European Issues

ISSUES OF EUROPE ACROSS A VARIETY OF CEU PRESS PUBLICATIONS

This compilation features books of the Central European University Press, published since its establishment in 1993, that have some relevance to European history, with special regard to the process of integration. After the latest release, titles in the backlist are arranged by content: contemporary topics are on top, older themes below. For more substantial information about the content and availability, please click on the covers of the book, or on the links inserted into the citations.

“When the colonial expansion strengthened, the fight for power among the authoritarian nation states and empires intensified. They had lost control of the balance of power and the ‘European concert’ collapsed.”—Engineering European Unity.
“The EU is based on the European law which is composed of the elements of the federalist functionalist ‘Monnet-method,’ of Spinelli’s constitutional bicameral parliamentary federalism, of Rougemont’s and Delor’s integral or personalist federalism, and of De Gaulle’s intergovernmentalism.”
“Perhaps the rethinking of The Interlaken Draft Constitution of a Federal Europe (1949), The Pleven Plan (1950), the Draft Treaty Embodying the Statute of the European Community (1953), or the Draft Treaty Establishing the European Union (1984) can serve as examples.”
“Democratic federalism is an idea that is appreciated by the non-European world, too. It could serve as a meeting point for people and states worldwide aiming for peaceful and democratic states and international organization.”

“Arguing that they fight for ‘Europe’ and ‘Christian Europe,’ the contemporary Polish, Hungarian, and Russian governments are pushing back against the EU and other international agencies.”—Open Society Unresolved.
“The first internationally coordinated campaign concerning ‘gender ideology’ took place at the European Parliament during the 2013 drafting of and debate on the Estrela Report, named after MEP Edite Estrela, coordinator of the Report on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights.”
“Uproars followed the Polish center-left government’s ratification of the Istanbul Convention in 2015 and the European Commission recommendation that the EU ratifies and thus makes it part of EU law.”
“In Bulgaria a ‘sorosoid’ is someone who (allegedly) receives money from George Soros, for whom the West, the European Union, and NATO are ‘sacred cows’ and for whom the establishment of liberal democracy with its ‘hollow mantras’ is a primary goal.”

Books on the economic challenges of transition and integration:

“Nine days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, François Mitterrand persuaded his European Community colleagues to consider the creation of a ‘Modernisation and Development Bank for Europe’.”—After the Berlin Wall.
„Attali protested to Mitterrand, urging him to intervene to reclaim the coordinating role, but was rebuffed. ’The US prefers the Brussels imp to the French devil! The President, to whom I speak to suggest, as host country, we reclaim the secretariat, refuses firmly: ‘One can’t have everything’.’”
„Mitterrand, like Thatcher, was nervous at the prospect of a strong Germany. In due course, Kohl was able to allay these fears by committing fully to the single currency and the EU.”
“Investors were comforted by Yeltsin’s appointment of wellknown reformers Anatoly Chubais to run the Presidential Administration office and later Boris Nemtsov as first deputy prime minister. This encouraged financial markets to believe a turning point had been reached in Russia’s transition.”

“In 2007, Turkey became frustrated with the continuing difficulties posed by some shareholders and was emboldened by positive signals coming from the European Commission. The Turks engaged in a diplomatic push. With the help of the Commission, they succeeded in winning enough support among EU member states for the issue.”—Transforming Markets.
“In late November,2008, the heads of the six large EU-based banks wrote to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde. The bankers sounded an alarm bell about the state of financial stability in emerging Europe and pressed for liquidity injections.”
“The crisis in Greece was one of the main sources of risk in the region. Action taken in support of Greece could make a significant contribution to the stability of south-eastern Europe.”
“It was at the 2015 Annual Meeting that Governors had called specifically for the creation of a gender strategy as part of the Strategic and Capital Framework 2016-2020.”

“The decades following World War II were distinguished not just by an economic boom, but also by the weakening of nationalism, the establishment of the institutions of European integration, and the major thrust of Americanization.”—Austerities and Aspirations.
“The process of integration took on momentum when Jacques Delors, president of the European Commission from 1985, began to argue persuasively in favor of the establishment of a single European market in which goods, services, capital, and labor would all be able to flow freely.”
“While American employees worked an annual average of roughly 1,860 hours at the turn of the millennium, the average for the entire Eurozone was roughly 1,550 working hours per year at that time.”
“In the period from 1994 to 2003, productivity increased somewhat more rapidly in the economies of the Eurozone than in the United States. By the end of this period, the GDP per hour worked was only 5 percent lower than in the US.”

