What do you think?
Rate this book
Les Salauds de L'Europe: Guide à l'usage des eurosceptiques
Peut-on encore être européen ? Trop de scandales, comme l’embauche de José Manuel Durão Barroso, l’ancien président de la Commission, par la banque d’affaires Goldman Sachs. Trop de compromissions, comme l’élection de Jean-Claude Juncker à la tête de l’exécutif européen, lui qui a transformé son pays, le Luxembourg, en paradis fiscal. Trop d’échecs, de l’économie au contrôle des frontières extérieures en passant par le social ou la défense. Trop de libéralisme débridé. Et trop peu de démocratie.
Il est facile de dresser un acte d’accusation implacable contre l’Union en dissimulant la responsabilité des gouvernements nationaux dans ces dérives. Les salauds de l’Europe, ce sont à la fois les États, les maîtres de l’Union, qui ont trahi le rêve des pères fondateurs, et les démagogues qui essayent de faire croire qu’un retour vers le passé résoudrait tous les problèmes. Il est temps de redire ce que l’Union nous a apporté à l’heure où elle n’a jamais paru aussi fragile, menacée de l’extérieur par la Russie de Poutine et les États-Unis de Trump, et de l’intérieur par le Brexit et la montée des partis extrémistes.
Dans ce livre percutant, l’un des meilleurs spécialistes de l’Europe reprend un à un les arguments de ses opposants en démêlant le vrai du faux et rappelle que la construction communautaire, aussi perfectible soit-elle, reste la dernière utopie pacifiste d’une planète au bord de l’abîme.
Il est facile de dresser un acte d’accusation implacable contre l’Union en dissimulant la responsabilité des gouvernements nationaux dans ces dérives. Les salauds de l’Europe, ce sont à la fois les États, les maîtres de l’Union, qui ont trahi le rêve des pères fondateurs, et les démagogues qui essayent de faire croire qu’un retour vers le passé résoudrait tous les problèmes. Il est temps de redire ce que l’Union nous a apporté à l’heure où elle n’a jamais paru aussi fragile, menacée de l’extérieur par la Russie de Poutine et les États-Unis de Trump, et de l’intérieur par le Brexit et la montée des partis extrémistes.
Dans ce livre percutant, l’un des meilleurs spécialistes de l’Europe reprend un à un les arguments de ses opposants en démêlant le vrai du faux et rappelle que la construction communautaire, aussi perfectible soit-elle, reste la dernière utopie pacifiste d’une planète au bord de l’abîme.
- GenresNonfictionPolitics
316 pages, Paperback
First published March 22, 2017
6 people are currently reading
38 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 8, 2019
A useful and balanced riposte to the most common criticisms of the EU. Quatremer knows his history and how the institutions work, but is also not afraid to make his own criticisms, specifically about the quality of European Commissioner we get these days, and the extent to which member States really run the show, all the while blaming the Commission for unpopular decisions.
It’s a very French point of view, in the sense that he target’s specifically France’s history and relationship with the EU. I found the last chapter, an alternative history imagining what would have happened if France had never joined the EU, a little unconvincing and pointless.
It’s a very French point of view, in the sense that he target’s specifically France’s history and relationship with the EU. I found the last chapter, an alternative history imagining what would have happened if France had never joined the EU, a little unconvincing and pointless.
July 13, 2017
I follow the author on Twitter. As a result I was dumbfounded by what he calls “Chapter 0” of his book, which is as good an anti-EU diatribe as you will ever read. It’s a true no-stone-unturned job worthy of Nigel Farage, if Nigel Farage could write this well, that is.
Next comes the Introduction, where the author comes clean: “I did not mean most of that, I was just showing you that I can screed against the EU with the best of them” is the gist of it, with a side order of “And, by the way, some of it is true. But bear with me, let’s go through the arguments one-by-one.”
