on which only the five big international players in the cosmetics industry were consulted. It was not until the European Economic and Social Committee produced an opinion that anyone concerned themselves with the concerns of the eight hundred SMEs in the cosmetics industry! This is one pearl among many, mostly directed at the Member States. Their constructive criticisms prove beyond a doubt that these two Europeans from France really do love Europe and want it to meet their expectations.
Michel Theys
*** MICHAEL DOUGAN, SAMANTHA CURRIE (Eds.): 50 Years of the European Treaties. Essays in European Law. Hart Publishing (16c Worcester Place, Oxford, OX1 2JW, UK. Tel: (44-1865) 517530 - Fax: 510710 - email: mail@hartpub.co.uk - Internet: http://www.hartpub.co.uk ). 2009, 439 pp, £35. ISBN 978-1-84113-832-9.
On the 50th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome nearly two years ago, the Law School at Liverpool University in the United Kingdom organised a high-level academic conference, the proceedings of which are very usefully published in this book. In a way, the book is a scientific counterweight to the book reviewed above, going deeper into the question of the history of the European project and the challenges facing it in the future, and is therefore aimed at a much more restricted expert readership. Two threads run through the book. The first part looks at the constitutional principles and processes that comprise the fabric of the European Union after fifty years of growth and success, but also years of moving backwards and rebounding. Prof. Alan Dashwood of Cambridge University looks at the EU's ability to find solutions to overcome reluctance by the Member States over EU integration and to encourage them to commit politically to achieve the EU's goals more effectively, along with the gradual introduction of an acceptable level of democratic responsibilities. In the same vein but using the tools of political science, Lee Miles of Liverpool University highlighted the importance in the EU's constitutional process of the consent of the national political elites, consent that must not be considered as definitively granted. Per Cramér of Gothenburg University in Sweden extends this analysis by means of the theories of mutual trust. There then follow three essays on constitutional issues connected with the complex sharing of powers by the EU and its Member States under the 'first pillar.' Derrick Wyatt of Oxford University argues in the light of the questions raised by the directive on tobacco advertising that the European Court of Justice has interpreted the provisions of the Treaty in such a generous manner that it has given itself general powers over the EU institutions to regulate the Single Market. The following essays extend the field of study to the second and third pillars, with the common foreign and security policy (and its obsessive procedural nature, according to Panos Koutrakos), the attribution of 'legal personality' to the EU and the area of freedom, security and justice. The second thread running through the book is EU law's contribution to the creation of an effective framework for increasing prosperity by means of economic integration and greater competition within the Single Market. The essays here cover issues like the updating of competition policy, energy, labour rights, fundamental rights and European citizenship. Throughout there are comments by Prof. Vlad Constantinesco of Robert Schuman University in Strasbourg on what comes after the constitutional treaty, in other words the Lisbon Treaty, which does not solve the problem that is more pressing than ever for the European Union - the need to win popular support, as so clearly demonstrated by the Irish no votes. From this viewpoint, the Irish referendum results simply shed light on a deeper problem - the way countries have disappointed people's hopes of Europe!
(MT)
*** ROBERT TOULEMON: Aimer l'Europe. Editions Lignes de Repères (3 rue de Téhéran, F-75008 Paris). 2009, 165 pp, €13-50. ISBN 978-2-915752-26-7.
Robert Toulemon obviously loves Europe - and wants others to love it too. Not that this is propaganda - it is a solidly documented study written without any euro-jargon and therefore reader-friendly. Prefaced by Michel Albert, member of the 'Institut de France,' the book is small in format and page number but makes a weighty contribution, or at least one would hope it would, to the debate that should be generated during the campaigning for the European elections in June this year. A must-read for both voters and election candidates. The author used to be a Director General at the European Commission. He is the founding president of the 'Association Française d'Etude pour l'Union Européenne' (AFEUR) which merged with the 'Association Réalités et Relations Internationales' in 2005. He has vast experience in European affairs and his critical analysis of the situation facing the European Union at the moment is always accompanied by profound reflection on how to escape from the crisis or rather, how to escape from crises in general - be they financial, economic, social, the climate, security of energy supplies and so on.
The book opens with a critical examination of what the author calls the 'French contradiction' of the European Union frequently being assigned ambitious targets without the resources to carry them out or to gradually move towards them (including institutional and financial resources). There is no lack of reminders from history but it is above all the future prospects and suggestions that will interest readers, no matter what their political preferences are. Like Prof. Jean-Louis Quermonne, to whom frequent references are made, the author Robert Toulemon takes the long view of the European Union (see European Library No. 807 of 13 January 2009), but he also makes suggestions for the immediate or short-term in order to resolve the 'crisis,' govern the enlarged EU in an efficient manner, and discuss the role that the EU could play on the world stage in the future. We will leave it to the reader to delve deeper into this treasure of a book and perhaps discuss it with the author on his blog on the internet. Many readers will experience sheer delight upon reading ties book. This is no exaggeration because Robert Toulemon invites us to "love 'Europe". (J-RR)
*** GENEVIEVE DUCHENNE, GAELLE COURTOIS (Eds.): Pardon du passé, Europe unie et défense de l'Occident. Adenauer et Schuman docteurs honoris causa de l'Université Catholique de Louvain. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes/Peter Lang (1 av. Maurice, B-1050 Brussels. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: pie@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Euroclio" series, No. 45. 2009, 173 pp. ISBN 978-90-5201-472-2.
Arising from a conference, this book rescues from oblivion the awarding of an honorary doctorate on 10 January 1958 (before the setting up of the European Economic Community's and Euroatom's commissions) to the German Chancellor back then, Konrad Adenauer, and also to Robert Schuman. After discussing the general situation of the day and recalling the role of universities in the European cultural area over the centuries, the book describes the obstacles that had to be overcome for a Belgian university to grant this honorary doctorate to a German chancellor. The deal was struck by awarding a doctorate on the same day to a Frenchman, Robert Schuman, who changed the face of history with his famous statement on 9 May 1950. These days, the event may smack of an anecdote but Prof. Michel Dumoulin explains that it demonstrates "a vision of Europe as the work of peace and reconciliation," and the ceremony also marked a desire to let bygones by bygones. (MT)
*** CONSTANTIJN KORTMANN, JOSEPH FLEUREN, WIM VOERMANS (Eds.): Constitutional Law of 2 EU Member States: Bulgaria and Romania. The 2007 Enlargement. Kluwer Law International, P.O. Box 316, 2400 AH Alphen aan der Rijn, Netherlands. email: sales@kluerlaw.com - Internet: http: //kluwerlaw.com). 2008, 217 pp. ISBN 978-90-13-05635-8.
This book provides a comparative study of the constitutional law of the last two countries to join the European Union, Bulgaria and Romania. Two books on the same issue in this series have already looked at the 'old' fifteen Member States and the countries that joined the EU in May 2004 so it is perfectly logical that the latest entrants would also enjoy a similar attention. The book gives a detailed description of the constitutional law of the two countries. The authors start by describing the origins of the two countries' constitutions, going on to explain their guiding principles and reviewing everything connected with the constitution, like the fundamental rights of citizens, the nature of direct democracy in the two countries, the legal system, the government, the president, territorial organisation and local governance. There is a bibliography at the end of each section. This highly detailed research is aimed at academia and people interested in the constitutions of Bulgaria and Romania. (NDu)