Books on various dimensions of the European integration:

“The EU cannot be a community of values: there is little common ground between committed liberal democracies and patronal regimes that operate in the EU as rent seekers.”—from the momentous endeavor of analyzing post-communist regimes.
“Compared to the EU’s carpet-bombing practice, US sanctions are more similar to guided missiles. They do not presume that the self-correcting methods of democracy will resolve the situation, and instead target the initiators of the infringements.”
“As opposed to patronal regimes outside the EU, post-communist member states cannot be treated as ‘them’—they have to be treated as one of ‘us,’ which disarms EU bodies at their very starting point. In the end, the EU lacks the tools for addressing the newcomer states’ post-accession hooliganism.”

“The original Cold War lasted from the late 1940s to 1989; followed by a quarter century of the cold peace, in which the European Union and NATO enlarged, but in which Russia became increasingly disgruntled; and then after 2014 the full-scale onset of a Second Cold War, in which we now find ourselves.”—from the debate about the current state of East-West relations.
“The West often indignantly points to the illiberal East that supposedly bites the hands that fed it; thereby conveniently overlooking its own responsibility in stabilizing autocratically-minded leaders.”
“While the opposition hopes for EU support, illiberal leaders fear it, hence their adamant defence of national sovereignty.”
“I am concerned about the role that Germany might play in a European Union likely to erode further, or even disintegrate, under the stresses and strains of the new global situation.”

“Setbacks in media freedom in EU member states like Hungary or Poland make it plausible that EU influence on media systems’ democratization is bigger before accession when its leverage is at its peak.”—Up in the Air?
“International actors such as the EU generally stop short of demanding accountability from local politicians, leaving the public service broadcasting organiza­tions’ compromised independence unchallenged. International interventions to create public service broadcasting result in insti­tutions which are what some authors refer to as  ‘isomorphic mimicry’: an imitation of Western models without their actual implementation.”
“Indirect beneficiaries of a dysfunctional public service television include international actors such as the European Parliament, the European Commission and other expert bodies that keep producing green papers and white papers, recommendations, resolutions, guidelines, and directives addressing the crisis and never-ending reform of pub­lic service television.”

Additional titles from the backlist, contemporary topics on top, older themes below:

“Tribal temptation is still present in many countries. I think this is what is behind the conspiracy to close the Central European University. If this conspiracy succeeds in Hungary, the European project is under threat.”
Quoted from the statement of Mario Vargas Llosa, uttered at a conference on academic freedom.
“One of the problems with the construction of Europe is that only political and cultural elites are aware of its global importance. Many Europeans have not embraced the enthusiasm that is necessary for the idea of Europe. But they receive the benefits.”
“See the minimal effects of the Council of Europe or the European Union putting pressure on Turkey and Hungary.”
“CEU’s experience may be unique but many other universities around the world face much more serious threats to their institutional and legal autonomy.”
“Continental European universities tend to have a very bad student-staff ratio which pushes them down in the overall rankings. They have not kept up with the way ethnic diversity has become part of European societies today.”

“Typically, Roma-related issues are addressed in the context of poverty and social inclusion rather than the more complex context of equality and social justice.”—from a critique of Roma policies in Europe.
Having identified eight policy failures, the book concludes: “it would be a miracle for the EU Framework for Roma to succeed in bringing its intended social change to European society.”
“Policies directed towards Roma fail because policy-makers ignore important aspects related to Roma ethnic identity, including antigypsyism.”
“A policy change on Roma will require a paradigm shift. First, Roma claims should be regarded political issues and part of a reconciliation process. Second, policy-makers should frame the issues that Roma face as part of a larger agenda of equality and social justice. Third, Roma should be involved in the exercise of power, especially at the local level, as a way to ensure their protection as an oppressed group.”

“Women are dramatically underrepresented at the top of academic positions—namely professorships. Only every fourth professor is female in Europe. Comparing the years 2011 and 2014, there is no significant change over time.”—from a book on the triple challenges of today’s universities.
“In the age of globalisation and knowledge societies, competition is imposed upon universities by external forces, including the markets, regulators and policy makers, funders and ranking agencies.”
With regard to higher education, “is a European complementarity policy desirable? Do we need European mergers? The European Universities Initiative may stimulate an answer to the latter.”
“The European Commission sued Hungary in 2017 over the CEU case, for infringement of academic freedom and of the right of establishment and the freedom to provide services. The case is still pending at the European Court of Justice.”