And then he’s off, listing ten common complaints against the EU and examining to what extent they’re all justified. Some he refutes and some he accepts. His angle is very very strongly pro-European, but the true function of the book for me was that it educated me about the European Union. I’ve read books on the Euro and Europe by Soros, Stiglitz, Sinn and Sandbu and that’s just authors that start with letter “S” and this is the one that taught me most about the EU.
You don’t have to agree with him on everything, but the breadth of topics is breathtaking. I often agreed and I sometimes violently disagreed. I entirely disagree with his views on QE, for example (he thinks it’s the best thing since sliced bread and good enough a reason to belong, even for France!!) but that’s alright, because this is such a complete book: it lays out the arguments pro and against and you can agree or disagree. Who could ask for more? Very few “straw men” here too. It’s all real.
And the book ends with a “what if” chapter, which discusses where we, and in particular France, would find ourselves without the EU. He paints a dreary (and believable!) picture.
My only complaint is that the book is 100% from the angle of France. This often gets annoying. But it’s a French book for a French audience, written in French. I was expecting no less! If you want the counterbalance, read Martin Sandbu!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To conclude my review, by means of an appendix, here are the ten arguments against Europe, followed by Quatremer’s refutation (or otherwise):
1. “Europe was built on the back of the peoples”
This myth the author demolishes, actually. And he gives the history of pre-war and post-war efforts to put together a European ensemble of sorts. I learned tons of history here, including the history of the failed effort to put together a European army in the early fifties, which was propose by France, agreed to by Germany, Italy and the Benelux and finally turned down by… France. Bottom line, you are left with no doubt that the peoples were not only consulted on a number of schemes, but rejected most of them, in fact. France would have blocked the European Community too, had it not been the debacle of Suez, which made the French appreciate that they wanted to belong with their fellow Europeans.
2. “Europe is a EUSSR”
Well, the author says, it’s certainly no Hotel California. The UK just left, for example, and everybody else is free to do so. Not exactly the experience of your run-of-the-mill Soviet republic or satellite. With regard to the powers Europe wields, moreover, there are exactly five domains where the member states are subordinate to the EU:
• Monetary policy
• Customs
• Competition
• Commercial negotiations
• Conservation of marine resources
Finally, it is the states that name all their EU representatives, so it’s not like the power comes out of some dark place nobody understands.
3. “Europe is not democratic”
The author concedes that there is truth in this argument. The EU does have what he calls a “democratic deficit,” he admits. When there’s something of substance to be decided, it is the country members’ heads of state who decide, in what is called the “European Council,” with no cameras invited and no published minutes.
Needless to say, the 28 heads of the European states are very much elected leaders, but when they meet in secrecy to make policy for Europe they are pretty much unaccountable to the European population as a whole. The author argues that this is because they want it to be that way: it is the desire of the states that their sundry prime ministers should be able to do their dirty little business in secret, precisely so they can afterwards evade political accountability to their electorates for the policies they decide behind closed doors to pursue. To them, passing the buck for their decisions to “Europe” is not a bug, it’s a feature; a feature we the people can legitimately complain about.
The author goes on to say that this is not terribly different from the US President making a decision (except of course he’s directly-elected, I hasten to add, and he lets that slide, because he has an even bigger beef) and provided we have enough checks and balances that ought to work.
This is actually where Quatermer finds the biggest problem with the setup: the checks and balances are not there to countervail the European Council:
(i) The Council of Ministers he finds to be a 532-headed cruel joke, a place politicians go to die or hide and in his view it relies 100% on the administrators who prepare its work, making it a low-quality black box.
(ii) The European Parliament has recently taken away many of the competences of the Council of Ministers, but it still cannot really propose legislation, it can only propose amendments to legislation prepared by the European Commission. Moreover, its members are not elected in true pan-European federal elections of true pan-European federal parties. And its alleged budgetary control is an utter joke, as it has neither control nor a budget worth talking about: it can’t tax and it can’t spend.