“Poland’s early determination resulted in its relatively quick and full integration with NATO in 1999 and with the European Union five years later. Poles were full of enthusiasm and pride in rejoining the European family.”—from a book on current Polish politics.
“PO established close relations with Germany under Angela Merkel’s CDU. The bad taste left after Gerhard Schroeder’s open and naïve pro-Russian stance was immediately removed with the arrival of the new leadership in Berlin.”
“Criticisms by the EU of violations of rule of law are treated by PiS in two ways: as a nuisance that unfairly sullies Poland’s brand but also as a badge of pride, as confirmation that the country follows its own path and no longer takes orders from snooty self-styled superiors.”
“The actions of PiS politicians in the European forum can also be easily decoded: romantic guerrilla warfare against European (Western) suppression, or European officials who have lost their moral legitimacy.”

“The new Russia is seen as ‘rising from its knees,’ able to resist both the global domination of the EU and the US and their perceived attempts to impose Western norms on Russian domestic life.”—from a book on how Russia is being constructed as a supranational entity
“European integration functions as an important nodal point. Identifying the Eurasian project with the EU corresponds to identification with the ‘universal’ neoliberal model of regional integration.”
“The discourse reinvents Dostoyevsky’s old idea about ‘two Europes.’ Russia is presented as the successor to the true and authentic Europe. It is the guardian of European Christian values to whom many Europeans, who now live in a ‘degenerate’ Europe, look with hope.”
“We do not repeat the mistakes of the European Union, we do not wander off into multiculturalism. We allow the cooperation of peoples and countries to develop on the basis of partnership, on the basis of mutual respect and complementarity.”

“In terms of traditional corruption, Romania and Bulgaria seemed to be the most infected countries, but the consecutive governments of each state upheld their strong commitments to the EU.”—from a book on post-communist regimes.
“The gravitational pull of the EU was faint, and where present—as in Moldova and Ukraine—it was used more to defend against what they saw as renewed Russian expansionism and empire-building than as part of any attempt to actually adopt the EU’s liberal socio-structural values.”
“In 2015–16, the deep crisis that hit the Russian economy provided Lukashenka some opportunities to act independently. However, he failed to seize them: instead of strengthening relations with the EU countries and Ukraine, Lukashenka elected to court China and Pakistan.”
“The EU itself is an overregulated space. Imposing the same excessive regulation in countries with significantly less state capacity and reflexive corruption is a recipe for failure.”

“In 1998, facing pressure from European organizations, the Latvian government removed some restrictions on citizenship and rolled out a ‘social integration’ project, which encouraged Soviet-era migrants to undergo the naturalization process and promoted bilingualism among Russian speakers.”—Defining Latvia.
“Definitions of Latvianness hinged upon an individual’s ability to speak the Latvian language, engagement in ‘Latvian’ cultural values, desire for European integration, and importantly their display of loyalty to the Latvian state.”
“In contrast to Sweden, Germany, and other European states, Latvia has no cordon sanitaire around the National Alliance (Nacionala Apvieniba), because the pro-Russophone parties are seen as a bigger threat to Latvian democracy, and therefore excluded from government coalition building.”

“The Czech Republic was too poor to carry the burden of Slovakia by retaining a common currency. This reflected the Czech perception of Slovakia as an economic burden upon the more developed Czech Lands.”
Some of the brightest Slovak and Czech scholars came together with the explicit goal of comparing Czech and Slovak achievements and failures in the twenty years since independence.
Mečiar’s conduct jeopardized the process of integration into the European Union. “The problem was not so much in the political decisions of the Slovak prime minister, as in his terrible rhetoric.”
“It is ironic that just eleven years after the split, in 2004, Slovakia became the regional leader in reforms, while the Czech Republic was the laggard. As the formerly ‘backward’ Slovakia was lauded as the new Central European tiger, Czech commentators looked on with envy.”
“While gradually closing the gap with Western Europe in material terms, Czech society seems to be spiritually stagnating in feelings of frustration, failure, and skepticism.”
“Ever since the split, relations between the Czechs and Slovaks have never been better. Thus, the breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1993, like Norway’s secession from Sweden in 1905, may be a good model for other nations who live in a common state but wish to go it alone.”