(iii) The European Commission is meant to be a collection of competent colleagues of the chief commissioner (these days called the European President), the equivalent of ministers in a cabinet, who submit proposals for legislation and negotiate agreements, but it is essentially political, because the commissioners are not given their jobs due to some skill or competence they have. They are appointed in the exact same fashion as the members of the Council of Ministers, by the states. The European President, does not have the power a prime minister normally has to appoint his cabinet. He is given his 28 commissioners by the member states and he then hands them out their briefs. Since 2004 they do have to go through a US-style approval process, but the results have been rather discouraging.
(iv) Since 2014, the European President, it what was a rather surprising success for the democratic process (and applying a rather liberal interpretation to the 2007 Lisbon Treaty), is no longer appointed by the European Council and is elected by the European Parliament. Ish. He is the head of the pseudo-federal party with the most seats in the European Parliament. This is, surely, progress, but of course the European Parliament is not a true federal institution. It’s made up of representatives of the parties of the member states, which after the fact shop for association with one of the pseudo-federal parties. So the European President remains as good as appointed by the European Council…
(v) In the case of France, in particular, the setup is such that the President of France can totally circumvent all institutions and exercise France’s powers at the European level in total contempt of the rest of the French political class, and, indeed, people.
4. “Europe is in contempt of its peoples”
In short, the accusation here is one of the most standard ones: All referenda that have taken place across Europe to pose a pro-Europe / anti-Europe question that have been answered by the peoples in the negative have been brought back to the people for re-consideration.
Quatremer has a series of good (and not-so-good) answers to this accusation:
(i) Brexit. Not getting reversed
(ii) It is always the governments of the member states that have brought the question back to their peoples. Not Europe. Bring your complaints on this issue to your own country’s political class, do not accuse Europe.
(iii) In his view, the process whereby a single state can keep the process behind for everybody is unacceptable, besides (and I, for one, disagree with him on this one, but hey!)
(iv) The peoples who have voted anti-Europe are more than anything else protesting against their own government, not against Europe (sure, but the government that poses this question is, equally, betting that it will bask in the reflected light of the positivity toward Europe)
(v) More often than not, referenda have given the pro-European result (no idea what this has to do with contempt, to be honest)
For what it’s worth, I reckon he should have left it with the second argument, because it addresses the question fully. The rest reveal him to be on occasion blinkered himself.
5. “The European Commission is technocratic and out of touch”
(Or, alternatively, “don’t tell my mom I work for the Commission, she thinks I play the piano at a brothel”)
The author does not refute this. He asserts that once upon a time serving at the Commission was a great honor that attracted men and women who were up to the task, but admits that this is no longer the case. And he blames the change to the work of one man, former Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock!
According to the author, Kinnock singlehandedly during his tenure at the Commission undermined the institution by re-orienting it (and particularly its hiring practices) toward the British model which worships management and leadership over skill and competence. Oh, and he switched the language to English. Oh, no. And his successors were not up to the task of undoing his evil work and building a proper, competent, French-style bureaucracy.
I see two problems with this: first that Quatremer is not exactly refuting the claim. He’s basically admitting the European Commission is no good. Second that Kinnock is an old-school dyed-in-the-wool socialist. But what do I know, of course? Maybe the author is correct and one man was enough to steer it in the wrong direction.
6. “European elites are corrupt and incompetent”
This chapter has two parts: In the first part the author sticks needles into a voodoo doll in the shape of Manuel Barroso, with walk-in parts by Nellie Kroes and a couple more. In the second part he says (proves, almost) that the Europhobes are, if anything, even more corrupt.
To the extent that everybody mentioned here is a “European elite” this does not sound like a very convincing refutation of the claim to my ears…
7. “Europe cannot keep itself out of other people’s business”
This is something we hear a lot from Eurosceptics, and the author does a tremendous job of laying the claim to rest. Europe is actually rather “light touch” when it comes to determining the laws. To wit:
(i) Yes yes yes, we all know that Europe regulates how the toilets will flush, Prince Charles is annoyed that Europe regulates unpasteurized cheese and we’ve all heard about how, for example “60% of all Belgian law is these days European law.” But there’s a good explanation for both: first of all “thou shalt not kill” is a one-liner, but if you want a toilet made in Italy to fit in a German bathroom you need pages and pages of specifications. (So much about the percentage of law made at home and in Europe) Second, most of the laws have been written to facilitate commerce. From the moment you have accepted that people, goods, services and capital can flow freely, you need the messy laws that harmonize how that will all happen across 28 countries. So yes, there are thousands of pages of EU law, but their aim is to harmonize!
(ii) Oh, and even if you count them all, they amount to 20% of European Law page count, actually
(iii) The way to think about European law versus member state law is really like two pyramids whose bases have some overlap. European law is the small pyramid. The bit of its base it does not share with member state law is to do with monetary policy, customs, competition, commerce and the conservation of marine resources, as discussed. The bit of the base that is common between the two pyramids is to do with agriculture, banking, finance and the environment (where the European share is 30-40%) and energy, transport, health and commerce with countries outside the EU (where the European share is a more modest 20% give or take) and absolutely everything else falls under member-stat law.
(iv) The truth about Europe is that it has a panoply of institutions that fully correspond to a super-state, but that they have very little power to influence the biggest decisions a state will ever take: personal tax, corporate tax, indirect taxes, salaries, the right to unionize, the right to strike, the right to lock-out, defense, police etc. etc. are uniquely the competence of the member states. Yes, there is a commissioner for all of the above, but he’s largely cosmetic. His only function is for eurosceptics to call him useless. Far from getting its nose into everything, the EU is “a Ferrari with the engine of a 2CV,” Quatremer concludes.
8. “Europe is ultraliberal”
A silly argument, given that Europe is alone responsible for half of the planet’s social spending, but it’s an accusation that you also hear all the time in my country, Greece, and the author quite clearly is sick of hearing it in France. He attributes both the rather generous facts on the ground as well as the perception of European liberalism to the legacy of the power leftward-leaning parties used to wield in Europe while the Soviet Union was still a going concern. The way he says it is “Europe is leftist, but is governed by the right.”
He also goes on a tour of how the victorious Americans used their power to break down once and for all the Ruhr valley monopolies in steel, for example, but adds that the main goal was to attain a balance between producers in the member states. Consistent with how the US was set up post-war, Europe was configured to leave room for many vertically-integrated producers who would enjoy “champion” status at home but operate on a level playing field across Europe.
From there he goes on to actually lament that Europe has not developed category killers like the US’ GE, Intel, Microsoft and Google and it sounds like he’s actually complaining that Europe has missed out. I could not possibly disagree more, but this mini-screed is at right angles to the point he is refuting in this chapter: Europe most certainly isn’t some kind of free-for-all ultraliberal nightmare.
But before he’s done, he actually closes the chapter with a 180 degree turn: as far as Jean Quatremer is concerned, Europe has overdone it on free-trade (and on the Eastern expansion, too) and has left an open goal for predatory exporters to sell into Europe, whose exporters still have to pay large tariffs. Perhaps, but as we all know Europe runs a surplus. It can’t be that bad, can it?
9. “Europe does not deal with the big problems”
Europe does not have anything like the American FBI, CIA or NSA, no army, no border control, no common defense, no common foreign policy. Shengen is a joke. The laws regarding social security, pensions etc. for intra-European migrants are confusing and non-uniform. There’s no defense against “social dumping” (defined also as the refusal to harmonize corporate tax) He goes on.
But that’s precisely the set of competences that the states will never give up, you see! Don’t blame Europe for the fact that sovereign states will not relinquish the Weberian “monopoly on violence,” for example.
10. “We need a different Europe”
This chapter sings the praises of the Euro. He refutes the “we cannot devalue anymore” argument by reminding us that no country ever devalued its way to prosperity and then hails the salutary effects of having the ECB’s quantitative easing save the day in 2011 (or whenever OMT was threatened, at any rate).