“Once accession was complete, the European Union gradually lost its capacity to entrench open society institutions in enlargement countries. In its place, a new political form, combining single party domination of the political system, media controls, and rent-seeking corruption began to displace open society as the political goal of the ruling elites.”
Studies that – among others – reveal the genetic proximity of the ideals of the Open Society and the fundamental values of the European integration.
“As soon as World War II ended, the European project based on Jean Monnet’s ideas began. It was not just a flight from nationalism but also from the idea of the nation state altogether.”
“The post-’89 liberal cycle has been exhausted. A major reason was that revolutions of 1989 did not offer a new social project but embarked on imitating Western models. In East Central Europe, it meant a triple transition—to democracy, to market economy, to Europe. All three were achieved with the accession to the European Union more than a decade ago. Yet all three are in crisis.”

“EU membership has left East Central Europe caught between two divergent memory politics: the ‘politics of regret’ as a normative model and the politics of national martyrdom (or ‘nationalization of suffering’ as one of the authors has aptly defined it).”
Developments in post-communist memory politics in Europe are discussed in a comparative collection.
“Around the turn of the millennium commemorating the Holocaust in an appropriate manner emerged as a historical cultur­al entry ticket to the European Union.”
“The position of European institutions has been ambivalent: while the post-communist countries’ right to memory has been elo­quently recognized, their memory narratives have not been (fully) endorsed. One telling example is the consistent preference of the term Stalinism rather than communism in European documents.”
“While the European Union has been issuing resolutions to harmonize the pasts of its member states, the Western Balkans has been experi­encing an on-going civil war of memories.“

“The Romanian example shows how demanding the implementation of the complete acquis communautaire is and what enormous efforts were required by legislators, who, during the same period, also had to implement thousands of other legal acts required by the acquis.”
The expansion and institutionalization of intellectual property norms in the twentieth century.
“What the Romanian legislators have ultimately and rather impressively achieved, certainly as the ‘law on the books,’ is a mature and modern example of copyright law.”
“A comprehensive and comparative study of the copyright laws in all the Eastern European countries would show that modern copyright regulations have been achieved, influenced in no small part by the seven EU copyright directives.”

John Paul II: It would be wrong for someone to claim that changes in Europe and the world should follow the Western model. This goes against my deep convictions. Europe, as a participant in world history, should breathe with two lungs. Gorbachev: This is a very appropriate vision. (Rome, 1989 December)—from Gorbachev and Bush, now in paperback.
Gorbachev: Economic integration is taking place now at all levels and political structures will also develop. As Europeans, we try to put this into the context of the “common European house.” I would like you to agree to give more thorough consideration to this idea, now that the whole of Europe is in a period of flux. Bush: I agree. (Malta, 1989 December)
Gorbachev: A natural question arises: if NATO does not plan to fight with us, then with whom? Not with Germany? Bush. I already said—with instability. (Washington, 1990 April)

Gorbachev: President Giscard said to me that I must be ready to deal with a United Federation of Europe. December, 1989
Face to face conversations of superpower leaders at the end of the Cold War on a thousand pages.
Bush: That it is in our interest and in the interest of a Europe whole and free and the common European home as you call it. It’s not all that popular a position here at home. April, 1990
Baker:
And one more thing. I said that pan-European security is a dream. What I meant is that it is a dream today. We made concrete proposals on how to build its structures in order for it to become a reality. We think it is important for Germany to be a member of the European Economic Community. May, 1990
Gorbachev
: I think that we have to see the other aspect of reality—the emergence of new centers in the world. In particular, I am talking about the integration of Europe. The northern countries are also eager to join this circle, and some Central and Eastern European countries are making attempts to join as well. July, 1991

Addressing himself to Mrs. Reagan, Gorbachev spoke of Russian history, about the fact that Russia had acted as a buffer zone for Europe throughout the centuries. (Dinner Hosted by the Gorbachevs, Geneva, 1985 November)
Conversations of superpower leaders at the end of the Cold War, now in paperback.
Reagan: As far as your missiles in Asia are concerned, I have seen maps from which it follows that while they can’t hit England, they can hit France, West Germany, Central Europe, Greece and Turkey. Plus the fact that they are mobile.
Gorbachev: That’s true. Which is why I am amazed that you dispute what I told you about our missiles in Asia. They cannot reach Europe. Specialists know this well, and therefore your position seems to be an obvious paradox. (Reykjavik, 1986 October)