The two arguments really really really don’t sit too comfortably next to one another if you ask me. Or perhaps he’s saying “let Europe devalue as a whole, rather than just my country.” Grrrrreat
From there he goes on to explain how horrible it would be to quit (yawn), explores a couple alternative European setups (as in North / Med)
And, inevitably, he finishes the “different Europe” chapter by imagining (over some ten pages) the perfect Europe as a federal Europe of the countries that share the common currency!
Next comes the Introduction, where the author comes clean: “I did not mean most of that, I was just showing you that I can screed against the EU with the best of them” is the gist of it, with a side order of “And, by the way, some of it is true. But bear with me, let’s go through the arguments one-by-one.”
And then he’s off, listing ten common complaints against the EU and examining to what extent they’re all justified. Some he refutes and some he accepts. His angle is very very strongly pro-European, but the true function of the book for me was that it educated me about the European Union. I’ve read books on the Euro and Europe by Soros, Stiglitz, Sinn and Sandbu and that’s just authors that start with letter “S” and this is the one that taught me most about the EU.
You don’t have to agree with him on everything, but the breadth of topics is breathtaking. I often agreed and I sometimes violently disagreed. I entirely disagree with his views on QE, for example (he thinks it’s the best thing since sliced bread and good enough a reason to belong, even for France!!) but that’s alright, because this is such a complete book: it lays out the arguments pro and against and you can agree or disagree. Who could ask for more? Very few “straw men” here too. It’s all real.
And the book ends with a “what if” chapter, which discusses where we, and in particular France, would find ourselves without the EU. He paints a dreary (and believable!) picture.
My only complaint is that the book is 100% from the angle of France. This often gets annoying. But it’s a French book for a French audience, written in French. I was expecting no less! If you want the counterbalance, read Martin Sandbu!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To conclude my review, by means of an appendix, here are the ten arguments against Europe, followed by Quatremer’s refutation (or otherwise):
1. “Europe was built on the back of the peoples”
This myth the author demolishes, actually. And he gives the history of pre-war and post-war efforts to put together a European ensemble of sorts. I learned tons of history here, including the history of the failed effort to put together a European army in the early fifties, which was propose by France, agreed to by Germany, Italy and the Benelux and finally turned down by… France. Bottom line, you are left with no doubt that the peoples were not only consulted on a number of schemes, but rejected most of them, in fact. France would have blocked the European Community too, had it not been the debacle of Suez, which made the French appreciate that they wanted to belong with their fellow Europeans.
2. “Europe is a EUSSR”
Well, the author says, it’s certainly no Hotel California. The UK just left, for example, and everybody else is free to do so. Not exactly the experience of your run-of-the-mill Soviet republic or satellite. With regard to the powers Europe wields, moreover, there are exactly five domains where the member states are subordinate to the EU:
• Monetary policy
• Customs
• Competition
• Commercial negotiations
• Conservation of marine resources
Finally, it is the states that name all their EU representatives, so it’s not like the power comes out of some dark place nobody understands.
3. “Europe is not democratic”
The author concedes that there is truth in this argument. The EU does have what he calls a “democratic deficit,” he admits. When there’s something of substance to be decided, it is the country members’ heads of state who decide, in what is called the “European Council,” with no cameras invited and no published minutes.
Needless to say, the 28 heads of the European states are very much elected leaders, but when they meet in secrecy to make policy for Europe they are pretty much unaccountable to the European population as a whole. The author argues that this is because they want it to be that way: it is the desire of the states that their sundry prime ministers should be able to do their dirty little business in secret, precisely so they can afterwards evade political accountability to their electorates for the policies they decide behind closed doors to pursue. To them, passing the buck for their decisions to “Europe” is not a bug, it’s a feature; a feature we the people can legitimately complain about.
The author goes on to say that this is not terribly different from the US President making a decision (except of course he’s directly-elected, I hasten to add, and he lets that slide, because he has an even bigger beef) and provided we have enough checks and balances that ought to work.
This is actually where Quatermer finds the biggest problem with the setup: the checks and balances are not there to countervail the European Council:
(i) The Council of Ministers he finds to be a 532-headed cruel joke, a place politicians go to die or hide and in his view it relies 100% on the administrators who prepare its work, making it a low-quality black box.
(ii) The European Parliament has recently taken away many of the competences of the Council of Ministers, but it still cannot really propose legislation, it can only propose amendments to legislation prepared by the European Commission. Moreover, its members are not elected in true pan-European federal elections of true pan-European federal parties. And its alleged budgetary control is an utter joke, as it has neither control nor a budget worth talking about: it can’t tax and it can’t spend.
(iii) The European Commission is meant to be a collection of competent colleagues of the chief commissioner (these days called the European President), the equivalent of ministers in a cabinet, who submit proposals for legislation and negotiate agreements, but it is essentially political, because the commissioners are not given their jobs due to some skill or competence they have. They are appointed in the exact same fashion as the members of the Council of Ministers, by the states. The European President, does not have the power a prime minister normally has to appoint his cabinet. He is given his 28 commissioners by the member states and he then hands them out their briefs. Since 2004 they do have to go through a US-style approval process, but the results have been rather discouraging.
(iv) Since 2014, the European President, it what was a rather surprising success for the democratic process (and applying a rather liberal interpretation to the 2007 Lisbon Treaty), is no longer appointed by the European Council and is elected by the European Parliament. Ish. He is the head of the pseudo-federal party with the most seats in the European Parliament. This is, surely, progress, but of course the European Parliament is not a true federal institution. It’s made up of representatives of the parties of the member states, which after the fact shop for association with one of the pseudo-federal parties. So the European President remains as good as appointed by the European Council…
(v) In the case of France, in particular, the setup is such that the President of France can totally circumvent all institutions and exercise France’s powers at the European level in total contempt of the rest of the French political class, and, indeed, people.
4. “Europe is in contempt of its peoples”
In short, the accusation here is one of the most standard ones: All referenda that have taken place across Europe to pose a pro-Europe / anti-Europe question that have been answered by the peoples in the negative have been brought back to the people for re-consideration.
Quatremer has a series of good (and not-so-good) answers to this accusation:
(i) Brexit. Not getting reversed
(ii) It is always the governments of the member states that have brought the question back to their peoples. Not Europe. Bring your complaints on this issue to your own country’s political class, do not accuse Europe.
(iii) In his view, the process whereby a single state can keep the process behind for everybody is unacceptable, besides (and I, for one, disagree with him on this one, but hey!)
(iv) The peoples who have voted anti-Europe are more than anything else protesting against their own government, not against Europe (sure, but the government that poses this question is, equally, betting that it will bask in the reflected light of the positivity toward Europe)
(v) More often than not, referenda have given the pro-European result (no idea what this has to do with contempt, to be honest)
For what it’s worth, I reckon he should have left it with the second argument, because it addresses the question fully. The rest reveal him to be on occasion blinkered himself.
5. “The European Commission is technocratic and out of touch”
(Or, alternatively, “don’t tell my mom I work for the Commission, she thinks I play the piano at a brothel”)
The author does not refute this. He asserts that once upon a time serving at the Commission was a great honor that attracted men and women who were up to the task, but admits that this is no longer the case. And he blames the change to the work of one man, former Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock!
According to the author, Kinnock singlehandedly during his tenure at the Commission undermined the institution by re-orienting it (and particularly its hiring practices) toward the British model which worships management and leadership over skill and competence. Oh, and he switched the language to English. Oh, no. And his successors were not up to the task of undoing his evil work and building a proper, competent, French-style bureaucracy.
I see two problems with this: first that Quatremer is not exactly refuting the claim. He’s basically admitting the European Commission is no good. Second that Kinnock is an old-school dyed-in-the-wool socialist. But what do I know, of course? Maybe the author is correct and one man was enough to steer it in the wrong direction.