Gorbachev: We consider the prospect for forming a vast economic space from the Atlantic to the Urals with a high degree of interdependence between its Eastern and Western parts as real, although not immediate. We have no doubt that integration processes in Western Europe are acquiring a new quality. We do not underestimate the likelihood of the emergence of a single European market in the coming years. July, 1989
122 top-level Soviet, European and American records on the superpowers’ role in the annus mirabilis of 1989.
Yakovlev (to Brzezinski): There are many questions about Europe’s future. What will happen? The European countries will have a common parliament, common affairs and trade relations; the borders will be open. And what will happen with long established bilateral relations between Western Europe and the socialist countries? How, for example, will economic relations between the USSR and Belgium develop further? October, 1989
Mitterrand:
We should not change the order of the processes. First and foremost among them should be European integration, the evolution of Eastern Europe, and the all-European process, the creation of a peaceful order in Europe. December, 1989

It was the Moscow International Economic Conference in April 1952, when “peaceful coexistence” was first pronounced. With no direct follow-up: Stalin may have viewed a closer partnership with the West as too dangerous.
The volume offers a new, Euro-centered account of the Cold War. The essays point to inconsistencies and inherent problems in the US-dominated narrative of the “victory in the Cold War.”
The bridge-building policy of the USA in 1964 meant “to promote and consolidate Atlantic unity in response to de Gaulle’s blockage of further West European political integration.”
“Nixon felt that he was presiding over the partial dissolution of the American empire. By 1972, he had come to the conclusion that European integration was no longer necessarily in the U.S. interest if the European Community adopted an anti-US trade policy.”
In Italy, “Moro’s foreign policy remained in substance constant, being multilateralism, Atlantic solidarity and European integration his primary goals… Transformation applied to the different dimensions of the PCI’s détente policies: part of the West European communist parties finally endorsed European integration.”
“Giscard explained in a letter to Brezhnev that Franco-German cooperation on East-West issues as well as on European integration issues was not directed against the Soviet Union.”
Mitterrand’s visit to Hungary in 1982 was a symbol to end the Cold War: “Towards the East, it underlines our desire for openness and dialogue with the members of the European Community that is grounded in the most ancient history and that cannot admit its future necessarily broken by Yalta.”

“In contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, the debate on class politics takes a different form to that in the West—it concerns whether class divisions increased as the post-communist societies transitioned to a market system.”
No other work has linked any country’s communist past with the present using survey data on class and inequality.
“The Warsaw School was initially designed to explain problems of Polish society decades ago. It has since proven useful to explain post-communist society and beyond, including the European Union era and the aftermath of the latest global economic crisis.”
“Currently the longest-running panel survey on national samples of adult population in Europe, spanning 1988–2013 in five-year intervals.”

“Many thought that the project of European integration, as epitomized by the Council of Europe and the European Union, may finally change for the better the rules of the political game in Central Europe. The holy grail of ethnolionguistic homogeneity and national egoism might be replaced with the model of open society, which thrives on inclusion.”—Words in Space and Time.
“The Russian geopolitical pressure on the post-Soviet countries translated into the widespread use of Russian as the medium of education at Ukrainian universities until 2014, the founding of a Russian-language university in Moldova.”
Users of the Latin alphabet side with the ideals of open society, liberalism, secularism, and the European Union. Those who prefer Cyrillic opt for the ‘traditional values’ of ethnolinguistic nationalism, Orthodox Christianity, and an unwavering political alliance with the world’s sole Orthodox power, namely, Russia. A similar situation is observed in Montenegro.”

“The Carnegie initiative took place in the twilight of the great powers’ empires, a turning point in European international history.”—Philanthropy, Conflict Management, and International Law.
“The Great War had shattered the credibility of European values and institutions and raised doubts about their progressiveness, lending urgency to the restoration of their foundations—a task that the USA in particular was capable of fulfilling.”
“Trotsky’s belief that a common market was the best solution stemmed from the antipathy he shared with Marx and Engels toward Kleinstaaterei. His derision toward the ‘dwarf states’ could be assuaged only by incorporating them into a unified federal republic to create a common Balkan market as a precondition for industrial development.”
“Whereas the 1914 report eviscerated the Great Powers for their self-interested interventions in the region, the 1996 report portrays the European powers and the United States as positive exemplars for the feuding Balkan nations and as the only guarantors of regional stability.”