6. “European elites are corrupt and incompetent”
This chapter has two parts: In the first part the author sticks needles into a voodoo doll in the shape of Manuel Barroso, with walk-in parts by Nellie Kroes and a couple more. In the second part he says (proves, almost) that the Europhobes are, if anything, even more corrupt.
To the extent that everybody mentioned here is a “European elite” this does not sound like a very convincing refutation of the claim to my ears…
7. “Europe cannot keep itself out of other people’s business”
This is something we hear a lot from Eurosceptics, and the author does a tremendous job of laying the claim to rest. Europe is actually rather “light touch” when it comes to determining the laws. To wit:
(i) Yes yes yes, we all know that Europe regulates how the toilets will flush, Prince Charles is annoyed that Europe regulates unpasteurized cheese and we’ve all heard about how, for example “60% of all Belgian law is these days European law.” But there’s a good explanation for both: first of all “thou shalt not kill” is a one-liner, but if you want a toilet made in Italy to fit in a German bathroom you need pages and pages of specifications. (So much about the percentage of law made at home and in Europe) Second, most of the laws have been written to facilitate commerce. From the moment you have accepted that people, goods, services and capital can flow freely, you need the messy laws that harmonize how that will all happen across 28 countries. So yes, there are thousands of pages of EU law, but their aim is to harmonize!
(ii) Oh, and even if you count them all, they amount to 20% of European Law page count, actually
(iii) The way to think about European law versus member state law is really like two pyramids whose bases have some overlap. European law is the small pyramid. The bit of its base it does not share with member state law is to do with monetary policy, customs, competition, commerce and the conservation of marine resources, as discussed. The bit of the base that is common between the two pyramids is to do with agriculture, banking, finance and the environment (where the European share is 30-40%) and energy, transport, health and commerce with countries outside the EU (where the European share is a more modest 20% give or take) and absolutely everything else falls under member-stat law.
(iv) The truth about Europe is that it has a panoply of institutions that fully correspond to a super-state, but that they have very little power to influence the biggest decisions a state will ever take: personal tax, corporate tax, indirect taxes, salaries, the right to unionize, the right to strike, the right to lock-out, defense, police etc. etc. are uniquely the competence of the member states. Yes, there is a commissioner for all of the above, but he’s largely cosmetic. His only function is for eurosceptics to call him useless. Far from getting its nose into everything, the EU is “a Ferrari with the engine of a 2CV,” Quatremer concludes.
8. “Europe is ultraliberal”
A silly argument, given that Europe is alone responsible for half of the planet’s social spending, but it’s an accusation that you also hear all the time in my country, Greece, and the author quite clearly is sick of hearing it in France. He attributes both the rather generous facts on the ground as well as the perception of European liberalism to the legacy of the power leftward-leaning parties used to wield in Europe while the Soviet Union was still a going concern. The way he says it is “Europe is leftist, but is governed by the right.”
He also goes on a tour of how the victorious Americans used their power to break down once and for all the Ruhr valley monopolies in steel, for example, but adds that the main goal was to attain a balance between producers in the member states. Consistent with how the US was set up post-war, Europe was configured to leave room for many vertically-integrated producers who would enjoy “champion” status at home but operate on a level playing field across Europe.
From there he goes on to actually lament that Europe has not developed category killers like the US’ GE, Intel, Microsoft and Google and it sounds like he’s actually complaining that Europe has missed out. I could not possibly disagree more, but this mini-screed is at right angles to the point he is refuting in this chapter: Europe most certainly isn’t some kind of free-for-all ultraliberal nightmare.
But before he’s done, he actually closes the chapter with a 180 degree turn: as far as Jean Quatremer is concerned, Europe has overdone it on free-trade (and on the Eastern expansion, too) and has left an open goal for predatory exporters to sell into Europe, whose exporters still have to pay large tariffs. Perhaps, but as we all know Europe runs a surplus. It can’t be that bad, can it?
9. “Europe does not deal with the big problems”
Europe does not have anything like the American FBI, CIA or NSA, no army, no border control, no common defense, no common foreign policy. Shengen is a joke. The laws regarding social security, pensions etc. for intra-European migrants are confusing and non-uniform. There’s no defense against “social dumping” (defined also as the refusal to harmonize corporate tax) He goes on.
But that’s precisely the set of competences that the states will never give up, you see! Don’t blame Europe for the fact that sovereign states will not relinquish the Weberian “monopoly on violence,” for example.
10. “We need a different Europe”
This chapter sings the praises of the Euro. He refutes the “we cannot devalue anymore” argument by reminding us that no country ever devalued its way to prosperity and then hails the salutary effects of having the ECB’s quantitative easing save the day in 2011 (or whenever OMT was threatened, at any rate).
The two arguments really really really don’t sit too comfortably next to one another if you ask me. Or perhaps he’s saying “let Europe devalue as a whole, rather than just my country.” Grrrrreat
From there he goes on to explain how horrible it would be to quit (yawn), explores a couple alternative European setups (as in North / Med)
And, inevitably, he finishes the “different Europe” chapter by imagining (over some ten pages) the perfect Europe as a federal Europe of the countries that share the common currency!
August 26, 2018
Enfin je tombe sur un livre qui parle de l'UE d'une façon équilibré. L'auteur ne fait pas un eulogue partisane de l'union mais plutôt à examiner ce qu'il y a de vrai dans les critiques eurosceptiques (beaucoup) ainsi que ce qu'il y a de faux (beaucoup plus). L'auteur a l'habileté d'expliquer pourquoi l'UE ne fonctionne pas si bien (essentiellement les états ne lui laissent pas fonctionner bien) et quels sont ses grands atouts (mise à part le cliché de la paix, la politique monétaire et commerciale fonctionne très bien, car en effet ce sont des politiques vraiment européennes). Le livre conclut avec une ucronie assez révélatrice (si bien centré sur la France).
August 21, 2018
Mandatory read to understand how the EU works
Jean Quatremer does a fantastic job debunking (or approving!) some of the common myths on the EU which its opponents keep pushing.
It should be translated in english just so brexiters could realise how wrong their reasons are.
Jean Quatremer does a fantastic job debunking (or approving!) some of the common myths on the EU which its opponents keep pushing.
It should be translated in english just so brexiters could realise how wrong their reasons are.
May 23, 2021
Quatremer est un fin connaisseur des rouage de l'Union Européenne. Contrairement à son sous titre il est un europeiste convaincu et examine avec pleins d'arguments pourquoi l'UE actuelle ne se montre pas à la hauteur de ses défis.
September 9, 2019
Si l'on s'arrête au chapitre 0 (non ce n'est pas une erreur, il y a un chapitre 0), on voterait presque pour le premier parti réclamant un frexit. J'ai écrit presque, on peut se contenter aussi d'aller vomir, ce qu'on aurait fini par faire de toute façon après avoir voté pour un parti pro-frexit.
Fort heureusement, le livre de Jean Quatremer est un excellent et efficace plaidoyer pour l'Union européenne. L'argument essentiel en est admirable de simplicité: arrêtons de maudire l'Europe pour ce qui nous plaît pas chez elle alors qu'elle et ses politiques sont le résultat des négociations entre les différents gouvernements des pays-membres et on imagine ce à quoi peut ressembler un texte accepté par 28 pays...
Fort heureusement, le livre de Jean Quatremer est un excellent et efficace plaidoyer pour l'Union européenne. L'argument essentiel en est admirable de simplicité: arrêtons de maudire l'Europe pour ce qui nous plaît pas chez elle alors qu'elle et ses politiques sont le résultat des négociations entre les différents gouvernements des pays-membres et on imagine ce à quoi peut ressembler un texte accepté par 28 pays...
June 22, 2017
bon livre sur les origines de l'Europe et son état actuel... cependant beaucoup trop de noms donnés et à force je m'y suis perdu un peu...
pourquoi pas.
pourquoi pas.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews