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Contents
News & Reports
American soft power comes through its culture...................................5
The terms we use influence the way we behave...................9
Staking out the ethics of corporate governance .....................15
Bridging the gulf between Europe and the US.........................16
Understanding Muslims as citizens of Europe....................................24
Prague looks to Europe’s future..........................................................26
TransAtlantic Dialogue amid Krakow cafés.........................28
Essays & Viewpoints
Orientalism, Hellas, and the Fall of Rome.................................2
Juan Luis Conde
Is Europe turning into a neo-Medieval Empire?...................................6
Jan Zielonka
Disunion: true hallmark of the history of Europe?..................10
Jean-Philippe Genet
How can the European Project be saved?...........................17
Curt Gasteyger
What’s the new story for our European Project?......................18
Timothy Garton-Ash
Can European foreign policy work without the US?...................20
Stephen Wall
Czechs sustained by ideas of American liberty.............................27
Lenka Rovna
Ora, labora et vivere in Geneva.........................................................36
Christian Glossner
News in Brief
Is there still a West?
Eastern views on Christianity
New Jenkins Scholars selected
Oxford-Geneva ties strengthen
Race focus in universities survey
New bursary for joint History MA
Taiwan shows up cultural difference
Remembering Jewish survival
Helsinki hosts Euro Economists
Evaluating a papal legacy
Boosting links between libraries
European Studies flourish in Prague
Making sense out of globalisation
New publications from workshops
Europaeum.org re-launch
Diary
.............................................................30 - 35
....................................................................................back page
From the editor
Is Europe, or rather the European Union, a new kind of
Empire ? This rather challenging thought comes to mind
because none of us quite know how to describe this new
political entity, which is the EU.
Yet there is need to find the right analogy, not just among
the groves of academe, but among the political classes, in
their trans-Atlantic discussions, and the global chattering
classes. In fact Robert Cooper, now one of the EU’s great
strategists, in his role as head of EU external affairs, believes
he may have inadvertently sparked off this analogy in an
article he wrote many years ago, groping for the right
analogy. to capture the EU.
Certainly, the internal debates within Europe, sparked
by the referenda defeats, the lead-up to the signing of some
kind of new mini-treaty, and the explosion of events marking
the EU’s own 50 th anniversary since the Treaty of Rome,
have all brought such thoughts to the forefront. The idea
featured heavily at a Europaeum conference on
globalisation in Helsinki in May, the conclusion being
that the EU is, by and large, a “good” Empire – to which
member states aspire to join, and in which citizens retain
their own identity, albeit while being made to follow the
rules of democracy.
Jan Zielonka has cleverly developed the Empire idea,
which he lays out in an essay here, based on his recent
book, taking on some of his critics, in facing the question
is Europe a neo-medieval Empire ? For Jean-Philippe
Genet, as he outlines in his essay in this issue, the story of
Europe from its medieval roots is one as much about disunion
– diversity – than union, as the hall mark of the
unfolding European Project. Timothy Garton Ash then
takes the story forward, sharing his version of a possible
new ‘narrative’ or story for our Europe for the next 50
years, taking us out of the trough that so worries some, as
Curt Gastayger describes, in his viewpoint piece.
We also continue our own focus on the TransAtlantic
Dialogue in this issue, with a major essay by Stephen Wall,
former Europe advisor to Tony Blair, outlining his analysis
on fissures in the Western alliance, and how much, or how
little, Europe and the US need each other in foreign
relations. There is also a report of our last summer school
on the EU and US relations after 9/11, while David Ellwood
explores US ‘soft’ power, and Lenka Rovna explains why
Czechs so love the America and Americans.
Our issue, as usual, also contains all the latest news
and views from across the Europaeum, with a fascinating
report on our last Classics Colloquium in Madrid which
explored ancient antecedents of Orientalism; reports on
workshops exploring how the arrival of Muslims has put
the spotlight on all our notions European citizenship; our
collaboration in the EU at 50 events marking the
anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, corporate governance
reform in Europe and a new initiative to map out European
political concepts. We close with a memoir of a Europaeum
bursary winner in Geneva.
Paul Flather

Viewpoint
Orientalism, Hellas
The Fifth Classics Colloquium in Madrid, support by
the Europaeum, yielded new insights in how the
East influenced Greek and Roman History, JUAN
LUIS CONDE explains.
As many other Latinists do at one time or another in their
studies, I have also followed an Oriental thread. That was the
case when I was considering some aspects of what has been
called Roman historism, wondering just how come historians of
all ages like Sallust, Titus Livius, Tacitus, Florus, and,
occasionally, other writers, such as Cicero himself, insisted upon
a process of downfall – even while Rome was at the peak of its
imperial power.
It is the very idea of Rome, conceived as a myth, as a
collective, trans-generational character with a biography of her
own, with her childhood, her youth and her mature age, that
was at stake.
As it travelled West, this mythical scheme was transformed
by Roman historians into a pattern on Roman history. It is an
old Oriental fantasy about lost paradises, retold in a methodical
Greek manner, that can be traced behind the persistent idea of a
pristine, innocent and pure past,
lived among Saturnine, golden
virtues, that, at different moments
according to different authors,
degenerated, owing to moral
decline, into an Iron Age of blood and civil distress.
The mere idea of Rome, depended, perhaps even more that
we can imagine, upon stories travelling westbound on
Phoenician boats across the Mediterranean sea.
In search of other explanations, our friends here at this
colloquium, so well coordinated by Professor Alberto Beranbe,
Professor of Classics at the Compultense Universidad in Madrid,
have also followed some of the threads. And it really seems like
a trip across the sea, at least given the wide range of subjects
and the dizzying variety of disciplines involved.
Zoa Alonso spoke about dancing: in her study of the Roman
reactions to Eastern religious dances. She stressed the idea of
West and East as worlds apart, and described a sort of ‘clash of
civilizations’ comparing the ritual dances of Dionysian cults
and those of Cybele, on the one hand, with the tripudium of the
Salii, the most proto-typical dance of the Roman religion, on the
other.
She traces several differences, of which the most
outstanding, according to her, was the freedom or even lack of
control, the furor, that pervaded the oriental rites and ceremonies,
in contrast to the strict Roman ratio, that wholly organized the
processions of the Salii. ‘All the elements related to madness
...Rome, depended, perhaps even more that we
can imagine, upon stories travelling westbound on
Phoenician boats across the Mediterranean sea.
and ecstasy’, she says, ‘were strangers to the Roman mind’.
These salient features of alien emotional demonstrations
caused different reactions in Latin writers, from scandal or fear
to mockery. Their texts, carefully produced by Zoa, ought to be
no less carefully assessed - considering that the Senate had
reactions of its own: in the case of Dionysian dances, legal
prohibitions had made it dangerous simply to write about it!
Not just dances: plants or animals could provoke “shock
and awe” in those days. We heard before about Theophrastus’
“paradoxographic” amazement in front of Eastern different and
surprising landscapes, as Irene Pajón showed in her report on
the sources of his botanic work.
Theophrastus’ attitude, in comparison with the scepticism
exhibited by Aristotle while dealing with animals, could well be
owing to the different trustworthiness of their sources – ancient
Historians like Herodotus or Ctesias for Aristotle, members of
Alexander the Great’s task force for his disciple. Whereas
Herodotus and Ctesias have often been branded as liars and
swindlers, who did not see with their own eyes the marvels they
claimed to know, the historians of Alexander are in a quite
different position: there is no doubt that they were where they
say they were, and that they
saw what they say they had
seen.
And besides, diversely
oriented lessons of literature,
we have had a look on the other great branch of the broad and
deeply rooted tree of Ancient scholarship: linguistics, and
linguistics of the toughest kind, as phonology is.
Carlos Molina has shown his well-documented concern in
Lycian, an indo-European language from Anatolian stock, whose
extant documents (written in an alphabet developed from Greek
patterns) are dated between VI and IV centuries BC. His paper
intends to revise an aspect of Lycian’s phonological structure,
Colloquium students with Professor Alberto Bernabe
Juan Luis Conde is Professor of Classics at Compultense
Universidad, Madrid
2

Viewpoint
and the fall of Rome
namely the values traditionally attributed to its
vowels. For that purpose, special help is obtained
from bilingual inscriptions for anthroponyms in
both Greek and Lycian.
Another especially interesting contribution
came from Alexander Riddiford (Oxford) in his paper
on the Odyssey. What was at stake here, is an
explanation of how come the suitor who manages to
marry Penelopem, will accede to the throne of Ithaca,
instead of Ulysses’ son Telemachus. The challenged
theory is Finkelberg’s, who tried toexplain this through
a would-be connexion with Hittite inheritance practices.
But Finkelberg is accused of oversimplification. Riddiford
shows, with remarkable and convincing evidence, how in
the Odyssey the poet attempts to reconcile an earlier
tradition, which permits a widowed queen to be courted,
explaining the narrative’s plot, as against a more recent
custom that allows only parthénoi to be courted. As a matter
of fact, this discontinuity forms one of Penelope’s main
arguments against her suitors’ proposals, showing it is
illegitimate to court her since she is actually not a
parthénos!
Another specific case of revolt against idées reçues, was
Efstathia Papadodima’s (Oxford) paper. Challenging the view
that Fifth Century drama interpreted myth in the light of an
unprecedented ethnocentrism, and so ‘invented the barbarian’,
according to Edith Hall’s well known thesis.
In her paper which focused on the genre of tragedy, she
argues that claims about tragedy’s ethnocentric, or chauvinistic,
re-interpretation of the myth is based upon a biased selection of
points, together with oversimplified and de-contextualized
conclusions. Instead, according to Efi, complex and subtle
connotations tend to be overlooked, such as the ironic use of
cliché, contrasts intending to question the Greekness of famous
Hellenic figures, or the consideration of barbarism as a universal
“second nature”.
Elena Chrystophorou (Oxford) follows suit on this “barbaric”
issue, drawing also upon tragedy, namely Euripides’ Phoenissae,
just to show how the Phoenician chorus, having been construed
specifically as a foreign collective identity, shows a better
understanding of events than their Theban counterparts and
plays even a more central role.
All of this demonstrates that the Greek outlook on the issue
of Otherness was much more subtle than commonly supposed.
They illustrate too, a common aspect of the symposium:
namely the complex ways of construction, representation and
assessment of the Other, leading to the notion of Foreigner.
Here the ideas of Easternness offer a particularly illuminating
approaches to this subject, taken forward in a range of other
different, and at times complementary, standpoints.
Selecting paragraphs from various books, the aim of Eva
Penelope broods on how to save
Ithaca for her son Telemachus
Lezeano (Madrid) is to show the way in which Latin authors
criticise the “corrupt” Roman Oriental way of life. She suggests
that, if a single word were to be chosen to depict it, it would be
mollis, in direct contrast to the Romans’ self-image as being
austere.
But what does foreignness depend upon? There were
Romans, like Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who deliberately chose
a bi-Roman standard, an Oriental way of expression, just to
convey not precisely mollia.
Angelo Giovatto (Bologna) has chosen to read his
Meditations in search of how to make it understandable to wage
war on the Others. That might not be a problem – except for the
fact that Giovatto is considering it within a cosmopolitan, and
all-embracing system of thought, such as that of Marcus
Aurelius’ stoicism – for whom unity among all rational beings is
sacred, and may not be broken.
There are, however, concrete reasons, for instance distance
or the struggle for survival, that are liable to cause “differences”
and contrasts between people and populations. Marcus Aurelius
is not a pacifist, so to speak. He presumes differences may push
people to war. But, he also establishes further “differences” in
human souls, for instance, in the way humans face violent Others:
though war might be necessary, he argues, the right behaviour
avoids violence, and sticks, always, to ‘decency’.
So, one can observe a circular argument in Marcus Aurelius’s
thinking: different attitudes towards war and violence are
evidence of differences in the hierarchy of human beings, which
in turn leads to war and violence, and so on, and so forth.
But constructing the paths of Otherness is treacherous. Ana
3

Viewpoint
González Rivas (Madrid) has tried to unmask their
Easternness facet, by studying what she describes as
“crossroad literature”, that is re-making, as
represented by the works of Wilder, Terence,
and Menander.
When reading Thornton Wilder’s The
Woman of Andros, we spot obvious
transformations regarding Terence’s play:
comedy changes into a modern tragedy, dramatic
form into a novel format, sentimental relations
change and so do the characters.
But perhaps the most striking transformation
has to do with what Edward Said has termed Orientalism – that
is a Western intellectual by-product, comprising aloof,
prejudiced, and negative views of the East – a view that is seen
as having Western greed and imperialist over the East. Well,
Eva Lezcano (Madrid) has shown in her paper how early such
prejudice may be dated. Thornton Wilder, she argues,
deconstructs of the discourse of Orientalism in this novel before
Said.
Writing in the early 1930s, Wilder seems to be more for
Menander than for Terence, rather for Greece than for Rome, as
the key setting. At the time of the story, Greece represents the
European perspective, while Alexandria is the other, that is the
Research Project Groups
Europaeum Grants Schemes
New Initiatives
Oriental. At the time of the writing, however, Greece is
seen as part of the Orient, as far as Rome is the
Occident. By changing the viewpoint, Wilder
makes us look at ourselves as Europeans
through the other’s eyes, through the eyes of
the Orient.
The East is one of the cardinal points, but
the Orient is a cultural point of view, created by
the West. The Orient has moving borders - we
may all be Orientals to others, and mostly so to
our next door neighbours.
Along your intellectual career, you will feel
pressed by the urge of hyper-specialization, benevolently
encouraged to choose a minute field as your scientific
possession. Stick to the spirit of width and be sure that if you
ever have something to say, it will not be just because you are
digging a hole where nobody else has, but because you share
an ever increasing and widely embracing expertise with others.
You will also come to see, if you have not already, how
important it is for us Classicists and lovers of Antiquity to be
aware of everyday modern life, about its politics, its cultural and
artistic trends, its technology, its economic movements, its living
languages. It is the awareness of present times that will make
more accurate your visions of the past.
Marcus Aurelius for decency
Visiting Professors
This scheme stimulates new
internationally-linked research
projects within, but not exclusive
to, the Europaeum academic
community.
Each successful group receives a
‘pump priming’ grant of up to
€3,200 to support research
initiatives undertaken by groups of
academics working collaboratively,
drawn from at least three
Europaeum partner institutions.
Grants can be used to launch or
develop a group, to run a research
seminar, co-ordinate a research
proposal bid, or aid research
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Small grants of up to €3,200 are
available to provide support for
innovative schemes, linking
academics and graduate students,
working collaboratively,
with preference given to projects
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This scheme aims to support
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given to activities that broaden
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Europaeum partner institutions can
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Chair, to be filled by a distinguished
scholar from another
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Each Europaeum Visiting Professor
is expected to carry out some
teaching and research, during the
EVP’s two-week visit period.
Discussion and development of
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The hosting institution receives up
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Applications for grants under each of these programmes may be submitted at any time.
For full details, guidelines, and application procedures for all three schemes, please visit http://www.europaeum.org
4

American soft power
comes through its culture
Viewpoint
Cultural power is America’s greatest weapon in the
era of globalisation, argues DAVID ELLWOOD.
American mass culture is a form of power, more specifically
of puissance, potenza or forcefulness. Cultural power is the
‘virtual empire’ of signs or myths, it is modalities – the airline
system, credit cards, car hire, retail chains, fast food, multiplexes,
film genres, internet browsers, Google.
Cultural power is force –
the reach of US law
nowadays, the position of the
US in ICANN (the Internet’s
governing body), in the
Motion Picture Association of
America (the venerable
diplomatic arm of the
Hollywood studios), in the
International Intellectual
Property Alliance.
However, the force is also
on display in the World Bank,
in the credit ratings agencies
(Standard & Poors, Moodys
et al), and in that other ratings
agency that is CNN; in the
great American foundations,
and in the faith-based
organisations which
countries like Uganda
experience as latter-day
equivalents of the evangelical
missions of old.
America’s cultural power laid bare
The impact of this power
can be just as significant historically, as the conventional military,
political and economic forms of power, and can never be
separated from them.
Historically, the three post-war
periods of the 20th century have seen
the most forceful deployment of this
‘soft power’, and the most intense responses abroad to its action.
Only after the Second World War was this action deliberately
organised by the US government, in an effort stimulated by the
Cold War confrontation, but with roots reaching back to the
start of the Wilsonian era.
Each nation, society, group, or generation, have developed
– over time – mechanisms for accommodating and managing
this challenge. These can involve reception, absorption,
translation, hybridization, what anthropologists call ‘creolization’
or ‘selective appropriation’. Outright rejection is often a
significant component of ‘anti-Americanism’, since the sensation
of being free to choose but forced to make a choice to stay in
the race for modernity, is often perceived as a situation of
constriction.
Europe is the place where this problematic pattern of action
and response was first evolved – now it is on show across the
world, wherever debates on modernity, sovereignty and identity
take place in a context of ‘globalisation’.
Like Europe itself, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and
other regions are not united by a common rejection of the US in
all its forms. The American
cultural challenge divides
societies internally and
between each other. Europe
remains the region where this
reality is most obvious, as
nations such as France and
the UK demonstrate on a
daily basis.
No conceptualisation,
much less a theory, has
emerged so far to offer a
comprehensive explanation of
the workings of this special
contemporary connection
between America and the
world. Joseph Nye’s
development of the notion of
‘soft power’ has made a
significant impact in the US.
It describes much of the reality
of the American cultural
presence in the world, and
explains some of its appeal. It
also leaves no doubt that
‘hard power’ is about the physical coercion of armies, weapons
and invasions, but it tries to leverage American cultural
forcefulness into an instrument of
The American cultural challenge divides foreign policy. Every historical
societies internally and between each other. lesson, of course, shows that the
enduring inheritance of empires is
due to their capacity to filter in their culture by osmosis and
example.
Since 9/11 and the Iraq invasion of 2003, ‘hard power’ has
apparently regained ascendancy after the post-Cold War era of
multiple identity crises in the West. But the myth and the reality
of ‘globalisation’ show how the challenges of American cultural
power endure and mutate. So far the US shows no signs of
flagging in its ability to create new ways – or new combinations
of old and new ways – to project this form of its presence.
David Ellwood is Associate Professor in International History, University
of Bologna. This article is based on his talk at a Europaeum Panel
Debate in Oxford last year.
5

Essay
Is Europe turning into
Europe is no super state. But after Enlargement, it
is fast developing a new form of neo-medievalism.
JAN ZIELONKA explains his thesis that Europe is a
continent in search of a paradigm.
What is the nature of the European Union today? The Union
is larger and more diversified than ever, it is now the biggest
economic bloc in the world with the largest single market and
its population exceeds the combined population of the three
NAFTA states (the United States, Mexico and Canada). but
this is where clarity and consensus end. 1 The dominant paradigm
is state-centric: the EU is on its way to becoming a kind of
Westphalian federation with a central government in charge of
a given territory.
The Union already has its parliament, court and executive
structure; it has external borders, common European currency
and citizenship; it even has a surrogate of a European army. But
this is misleading. The Union has no effective monopoly over
the legitimate means of coercion. It has no clearly defined center
of authority. Its territory is not fixed. Its geographical,
administrative, economic and cultural borders diverge. It is a
polity without coherent demos, power without identifiable
purpose, geopolitical entity
without defined territorial limits.
The Union is also a very
peculiar international actor. Its
prime “international” role (although unstated) is to keep peace
among its members states and not to project power abroad. Its
most successful foreign policy is conditional enlargement, and
not traditional diplomacy or military intervention. Export of laws
and regulations is the Union’s most favorite foreign policy
instrument. Foreign trade and aid come second, peace
enforcement comes third if ever. Besides, there is no single
Signing the Treaty of Rome: 1956 beginning of a new Empire?
institutional framework to exercise the European foreign policy.
The famous or infamous CFSP (Common European Foreign
and Security Policy) and ESDP (European Security and Defence
Policy) are used quite seldom and usually amount to vague
“joint” declarations. EU member states often prefer to act within
the United Nations framework or via the OSCE, Council of Europe
or NATO. European foreign and security policies are often carried
out by formal or informal coalitions of the willing, contact groups
or bilateral initiatives. Individual member states have a complex
set of diplomatic relationships within and across EU borders
and they pursue their security in a different manner depending
on the case and circumstances of the day. Most notably, their
loyalty is not only to the EU, but also to the US.
If the Union is not a super-state in the making, what is it? Is
it a kind of UPO (Unidentified Political Object), as Jacques
Delors, former President of European Commission, used to say? 1
Does the Union’s uniqueness prevent any analogies and
comparisons that would give us some clues for understanding
or even predicting its behavior? Are we at the mercy of
astrologers and fortune tellers?
The answer is: no! In my view, the enlarged Union
increasingly resembles an empire and this has profound
implications for understanding
...cheating is the essence of imperial relations its internal and external politics.
characterized by structural asymmetries... However, the Union is not an
empire like contemporary
America or nineteenth century Britain. Its polycentric
governance, fuzzy borders and soft forms of external power
projection resemble the system we knew in the Middle Ages,
before the rise of nation-states, democracy, and capitalism.
There are many factors behind the neo-medieval
development starting with globalization and ending with the
ongoing cultural shift, to use Inglehardt’s term. In my view
however, the recent wave of EU enlargement was
decisive in tipping the balance. This is partly because
enlargement represents an enormous import of
diversity that can hardly be addressed by the new
members’ formal adoption of the entire body of
European laws and regulations: the famous (or
infamous) acquis communautaire. Compare, for
instance, the GDP per capita of Denmark and Latvia.
The ratio is 10:1. These differences in various
functional fields imply differences in policies that
these countries support within the EU. In fact, there
is already a significant body of evidence showing
that policies of new member states from Eastern
Europe reinforce the neo-medieval scenario.
As the Latvian president, Vaira Vike-Freiberga,
1
http://www.notre-europe.asso.fr/
article.php3?id_article=168&lang=en. See also Neil
MacCormick, Questioning Sovereignty (Oxford: OUP, 1999)
6

Essay
a neo-medieval Empire?
put it in 2002: “Latvia sees the EU as a union of
sovereign states…We do not see the need at the
moment to create a unified federal European state…
Europe’s vast diversity is one of its greatest
strengths. While this diversity may present
challenges to consensus-building, it is a resource
that must be nurtured and cherished. Every memberstate
of the European Union, whatever its size, has
the potential to make a meaningful contribution to
the organization as a whole.” 2 And Slovenia’s
Foreign Minister, Dimitrij Rupel, added: “The basis
of diversity management is the principle of
subsidiarity. Subsidiarity can be an efficient means
of avoiding unnecessary disputes.” 3
The increased level of diversity will complicate
rather than simplify the EU’s institutional structure
which is another factor behind the medieval
development. Even now Norway and Iceland are
part of Schengen, while EU members such as Poland, Ireland or
Slovenia are not, albeit for different reasons. There are more EU
member states outside the Euro-zone than inside it. As a result
we have a multi-level European goverment composed of
concentric circles and acting along a variable geometry medieval
style.
The new Europe may well be neo-medieval, but is it also
imperial? Here again, enlargement with its comprehensive and
strict policy of conditionality suggests the Union’s external
policy is truly imperial. Through
enlargement the Union was able
to assert its control over
unstable and poor neighbours.
True, the post-communist
countries were not “conquered” but invited to join the EU, and
they did so quite eagerly. Moreover, at the end of the accession
process they were offered access to the EU’s decision-making
instruments and resources.
Nevertheless, the discrepancy of power between the EU
and the candidate states was enormous and one wonders how
much actual freedom the candidate countries could ever have
had in the accession negotiation process. In fact, the Union
has from the start made it clear that the candidate countries
must adopt the entire body of European laws before entering
the Union. Of course, their compliance with EU laws was often
more apparent than real, but cheating is the essence of imperial
relations characterized by structural asymmetries. The fact is,
however, that within empires the peripheral states operate under
2
Address by Vaira Vike-Freiberga in Dublin, June, 4, 2002, available at
http://europa.eu.int/futurum/documents/speech/sp040602_en.htm
3
Dimitrij Rupel, Ljubljana, July 3, 2001 at: http://europa.eu.int/futurum/
documents/other/oth030701_en.pdf.
4
Steven Beller, “Back to the middle”, Times Literary Supplement,
December 8, 2006, p. 22.
Jan Zielonka is Professor
of European Politics and
Fellow of St Antony’s
College, at Oxford
University, and formerly
at the EUI, Florence. His
current research
focuses on the EU’s
eastward Enlargement.
The neo-medieval empire is about overlapping
authorities, divided sovereignty, diversified
institutional arrangements and multiple identities.
de facto (if not de jure) constrained sovereignty.
This is also the case when we look at the set of
relations between the EU and its new members and
would-be-members.
My use of the term empire proved controversial
especially in the neo-medieval context. There was a
Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages, but students
of history often argue that it was neither Roman,
nor holy nor even an empire. Besides the Holy
Roman Empire continued, albeit diminished, until
1806. In many ways its direct heir, the Habsburg
Monarchy continued until 1918 and it was pointed
out to me that the Austro-Hungarian Dual
Monarchy that existed from 1867 is more reministcent
of the contemporary European Union. 5
However, I never intended to suggest any
historical analogy by using the term neo-medieval
empire. For me the neo-medieval empire is an abstract
paradigm describing the nature of the emerging European polity.
My paradigm is emirically grounded, but it relates to the situation
of today. And I contrast this paradigm with the paradigm of a
Westphalian state that is often used in the literature on European
integration.
The Westphalian state is about concentration of power,
hierarchy, sovereignty and clear-cut identity. The neo-medieval
empire is about overlapping authorities, divided sovereignty,
diversified institutional arrangements and multiple identities.
The Westphalian state is about
fixed and relatively hard external
border lines, while the neomedieval
empire is about soft
border zones that undergo
regular adjustments.
The Westphalian state is about military impositions and
containment, the neo-medieval empire is about export of laws
and modes of governance. Both paradigms represent a
conceptually possible expression of political authority organized
at the national and transnational level, but I argue that the recent
wave of enlargement makes it impossible for the Union to become
a Westphalian state. In fact, the Union increasingly resembles a
neo-medieval empire.
Charles V, Joseph II, and Jacques Delors: an imperial lineage?
7

Essay
The most important implication of the neo-medieval
development is geo-strategic: the Union, like all empires is
doomed to enlarge ever further despite public anxieties in several
member states. Several EU members are exposed to instabilities
outside EU borders and enlargement proved to be the only
effective tool of pacifying the external environment. The decision
to open accession negotiation with Turkey is a clear
manifestation of this, but Ukraine, and Belarus may require a
similar solution in the not too distant future, not to mention
several states in the Balkans and North Africa.
The second implication concerns governance capacity of
the Union: hierarchical governance is doomed to failure in the
neo-medieval environment. The Union would have to adopt
more loose and flexible forms of economic and administrative
governance to remain competitive and coherent.. Soft rather
than hard law would have to be the norm. We would have to rely
on liberal economic policies stimulating growth rather than
central redistribution from Brussels. Incentives and shaming
would have to prevent free-riding rather than sanctions and
commands.
The third implication concerns the Union’s democratic
legitimacy: parliamentary representation can hardly work in a
neo-medieval setting. This means that giving more powers to
the European Parliament, for instance, may prove not only
irrelevant, but even counter-productive. The Union would have
to construct democracy on other principles than representation
such as deliberation and contestation. We already have a rapid
growth of various types of
litigations in the Union. And we
can think about various new ways
of giving citizens the possibility of
contesting European decisions.
Friends of a European states
see medievalism as a symbol of chaos and conflict. Yet for
someone living in the medieval cities of Florence and Oxford the
medieval story is more positive. A flexible neo-medieval empire
in concentric circles would be in a better position than a European
state to cope with the pressures of modernization and
globalization. It would also be in a better position to compete
Metternich and Bismark: outdated
with other great powers
by pulling together vast
European resources, but
without eliminating
Europe’s greatest
strength: its pluralism
and diversity.
A neo-medieval
empire would also be well
suited to provide conflict
prevention in its
neighborhood by
Antecedent to the EU: The Habsburg peacock
A neo-medieval empire would also be well
suited to provide conflict prevention in its
neighborhood by shaping countries’ behavior
shaping countries’ behavior through the mechanism of EU
membership conditionality. A neo-medieval empire might even
be in a good position to be seen as democratically legitimate by
bringing governance structures
closer to the citizens, and making
the system more transparent and
open.
This optimistic scenario will
only materialize if we are able to
adjust to change. The EU needs to adopt more flexible and
decentralized modes of governance to run its economy and
administration. The EU can no longer run the European foreign
policy in the style of Matternich and Bismark. And it should
find new channels of political representation and participation
to make democracy work in this neo-medieval setting. This will
not be easy.
However, applying Westphalian solutions to the neomedieval
emvironment would certainly be worse. Therefore, I
am not so enthusiastic about the current draft of the European
Constitution, the European President or the European Parliament.
This is why I am against hierarchical governance exercised by a
strong European Commission. Likewise I disagree with those
who argue that Europe’s foreign policy cannot do well without
a European army and a European foreign minister.
This text is adapted from Jan Zielonka’s recent book, Europe as Empire.
The Nature of the Enlarged European Union (OUP, 2006). It also was
the basis of a talk at a Europaeum panel debate last year.
8

Report
The terms we use influence the
way we behave
Political concepts determine how people think, as
a new Europaeum research group aims to show.
HENRIK STENIUS and PAUL FLATHER explain.
Ever increasing integration and globalisation, means that
communication and mutual understanding among citizens, drawn
from different regions, ideologies, social classes, and ethnicities,
is all the more critical.
The European Union is a multi-lingual polity, with no simple,
or single, grid to show how crucial judicial and political concepts
are actually used. Language and state borders do not always
coincide, and the different political language ‘games’ do not
necessarily correspond to national, linguistic, or even party
political, differences.
So, one has to accept that there are no simple or mechanical
ways for translating key political concepts, and that they will
always carry within them historical layers with inherent historical
controversies. Yet it is clearly an advantage to narrow
communication gaps, while recognising natural and inevitable
limitations for any such project - individuals and groups do
conceptualise the world in very different ways at different times.
For a Brit, the ‘state’ can be a dubious ‘nanny’, while for the
Nordics, ‘state’ is a benevolent friend. Then again the ‘citizen’
can be mostly regarded as a pro-active, republican, agent,
predominantly regarded as an urban figure negating patriarchal
rural practices. Yet in Scandinavia the ‘good’ citizen comes
equipped with the best of civic virtues and has, to a large extent,
been identified with rural communities.
It was against that this background that a group of European
scholars met in Oxford last autumn to discuss the merits of
combining high-quality research in this field of European
conceptual history, with pragmatic goals such as bringing their
research results to fora where problems of communication and
the transfer of culture can be discussed together with
practitioners - policy makers, law makers, the media
representatives, translators and lexicographers.
The event, supported by the Europaeum and the University
of Helsinki, drew in scholars from Helsinki, Paris,
Madrid, Geneva, Leiden, Sheffield, Athens, and
Oxford, among other universities, who agreed to set
themselves up as a new research group which would
aim to hold a series of workshops over coming years
as a European Conceptual History Project. It is being
led by Professor Henrik Stenius of Helsinki and
Professor Michael Freeden of Oxford, who is also
currently editor of the Journal of Political
Ideologies.
Professor Stenius is Research Director of the Centre for
Nordic Studies at the Renval Institute, Helsinki University
Denis Diderot:
conceptual pioneer
Union: different meanings in different places?
The group noted though that in their ‘messages’ and use
of key concepts, historical agents and groups always end up
inserting their own historical experiences in the way they
comprehend and use the concept. This naturally creates huge
logistical research problems - though ones that the group did
not plan to shy away from.
The group discussed the many different approaches
adopted by conceptual historians in different European
countries. It was noted that the Dutch model - focussing on an
agreed, limited group of linked concepts and clustering them
together - seems to suit European needs better, than alternative
models.
The English model is seen more as producing a woven
intellectual history, while a Germany model combines both these
strands. The Spanish and the Finns had also had their own
approaches.
It was agreed that choosing clusters would depend on their
Europeaness, on the new perspectives that could be developed,
differing from other projects currently underway in the field, the
light thrown on notions of modernity, and the importance in
current political debates of the key or ‘hinge’ concept.
Another important theme would be take account of how key
concepts are used in the core regions of Europe – heartlands
such as Germany, Britain and France, where agendas have
traditionally been set – as opposed to the so-called peripheries.
Such diversity can throw light on hegemonic patterns of
discourse, as well as help peripheral societies to see
how they have related themselves to the core.
The group discussed various strategies for this
work, including analysing the repetitive use of
concepts by specific agents in specific groups;
focusing on political change, and the originality and
the innovative aspects of individual
conceptualisation; and analysing contestation of
meanings among groups of linked concepts.
Ultimately, the group hopes to publish a series of
anthologies which will help Europeans to understand
themselves and each other that much better.
9

Essay
Disunion: true hallmark
Europe can only be understood by re-examining its
medieval roots. JEAN-PHILIPPE GENET tracks the
origins of the European Project.
The European Union has a very short history behind it, and
what the word “Union” means is largely a matter of opinion.
The conflicting positions of the European governments and
public opinions cover a wide spectrum, to say the least.
After the Second World War, the first European project,
associated with figures such as Konrad Adenauer, Jean Monnet
and Robert Schumann, was conceived as a voluntary reaction
against the structural division of Europe, an artificial union
against a natural disunion. The alternative vision, that of an
enlarged Europe, does not bother about the past, it simply
advocates a union of economic
interests: still an artificial union,
it makes no assumption about
the past, be it union or disunion.
However, the simple fact that,
for the first time on this scale, the consent of the citizens is
necessary for the implementation of a European Constitution,
implies the existence of a political community, a political society
of some sort, which will share a common fate as a consequence
of this vote. Bearing this in mind, the question of union or
disunion strikes a different chord: if we consider a political
community, and go beyond the mechanics of treaty-making
between states, the problem of what the members of such a
community have in common and of what divides them – and to
what extent – becomes central.
The long and mostly inconclusive discussions about the
preamble of the European Constitution (including, for instance,
the controversy about the relationship between Europe and the
Christian religion or the opportunity to quote a Greek
philosopher) may be only a foretaste of other impassioned
debates to come.
What I intend to do is simply to look for indisputable
The problem of what the members of such a
community have in common and of what divides
them – and to what extent – becomes central.
Konrad Adenauer, Jean Monnet, and Robert Schuman - the EU’s founding trio
elements in European history which could help us to highlight
common features and to trace divisions which lie behind the
present structures, and may have more or less weight in their
evolution: it will come as no surprise that I shall concentrate
mostly upon the medieval period.
The main reason for this here is that the history of Europe
starts during the medieval period: not on a given day, or year,
not even during a precise century, but through a rather long
period of a half-millennium, during which something roughly
corresponding to what we now call Europe emerged.
No such development can be traced either in prehistoric,
protohistoric or ancient times: for instance, Greek cities were as
numerous on Asian soil as they were in modern-day Europe.
Similarly, the Roman Empire was not especially European, being
centred on the Mediterranean
and nearly equally divided
between three continents,
Africa, Asia and Europe. In
many ways, the Islamic caliphate
is as much a successor to the Roman Empire as the Frankish or
Byzantine Empires. The Christian religion itself originates in
Palestine, as does its direct ancestor, Judaism, not far from the
place of birth of its younger rival, Islam, in the two Asian cities
of Mecca and Medina. The so-called fall of the Roman Empire
did not change much at first: however, it was no fall, since the
Empire continued in the East, and remained alive, at least as a
fiction, in the West.
In fact, the real change started in the seventh century, when
the Arabic conquest cut off the Christian kings from the
Mediterranean. At the end of the same century, the first serious
attempts to a systematic conversion of the pagan Germans
started. True, the Germanic people which had settled inside the
traditional limits of the Empire had soon become Christians.
They were also, with the remarkable exception of the Franks,
mostly Arians: but it was something quite different to enter the
wilderness of non-urbanized Northern Europe and confront the
paganism of peoples which had an
organized clergy and tribal
sanctuaries. Irish and Anglo-Saxon
missionaries, soon staunchly backed
by both the Carolingian dynasty and
Church, started a movement which
culminated with the conversion of the
Saxons, which took more than 30
Professor Genet is professor of Medieval
History, Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne. This
essay is based on a lecture at Leiden given
to inaugurate the 2005-6 academic year
of the Europaeum’s MA in European
History and Civilisation. The full text is on
the association’s website.
10

Essay
of the history of Europe ?
years.
This was the turning point in the West: all other
incoming people were thereafter converted in due
time, and when the Frankish missionaries met their
Byzantine counterparts on the Eastern border, a
fierce competition erupted between them, making
sure that nearly all European peoples, even the
Russians, were converted by the twelfth century
(though most of Spain and Sicily was Muslim, and
Lithuania only Christianised in the fourteenth
century).
To sum up what had happened, one could say
that the Christianizing of the pagan people united in
one community the remnants of the Roman
populations, all those people who had settled inside
the Empire and become “civilised” from the fourth
century onwards, and the pagan peoples. This
community was united by religion, and though it
was often torn by heresies and rivalries, especially
between the Greek and the Latin Churches, it had a
certain amount of cohesion, because its members were free to
enforce its rules and to shape their societies according to
influential minorities.
But two points ought to be made clear: there was no political
unity in this Christian Europe;
and neither the Church nor the
two rival Empires (Romano-
Germanic and Byzantine) had
any idea that “Europe” could
have any value in itself: they were aiming at a universal
domination and had no intention to limit their ascendancy to
Europe. In that sense, one could say that Christianising – and
certainly not the Christian religion in itself – created Europe,
this mixture of decadent Rome and proto-historical civilization.
However, the European lands were on the verge of a
complete transformation. Historians are far from
unanimous on what happened and why, though few would
question the magnitude of the change. From our point of
view, its main consequence is that it created a fundamental
divide in Europe, which led to disunion, mutual ignorance
and, in the end, hostility between the Western and Eastern
parts of Europe. The starting-point is the political
discrepancy between the Carolingian Empire and the
Byzantine one (which, however, is not to say that its cause
was political) and its consequences on the respective
positions of the Greek and Latin Churches. The
Carolingian Empire collapsed precisely when the Byzantine
reached a new summit, under the Macedonians Emperors.
This led to a complete reorganization of power and
authority in the West, a phenomenon which is usually
called feudalism, though this word is now viewed with
Jean-Philippe Genet is
professor of Medieval
History at the Universté
of Paris I-Panthéon-
Sorbonne. He has been
the Scientific Secretary
of the CNRS and
President of the Ancient
and Medieval Worlds of
the CNRS National
Committee.
In many ways, the Islamic caliphate is as much a
successor to the Roman Empire as the Frankish or
Byzantine Empires.
much suspicion by a growing number of historians.
The main fact may be a phenomenon which has
different facets. Noble families, with the help of
bands of mounted warriors – who became known
as knights and became themselves noble in due
time – rooted their power in territorial lordships,
controlled by castles, and reorganized territories,
structuring with nucleated villages. The most
prestigious of them were the princely families
established in groups of counties entrusted to them
by the Carolingians: but they had to struggle
against competing noble families to uphold their
position. Kings, first members of the Carolingian
family continually struggling among themselves to
reach the imperial crown, then members of
successful princely families, preserved a degree of
superiority by being sacred: despite this, the idea
that the government of a human society could be
achieved only by the collaboration between an
imperial and a clerical/pontifical power, slowly lost
ground. This remained true in the East, but in the West, the
disintegration of public power created a new situation.
For long, it has been held that the feudal period was a period
of anarchy and that nobles, princes and their followers made
havoc on the goods of the
church. It was certainly a violent
time, when a new nobility
asserted its dominium on free
peasants. But historical
anthropology has brought with it a new understanding of a
society in which conflicts were often terminated by arbitration:
no state justice, true, but a regulation system in which the
consensus of the members of the dominant class, behaving as a
collective ruler, maintained a certain amount of order.
Emperor Justinian, Charlemagne, and Sultan Suleyman: three
successors to the Roman Empire?
11

Essay
News
However, it implied certain changes in the position of the
Church, though less important that may have been thought: for
instance, western monasteries in the Carolingian period were
often closely linked with aristocratic families, with abbots always
recruited from the founders’ kin: these founding families, which
had originally endowed monasteries, still considered their lands
as their own. Feudal lords simply tightened their control on
church land and mustered its resources for their own struggles,
extending their authority on bishoprics by buying them for
members of their family and trying to pass them to sons or
nephews. Since most influential clerics were members of ruling
feudal families, those opposing this evolution were only a
minority.
However, had such an evolution, depicted in horrified terms
by the Gregorian reformers prevailed, it would have precluded
any hopes of an imperial revival in the West: even more than in
the East, where civil judges and magistrates had survived,
Western Emperors needed the close collaboration of a Church
free from aristocratic control to govern efficiently. That is why
the successors of Otto I, King
of Germany and Italy who had
revived the western Empire in
962 after defeating the
Hungarians, deliberately chose to uphold the Reformers: monks
who had found shelter in monasteries benefiting from exemption,
depending directly on the Pope and therefore avoiding the
interference and control of local bishops (i.e. local feudal
families). Cluny in France was the first and greatest of these
monasteries, but they were soon numerous, especially in
Lorraine and the Palatinate, where they were protected by the
Imperial family. I am not going to detail the following evolution.
Imperial hopes were thwarted: the
Church went a step further than
expected. When Reformers became
Popes with the help of the Emperors,
they soon enforced the Pope’s
election by the college of the
Cardinals: the Church asserted its
own authority, free from any
interference, and claimed the Pope
as the only representative of Christ
on earth, as the holder of supreme
authority.
At that stage, I would like to
make a pause. You will have noticed
that I never mentioned “causality”.
However, the Reformers’ victory is
not the victory of a good, just or
wise policy against a bad one. It is a
social choice, made possible
because of the particular conditions
Christianising created Europe, this mixture of
decadent Rome and proto-historical civilization.
Pope v. Emperor: stuggling for supremacy in Europe
existing in the West: the collapse of the Carolingian empire, a
social revolution (which you may term feudal or not) and an
economic upheaval: the end of a long period of decline and the
start of the longest period of economic growth experienced by
Western Europe in its whole history. This is what makes the
processes we are studying part of a deep structural change,
creating an entirely new world, in which the West of Europe
entered on a path totally different from that of the East.
The Church’s power was never, even at its apex, a military or
even (strictly speaking) a political power. The Church was happy
to let lay rulers rule, provided they directed their energy, their
money and their men to fulfilling its wishes and to enforcing its
laws. When I speak of the Church, I really mean the Pope. For
the fist time, Christian religion had organized as a unitary
structure, the Papal monarchy. Its power was absolute, but it
chose to exercise it first and foremost on souls. Nineteenth- and
most twentieth-century historians did not fully grasp this,
embroiled as they were in the struggle of laicisation against
clericalism, siding in general with
one of these two positions.
There was no religion as such:
all men were Christian; that is,
they were the fideles of Christ in
everything spiritual as they were the fideles of their lord in
temporal ones, and as such, they were under the spiritual
dominium of the Church and of the Pope. Christians were those
who were neither infidels, pagans (for instance Jews and
Muslims) nor heretics (a word practically forgotten in the
Western World, where it had last been heard in the sixth century
before being brutally revived in different parts of Europe between
1022 and 1028).
However, to enforce his
domination, the Papacy had to
solve two main problems. The first
one was its competition for
universal power with the Empire.
Suffice it to say that, after a long
and protracted struggle, the Empire
lost; after the death of Frederick II
of Hohenstaufen in 1250, and the
establishment of Saint Louis’s
brother, Charles of Anjou, on the
throne of Sicily, Emperors, though
at times dangerous, were never
again in a position to press their
claims to universal power. When
Boniface VIII celebrated his
triumphal jubilee in 1300 in Rome,
the victory of the Papacy was
apparently complete. In fact, the
other problem of the Papacy was
12

Essay
still more difficult to solve: how to enforce
its spiritual power and to make it efficient
– how to govern and control the minds of
millions of people, from kings to serfs and
slaves, men and women, old and young?
The Reformers’ action took two main
routes. The first one was that of social
control. The Reformers strategy was to
exclude themselves from the exchange of
women, to be in a position from which they
could control it. The married priest was to
disappear: the western priest had to be
celibate, obeying vows of chastity as strict
as those of the monks, those honorary
angels, as Peter Brown put it. Carnalitas
became the main enemy of spiritualitas and the epic struggle
between the two became one of the main themes of religious
propaganda. The rules of marriage were completely transformed:
whereas the Carolingian aristocracy had been structured in large
kin groups, whose cohesion was in part maintained by the
circulation of women and especially by marriage between
cousins, it became a mortal sin to marry a woman within the 6 th
degree of parentage. In a world where travel was difficult, this
excluded practically all women in the neighbourhood. Besides,
and even worse, monogamy was strictly enforced. While
Carolingian aristocrats indulged in having several wives, both
by divorcing them when they found it expedient and by
supplementing their first wife with official mistresses, and
therefore usually managed to get sons from at least one of them,
feudal lords who had the misfortune to marry a barren wife were
deprived of legitimate issue. Marriage within a prohibited degree,
bigamy and divorce were severely condemned by ecclesiastical
courts, often opening the path
to excommunication. Kings and
great lords were often selected
as exemplary targets of the
Church’s justice. In the
meantime, marriage was transformed into a sacrament – which it
had not been – and conjugal love was promoted as the best way
to avoid beastly carnalitas as a sin, if it was impossible for
laymen to avoid having sex altogether.
The second road was that of education: a complete
educational change was a necessary precondition for the
teaching of the Church’s new interpretation of Christian religion,
insisting upon the need for each individual to achieve his
redemption and to repay the infinite debt due to Christ who
suffered for redeeming humanity. To convince the laity, to capture
people’s mind at a point where Christian principles would become
the essential components of their individual moral views, it was
necessary to teach, to preach and to reach each man’s
conscience, whatever his status in society.
Bologna (left) and Paris: great European universities led an eductional revolution
...a complete educational change was a necessary
precondition for the teaching of the Church’s new
interpretation of Christian religion..
This implied two things: first, to have a well educated clergy
in sufficient numbers to do this, and second, to have a
conveniently and clearly structured explanation of the Christian
religion to offer to the Christian people in all its diversity. On
these two counts, schools were essential. The move started in
reformed monasteries, but they were unable (and probably also
unwilling) to provide the expected numbers of educated men
the Church needed. Cathedral schools, from the eleventh century
onwards, took over but they soon appeared unequal to the
task. The twelfth century saw the development of the great
schools of Paris and Bologna, and this led to the creation and
later on to the multiplication of universities. In the thirteenth
century, the mendicant convents and new types of urban schools
offered further opportunities for education.
But the schools were also able to introduce radical changes
in the content of education. Christian theology now centred
upon the Christ and his sacrifice: Eucharist, implying a
reorganization of the ritual of the
mass, became the centre of this
new presentation of Christian
religion. Each man, as an
individual, was indebted to
Christ for the chance of salvation he had offered him by His
sacrifice; each man had to repay his debt. The invention of
Purgatory was one of the great ideas of the Parisian masters:
each man was to be judged according to his merits, and though
a layman given to carnalitas had few hopes of achieving salvation
at first, he could, with the mediation of the Virgin, the saints and
the Church, entertain reasonable hopes to reach a place in
Purgatory and from there in Paradise, avoiding the unending
torments of hell. But these transformations of theology were
not the product of intuition, dream and creative imagination:
they were achieved by an assiduous and careful search for truth,
through a philosophical method based upon the elaboration
and validation of true propositions, in order to interpret and
complement Scripture.
13

Essay
Pope Boniface was exiled to Avignon (above) signalling a
triumph for State over Church
Two things are to be kept in mind at this stage. First, the
change in the education system created new opportunities and
new incentives for education. We have moved far away from a
society in which the basic skills of reading and writing were the
monopoly of the clerical order, to enter into a society of restricted
literacy, to use an
anthropologist’s concept, that is
a society in which the written text
is so omnipresent that even
illiterates use it, hiring
professionals to read or write for them. Medieval theologians
considered themselves as the only authorized exponents and
interpreters of the Truth. To achieve this, they went back to the
logic of the ancients, to the writings of Aristotle, often recovered
through Hebraic or Arabic versions, enriched by the
commentaries of Jewish (Maïmonide) or Arabic (Avicenna,
Averroès) philosophers. The development of Christian theology
in the West was built upon the philosophy and the science of
the Antiquity, which thus became “European” for the first time,
together with many Jewish and Arabic authors.
However, the thirteenth century saw an enormous increase
in the writing and diffusion of texts in the vernacular: Icelandic
and Occitan were first, though for very different reasons, but
then French took over, and became the first “European” written
vernacular language in the thirteenth century, the only resistance
coming from the Castile of Alphonse X. But, in the fourteenth
century, all major European languages were written in a more or
less standardized form, giving the laity access to a wide range
of texts.
Second, the delegation of power to the lay rulers had always
been an assumption on the part of the Papacy, but now gradually
became an actual institutional arrangement. Though several of
...the educational revolution...and the autonomy of
lay powers...are the two necessary conditions for
the appearance of the modern state.
the main kingdoms (England, for instance) had for some time
been vassals of Saint Peter, Christian Kings had never accepted
to be limited in their decisions by the Church. In return for their
help or neutrality in the conflict between Empire and Papacy,
they got the possibility to enlist bishops and canons in their
councils and, in due time, in their administrations. By accepting
that the Papacy could exploit the resources of the Church in
their kingdoms, they got a share, sometimes a lion’s share, of
these resources.
The progress of Canon law, based upon the adaptation by
university masters of the Roman law to the needs of the Church,
made expertise in Roman law available to Kings and cities, and
these were not slow in using it for their own purposes. The
struggle between papacy and Empire had paved the way for the
development of other lay powers: feudal monarchies in the West,
cities in Italy, and, to a lesser extent, in Flanders.
This evolution had an obvious advantage: none of these
autonomous political structures were making a claim for universal
power; none of them could rival the Pope, as the Empire had
once done. But it had its counterpart: as Innocent III observed
to Philip Augustus, rex est imperator in regno suo. And in the
end, they turned against papal demands: Boniface VIII was utterly
defeated, both in fact and in principles, by the Kings of France
and England, and the Pope was even forced to flee Rome and to
find a shelter in Avignon until
1377, a situation which
eventually led to the Great
Schism and to the Conciliar
Crisis.
These two elements – the educational revolution and its
cultural consequences on the one hand, and the autonomy of
lay powers and their legitimization on the other – are the two
necessary conditions for the appearance of the modern state.
They do not “produce” it: but without them, it simply cannot
develop. The main reason for this is that without them, it is
impossible to create a political society: an articulate political
community in which debate and discussion, by oral or written
communication, is possible.
However, it must be kept in mind that we are dealing with
structures whose maturation takes an enormous amount of time:
the transformation of the emerging English political society of
1215 into an articulate national political society took more than
another century, and though the king of France, Philippe the
Fair, was the first to ask his men to fight and to die pro patria.
If we now go back to our theme, union or disunion, we realize
that what characterizes Western Europe is disunion: it is a
political structure of competitive disunion which unites this part
of Europe and makes it so different from the rest of the world –
including the rest of Europe. Forgetting this may be quite
dangerous for the understanding of contemporary conditions,
because it leads to dangerous illusions.
14

Viewpoints
Staking out the ethics of
corporate governance
Corporate governance remains high on the
agenda. MARKUS PINS and PAUL FLATHER report.
Imagine every large European company given a Corporate
Governance Rating. The idea of a European wide CGR index,
perhaps equivalent to Transparency International’s Corruption
rating index for countries was one of a number of innovative
ideas to emerge from a Europaeum-supported seminar held at
the Saïd Business School last autumn.
The event, involving half distinguished experts and
academics and half leading corporate leaders and practioners, a
follow-up to the Europaeum policy forum on setting a new
European agenda for corporate governance, also held at the
Business School in 2005, was to explore options for further
collaborative research.
Underlying themes involved questions of harmonisation of
corporate governance regulation in Europe - shareholder rights,
board composition, public and ethical responsibilities; who is
best placed in a company structure to manage corporate
governance, the ethical dimension of corporate governance (cg),
and even broadened out to look in particular at cg issues in
Russia and China.
The seminar took issue with various aspects of current EU
policy on corporate governance. Professor Colin Mayer, Dean
of the SBS, drew attention to the campaign by EU Commisioner,
Charlie McCreevy, to abolish dual class shares, “mechanisms
that allow limited numbers of shareholders to exercise significant
influence on companies without any relation to their financial
contribution to the wealth of a company”.
He noted that the EU was also trying to weaken barriers
against takeovers by issuing a renewed takeover directive,
ostensively to facilitate financial integration and demand more
frequent and more open disclosures. Professor Mayer analysed
these features as differing approaches between freedom of
contracting – which he tended to favour - as against
harmonisation and the setting of common standards.
David Jackson (BP); Martin Smith (consultant on Russia); and
Christoph Horn (Bonn), exchange ideas
The seminar was given three different models of corporate
governance. First, Anne Mönnich, head of the Corporate Center
at T-Systems in Frankfurt, showed how her company has to
adapt to link in with many cg cultures, when even basic principles
may not even overlap. This was a key ingredient in post-merger
success, especially for a company with over 100 affiliates
worldwide in more than 20 countries.
David Jackson, company secretary at British Petroleum,
presented a counter view, that while daily operations of a
company are best looked after by its CEO, the board with its
non-executive directors, must play the over-arching supervisory
role, looking at long term structural aspects – including oil
exploration and energy strategy, and corporate governance, but
as opposed to preparing quarterly reports, he said. Finally Arthur
Walford, company secretary of the health providers, BUPA,
reflected on a third model, the not-for-profit board, essentially
made of ‘trustees’ who could take a more ‘enlightened view’ of
social problems and the public interest in their strategy.
The key role to be played by all stakeholders was the theme
of Alexander von Ungern-Sternberg, CEO of London investment
bank Euro-IB, which advises large clients on cg. He argued that
future generations, smaller stakeholders, and bond-holders, as
well as the employees, all had a stake, not just the shareholders.
Corporate governance, he argued, was not meant to be just a
rich men’s club – and the globalised world now needed to reflect
worldwide challenges such as the sustainability agenda.
Christoph Horn, professor of philosophy at Bonn University,
then provided a more ethical dimension, contrasting corporate
codes with political constitutions. Following the ideas of
Matthias Benz und Bruno S. Frey in Zürich, he argued for much
greater public accountability and ethical acceptability of
businesses by adapting practice common in public governance
to cg.
During the seminar discussions, additional dimensions were
presented by Dr. Guy Liu, adjunct professor of Sichuan
University in China, and Dr. Martin Smith, managing director of
West Bridge Consulting, advising large firms in Russia, raising
issues of the state as shareholder, the concept of national
interests and overseas investor perspectives.
Following the seminar, which produced a check list of
proposals for further comparative research, the Europaeum is
exploring options to create a research network on corporate
governance linking experts within its range of partner universities
with leading European corporations. The aim will be to explore
further different modes of supervision and operation of corporate
governance across Europe, disparities that can affect capital
markets mergers and policy-making, and, indeed, how cg can
add to the success of an individual company.
For more information on this project please contact the
Europaeum’s Secretary General at the office in Oxford.
15

News
Bridging the gulf between
Europe and the US?
16
Does the West still exist? BRIDGET KENDALL,
reviews the debates at a recent interenational
conference in Washington, DC.
A scene coalesces in my mind of fir-trees laden with snow,
glimpsed through a grimy train window. It’s November 1976.
Our train from Berlin to Moscow has pulled into a siding.
Shadowy figures crunch along the tracks. The wheels grate in
the hollow frosty air. This is the Polish-Soviet border, where
they change the wheels to a wider gauge – to protect Soviet
lands from Western invasion. A potent symbol of the twentieth
century East-West divide.
But these days, despite veiled threats from the Kremlin, the
old definitions won’t do anymore. The world is in a state of flux,
with muddled divisions between foes and allies. ‘The Cold War
alliance was a golden era,’ observed one former diplomat shaking
his head ruefully, ‘What we’ve got now is much harder, the
uncertainty of grey.’ He was speaking at recent conference in
Washington that brought together eminent policy makers and
academics from both the United States and Europe. Their task -
to explore how much the US and Europe still have in common.
And discussion hadn’t gone very far before the prevailing
American view was dumped in the European collective lap like a
bucket of cold water. ‘The West is an outdated concept,’ declared
one supremely self confident senior American official at a lunch
where he was the guest of honour. ‘And if there’s still a West,
then it includes Australia, Japan and South Korea. We have a
global vision now,’ he continued, waving his mike like a daytime
talk show host, as he roved between the immaculately set
luncheon tables.
The European guests, several ambassadors among them,
toyed uncomfortably with their cutlery. This didn’t sound much
like American contrition following a ruinous Iraq invasion. Far
from it.
We learnt that Europe was no longer central to American
interests. The once turbulent Balkans were no longer a worry.
Russia was weaker than it pretended.
What mattered now were Middle East
threats, and the opportunities offered
by the emerging Asian giants, China
and India. Seen through American
eyes, it seemed that the era of fixed
alliances was over. From now on the
United States would pick and mix.
Sometimes partners would be
Europeans, sometimes Japanese,
Indian and even Chinese. The name
of the game would be selective and
loose commitments… ‘Like an open
marriage,’ said one former US official,
eyeing the audience playfully.
Chris Patten and Richard Haass: gulf war?
Some of the Europeans shuffled uneasily in their seats. ‘What
rubbish,’ muttered one to me, snapping shut her notebook as
we filed out for a coffee break.
‘In my experience an open marriage tends to work only for
one side,” ventured another, a British academic, ‘And I suspect
it’s the Americans who’ll benefit.’
To be fair, some of the Americans did admit mistakes and
acknowledge policy adjustments. One official talked about Iraq:
‘There’s a recognition you can’t kill or capture your way to
victory…’ he said.
Another mused aloud about whether Iran could be coaxed
into negotiations. ‘We did it with North Korea,’ he said, ‘and
we’ve got time. Conflict with Iran is not inevitable.’ But neither
gave up America’s right to go it alone and use military muscle to
intervene when it suited them. It was clear the ‘war on terrorism’
is still just that, a war with an external enemy... to be vanquished
at any price.
So different from the view in Europe, where terrorism can be
homegrown, and if you use force too recklessly, you risk
converting new recruits to the terrorist cause.
‘Just cut us some slack,’ shot back the US official addressing
the luncheon, when one former general rose to his feet to suggest
that holding prisoners for years in Guantanamo Bay, or using
secret CIA jails to extract intelligence might be
counterproductive. ‘We’re dealing with a different kind of
insurgency here,’ said the American testily, ‘And we need to
win.’
‘I was trying to be helpful,’ said the old solider with studied
politeness, ‘If you’d agree, instead of trying to justify the
unjustifiable, the US would be a better place.’ A moment of icy
tension that revealed a gaping Transatlantic split.
So is the West still alive and kicking? I’m afraid as I got on
my plane back to London, I wasn’t optimistic. For all the shared
history, and the need to pull together against dangers like global
warming, it’s hard to see the US and Europe agreeing on what is
the right approach to counter the great problem of our ageinternational
terrorism. Not when the
US sees a weak and divided Europe
that cannot decide on internal reforms,
or even what its future shape should
be.
But there is one thing the US
should not ignore. President Bush
may have failed in his plan to
democratize the greater Middle East.
But using democracy to stabilise its
neighbours is one area where Europe
can boast a rather remarkable
achievement.
Ms Kendall is Foreign Correspondent for
the BBC. This piece is reproduced witht he
kind permission of the BBC.

How can the European
Project be saved?
Viewpoints
The unity of Europe is in jepardy argues CURT
GASTEYGER. Can it be saved?
Since the end of the Cold War, and its Enlargements to 27
member states – three from the former Soviet Union and six from
the former Soviet Bloc – has taken on the demanding mandate
of responsibility for the political future of the Continent and its
role in the European Union community.
That in itself is both unique in history and ambitious in
purpose. It cannot be achieved without broad support by all
member states, their populations, and, indeed, the appropriate
common institutions. Today’s reality is rather more complex.
Of course, it is useful to remember that the long road to what
today makes up EU, is littered with setbacks and discords. They
range from General de Gaulle’s “Non” to British membership, to
the rejection of the Maastricht Treaty by Denmark, and of the
Nice Treaty by Ireland, to Mrs. Thatcher’s refusal to pay more
into the EU budget than Britain receives from it and, most
recently, the rejection of the EU’s draft Constitution by a majority
of French and Dutch voters.
And yet, the idea of European unity has survived. Will it do
so in the future? Given the profound changes on the global
stage with the emergence of new, powerful players and totally
new threats to security, energy and
the environment, the answer should
be a clear “Yes”. Alas, for the time
being, we cannot be totally sure
whether the EU and its members will
give that answer.
There are at least two
explanations for such uncertainty. The first has to do with the,
as yet unresolved, questions about “how much” and “when” of
further Enlargement. Prominent on the waiting list are the Balkans
–notably Serbia and Kosovo – and, of course, Turkey. This
leaves aside no less problematic countries as the Ukraine,
Moldova or, still further afield, Armenia and Georgia. The
inclusion of any of these countries is bound to change, even
more profoundly, the nature and identity of the EU, and its
capacity to act promptly and coherently on the international
scene.
It is here that we find the second issue standing in the way
of Europe’s political cohesion and integration. It is, to put it
crudely, the re-awakened emphasis on purely national, if not
outright nationalistic interests. They come, not surprisingly, in
different versions: in “old” member states here, and in some of
the “newcomers” there. While there seem few convincing
explanations for such a national “new-awakening” in the former
group – except, as some have termed it, ‘Europe-fatigue’ – we
find some more plausible arguments for the latter. Having
experienced, after 50 years of Soviet domination, a brief spell of
national independence, the new member countries now feel that
they have to give up
parts of their newly
r e - g a i n e d
independence by
joining the EU. Thus
– rightly or wrongly
– they feel again
deprived of a long
awaited selfdetermination.
Such trends point
to divergence, rather
than convergence
...new, potentially divisive effects have
begun to emerge among EU members...the
relationship with Russia, the formulation of
a common energy and environmental
policy, and the distribution of EU subsidies.
Turkey waits on the EU horizon
within the EU, accentuated by developments over which
Europeans have little, or no control. The first example of this
was the split between what, unhelpfully, was called the “old”
and the “new” Europe at the beginning of the war in Iraq. Little,
if anything, of this dissent is left – unfortunately at the expense
of the still vital relationship with the US. But new, potentially
divisive effects have begun to emerge among EU members, such
as the relationship with Russia, the formulation of a common
energy and environmental policy, and the distribution of EU
subsidies.
What is their likely impact?
Optimists may see in them one more
convincing reason for further
integration; pessimists, however, will
point out, first, that the erstwhile
essential locomotive and promoter of
European integration – the Franco-
German alliance – has, for all intents and purposes, ceased to
function: after the Eastward enlargement, France has become
geographically, if not strategically, marginalised, whilst Germany
finds herself once more in the centre of Europe, with all that this
implies in terms of political weight and influence.
Second, Europeanisation here, and globalisation
everywhere, are simply too much to be digested simultaneously.
Hence, the return to basics, to the more familiar and protective
nation state, a re-awakened feeling of national identity, spurred
by fears of ever more immigration. In fact, the EU has not yet
managed to define a coherent and future-oriented strategy on
how to deal with the almost inevitable, and growing, inflow of
immigrants.
The forecast for Europe and, EU is therefore highly mixed. It
points both to the obstacles and brakes in the march towards
greater unity. At the same time, it, despite all the shortcomings,
the EU remains the only chance for Europe to play a constructive
role in a fragmented and ever more competitive world.
Professor Gasteyger is Honorary Professor of International Studies at the
HEI Geneva. His most recent book is Europe: From Division to
Unification,(Bonn, 2006)
17

Essay
What’s the new story
The EU urgently needs to give a new account of
itself. Old-fashioned grand narrative and Euromyth
will no longer do the trick. TIMOTHY GARTON ASH
makes the case.
Europe has lost the plot. As we approach the 50th anniversary
of the treaty of Rome on 25th March 2007—the 50th birthday of
the European economic community that became the European
Union—Europe no longer knows what story it wants to tell. A
shared political narrative sustained the postwar project of (west)
European integration for three generations, but it has fallen apart
since the end of the cold war. Most Europeans now have little
idea where we're coming from; far less do we share a vision of
where we want to go to. We don't know why we have an EU or
what it's good for. So we urgently need a new narrative.
I propose that our new story should be woven from six
strands, each of which represents a shared European goal. The
strands are freedom, peace, law, prosperity, diversity and
solidarity. None of these goals is unique to Europe, but most
Europeans would agree that it is characteristic of contemporary
Can Europa be tracked? (from Coypel’s Abduction of Europa)
Europe to aspire to them. Our performance, however, often falls
a long way short of the aspiration. That falling short is itself part
of our new story and must be spelled out. For today's Europe
should also have a capacity for constant self-criticism.
In this proposal, our identity will not be constructed in the
fashion of the historic European nation, once humorously
defined as a group of people united by a common hatred of their
neighbours and a shared misunderstanding of their past. We
should not even attempt to retell European history as the kind
of teleological mythology characteristic of 19th-century nationbuilding.
No good will come of such a mythopoeic falsification
of our history ("From Charlemagne to the euro"), and it won't
work anyway. The nation was brilliantly analysed by the
historian Ernest Renan as a community of shared memory and
shared forgetting; but what one nation wishes to forget another
wishes to remember. The more nations there are in the EU, the
more diverse the family of national memories, the more difficult
it is to construct shared myths about a common past.
Nor should our sense of European togetherness be achieved
by the negative stereotyping of an enemy or "other", as
Britishness, for example, was constructed in the 18th and 19th
centuries by contrast with a stereotyped France. After the
collapse of the Soviet communist "east," against which western
Europe defined itself from the late 1940s until 1989, some
politicians and intellectuals now attempt to find Europe's "other"
in either the US or Islam. These attempts are foolish and selfdefeating.
They divide Europeans rather than uniting them. Both
the negative stereotyping of others and the mythmaking about
our own collective past are typical of what I call
Euronationalism—an attempt to replicate nationalist methods
of building political identity at the European level.
In this proposal, Europe's only defining "other" is its own
previous self: those unhappy, self-destructive, at times
downright barbaric chapters in the history of European
civilisation. With the wars of the Yugoslav succession and the
attempted genocide in Kosovo, that unhappy history stretches
into the very last year of the last century. This is no distant past.
Historical knowledge and consciousness play a vital role here,
but it must be honest history, showing all the wrinkles, and not
mythistoire.
By contrast with much traditional EU-ropean discourse,
neither unity nor power are treated here as defining goals of the
European project. Unity, whether national or continental, is not
an end in itself, merely a means to higher ends. So is power. The
EU does need more capacity to project its power, especially in
foreign policy, so as to protect our interests and realise some
benign goals. But to regard European power, l'Europe puissance,
as an end in itself, or desirable simply to match the power of the
The full proposal can be found at http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/
article_details.php?id=8214. It was first outlined in Prospect Magazine,
Issue 131, February 2007.
18

Essay
for our European Project ?
US, is Euronationalism not European patriotism.
So our new narrative is an honest, self-critical
account of progress (very imperfect progress, but
progress none the less) from different pasts towards
shared goals which could constitute a common
future. By their nature, these goals can not fully be
attained (there is no perfect peace or freedom, on
earth at least), but a shared striving towards them
can itself bind together a political community. What
follows are notes towards the formulation of such a
story, with built-in criticism. This is a rough first
draft, for others to criticise and rework. If something
along these lines does not appeal to a sufficient
number of Europeans, there's no point in continuing
with it. If it does, perhaps there is.
FREEDOM Europe’s history over the last
65 years is a story of the spread of freedom. Most
Europeans now live in liberal democracies. That has
never before been the case; not in 2,500 years. And it’s worth
celebrating.
PEACE For centuries, Europe was a theatre of war.
Disputes between European nations are resolved in endless
negotiations in Brussels, not by armed
conflict. But Serbs and Albanians are
still killing each other. You cannot
simply rely on goodwill to keep the
peace in Europe. This may be an old,
familiar argument for European
integration but that does not make it less true.
LAW Most Europeans, most of the time, live under the
rule of law. We enjoy codified human and civil rights and we can
go to court to protect those rights—including the European
court of human rights. We forget how unusual this is. For most
of European history, most Europeans did not live under the rule
of law. At least two thirds of humankind still does not today.
PROSPERITY Most Europeans are better off than their
parents, and much better off than their grandparents. We have
never had it so good. Europe is one of the world’s richest blocks.
DIVERSITY You can enjoy one culture, cityscape,
media and cuisine in the morning, and then, with a short hop by
plane or train, enjoy another that same evening. And yet another
the next day. And when I say “you,” it is just not a tiny elite.
SOLIDARITY We believe that economic growth should
be seasoned with social justice, free enterprise balanced by
social security—and we have European laws and national
welfare states to make it so.
We need to add or subtract a theme or two. The flesh then
has to be put on the bare bones. Popular attachment, let alone
enthusiasm, will not be generated by a list of six abstract nouns.
Everything depends on the personalities, events and anecdotes
that give life and colour to narrative. These will vary from place
Professor of European
Studies in the University
of Oxford, Director of the
European Studies Centre
at St Antony’s College,
Oxford, and a Senior
Fellow at the Hoover
Institution, Stanford
University.
...our new narrative is an honest, selfcritical
account of progress from
different pasts towards shared goals
which could constitute a common future.
to place. The stories of European freedom, peace or
diversity can and should be told differently in
Warsaw and Madrid, on the left and on the right.
There need be no single one-size-fits-all version of
our story—no narrative equivalent of the eurozone
interest rate. Indeed, to impose uniformity in the
praise of diversity would be a contradiction.
Nonetheless, given the same bone structure, the
fleshed-out stories told in Finnish, Italian, Swedish
or French will have a strong family likeness, just as
European cities do.
Woven together, the six strands will add up to
an account of where we have come from and a vision
of where we want to go. Different strands will,
however, appeal more strongly to different people.
For me, the most inspiring stories are those of
freedom and diversity. I acknowledge the others with
my head but those are the two that quicken my heart.
They are the reason I can say, without hyperbole, that I love
Europe. Not in the same sense that I love my family, of course;
nothing compares with that. Not even in the sense that I love
England, although on a rainy day it runs it close. But there is a
meaningful sense in which I can say
that I love Europe—in other words, that
I am a European patriot.
Our new European story will never
generate the kind of fiery allegiances
that were characteristic of the pre-1914
nation state. Today's Europe is not like that—fortunately. Our
enterprise does not need or even want that kind of emotional
fire. Europeanness remains a secondary, cooler identity.
Europeans today are not called upon to die for Europe. Most of
us are not even called upon to live for Europe. All that is required
is that we should let Europe live.
Non: voting ‘no’ in France stirs a crisis
19

Essay
Can European foreign policy
Will Europe and the US continue to grow apart?
STEPHEN WALL assesses the landscape after Iraq.
A crucial question for whether the United States and Europe
grow apart is whether, despite the experience of Iraq, the United
States remains in favour of regime change. The next British Prime
Minister is more likely than Tony Blair to share the European
dislike of regime change, given its failure to work in Iraq.
Tony Blair has argued in speeches and in an article in Foreign
Affairs (A Battle for Global Values) that the “crucial point”
about the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq is:
“...that they were not just about changing regimes but about
changing the value systems governing the nations concerned.
The banner was not actually ‘regime change’; it was ‘values
change’. That is why I have said that what has been done, by
intervening in this way, may be even more momentous than
was appreciated at the time.”
Part of the problem with this argument is that the two
countries whose values systems were (at least in theory)
changed were, or were thought to be, relatively soft targets.
The United States is not about to intervene to change the values
systems of Pakistan, a military regime with unauthorised nuclear
weapons or of Saudi Arabia which spawned some of the nastier
terrorists at large in the world. For reasons of self interest and
the total impracticality of the use of force the United States
prefers to embrace rather than demonise both countries. It is the
self-serving and inconsistent nature of the rationale behind the
invasion of Iraq that alienates Europeans (most Britons, apart
from Blair, included) along with the suspicion that a real and
serious terrorist threat is being used to justify action which is
seen, not just as a disproportionate response, but as an
inappropriate response.
Iran is the prime current instance where the Bush/Blair
Passing legacy: how close can Gordon Brown get to the US after Tony Blair?
doctrine is likely to be tested. A US or Israeli air strike, or series
of strikes, on Iran would not require European participation,
though they might need logistical support as was the case for
America’s attack on Libya in 1980. The precise timing of an
attack would be a secret but its imminence would not because
of the prior build-up of diplomatic pressure and international
action in search of a solution.
Europeans, including post-Blair Britain, are likely to be more
preoccupied than Americans by what Sir Jeremy Greenstock
called in a recent BBC radio interview “the consequences of the
consequences”. For example, the destruction of Iranian nuclear
facilities would shield Israel from the immediate threat of nuclear
attack but would also increase the long-term threat to Israel’s
security from sustained terrorist assaults. More gravely, if
attacks had to be sustained on a number of Iranian sites over a
period of some nights, the risk of an Iranian military response
directed against Israel would also be that much greater. In the
short term, Europeans would be more preoccupied than
Americans by the likely threat to oil supplies. For the longer
term, Europeans would be more concerned about the effects on
peace in the region.
As a result, Europeans are likely to be more disposed to
want to go the last mile for a peaceful resolution and to press for
action limited to that which the UN Security Council will support.
They will be even more opposed to regime change in general,
and in the specific case of Iran, than in the past.
How far this divergence became a breach would depend on
the consequences of American, or American-backed Israeli,
military action against Iran. In the short term, most European
governments would at the least want to distance themselves
from the action (though the British government would be
reluctant to do so vocally). If the longer term results were as
dire as most European governments will fear then there would
be a greater prospect than ever before that
Europe would try to take a lead, regardless
of the Untied States, in forging an
independent Middle East strategy. How
far that exacerbated an already severe
breach in transatlantic relations would
depend on whether American public
opinion turned against what had been
done to Iran. In either case, it is hard to
see Europe having the political influence
over Israel that the United States has, at
least in theory. It is almost as hard to see
Europe trying to exert leverage on Israel
by applying the pressure of its economic
This article is extracted from a longer essay
prepared for a recent international US-Europe
conference, co-sponsored by the Europaeum.
The full essay is on the website.
20

work without the US?
Essay
relationship. Israel commands much less popular
support in Europe than in the United States but
that support is nonetheless not negligible and if
democratic Israel were thought to be seriously
threatened by non democratic Arab states pro Israel
public sympathy would increase. It is hard to see
that essential dynamic changing in the next two
decades. In other words, Europeans could pursue
an independent policy towards the Middle East
but the chances of them helping achieve a peace
settlement without the active leadership of the
United States look remote.
In the case of Iran, fear of a nuclear-armed,
aggressive dictatorship is the main driver of Western
policy. While the analysis is shared across the
Atlantic, the ultimate choice of response may not
be. Will the same be true for the other challenges
we will face over the next twenty years?
Over the period, the principal sources of tension within the
West, as well as between the West and others, will come from:
continued international terrorism, conceivably escalating
to the use of nuclear weapons in some form;
the interaction of so-called rogue states with international
terrorism;
instability in the Middle East caused by the Israel-Palestine
question;
the actions of Iran and the US response;
instability in countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia
fuelled by the pressures of a growing, young, population;
competition for access to energy supplies on the one
hand and the abuse of power by energy suppliers on the other.
The first is already a source of tension with China, the second
of tension with Russia;
the consequences of climate change and the lack of a
transatlantic, let alone a global, consensus for dealing with them;
the impact of demographic changes, which may exacerbate
Europe’s relative economic weakness and will, self-evidently,
fuel migratory pressures;
Pandemic disease.
One, or a combination of these, could lead to conflict. There
are neo-realists who believe that a military confrontation between
the United States and China is inevitable. Energy dependence
is leading China to seek privileged relationships with
controversial countries such as Somalia and Zimbabwe. The
quest for energy security will cause more widespread tension
as countries compete for privileged relationships with producers.
There will be competition between the industrial powers and
therefore greater scope for friction as India and China, in
particular, compete for their share of energy resources and as
they develop the political relationships to help deliver security
of supply. How dangerous these tensions become depends upon
A former Permanant
Representative to the EU,
Stephen Wall was Head
of the European
Secretariat in the Cabinet
Office in London and EU
adviser to the Prime
Minister, Tony Blair, from
2000 - 2004.
many of the other factors in the equation. Those
include the role of China as a country which thwarts
or assists the management of the ‘world order’ in
the UN Security Council. Mark Leonard has argued
in a recent paper for the Centre for European Reform
(Divided World: The Struggle for Primacy in 2020)
that Russia and China will use their positions as
permanent members of the UN Security Council to
contain the United States and to protect themselves
from western interference.
If China does seek, in cooperation with Russia,
to establish a sphere of influence which, by providing
a comfort zone for dubious governments and
thwarting effective action in the UN Security
Council, threatens American interests then events
may turn out as the neo realists suggest. But there
seems to me to be nothing inevitable about such a
clash which depends as much upon how the United
States perceives its interests as upon the actions of China. The
biggest unknown is what will happen within China itself.
In no foreseeable circumstances is Europe likely to see the
way through these difficulties as lying in anything but the
deployment of soft power. If a neo-realist agenda of increasingly
hawkish confrontation with China (of which Taiwan could yet
be a trigger) became staple fare in the United States, it would set
alarm bells ringing in Europe.
By 2030, Europe will be dependent on imports for 90% of its
oil needs and 65% of its gas needs. Unless the European Union
can agree in the near future on a coherent energy policy,
including on unbundling, regulation, energy choices and
external energy policy its ability to frame coherent policies for
China: will the dragon reunite the West?
21

Essay
its relationship with Russia will
not intervened more to prevent
be constrained by its
the Shah’s overthrow and, with
dependency. That dependency
it the loss of a country whose
has already contributed
political and economic policies
significantly to the inability of
the European Union to
formulate a coherent policy
towards the government of
President Putin as individual
European leaders have beaten
a sycophantic path to his door.
The US will be less constrained
were oriented towards the West.
A similar dilemma may well
present itself in other countries,
for example in Saudi Arabia. The
impact of a revolution in Saudi
Arabia on energy supplies and
on terrorist activity would be the
key drivers of the Western
but also less interested unless
response. A measured
Russia’s behaviour becomes
threatening. Given Russia’s
dependence on exports for
income and the disorganised
state of its energy industry its
capacity for sustained blackmail
Ayatoullahs on the move in Iran: can they be contained alone?
response, which secured
European support, would
require the United States to
formulate its policy on a cool
calculation of interest, rather
than on its distaste for the
of the West is likely to be limited over the period but the impact
of Russian bullying on its neighbours will be a source of anxiety
and destabilisation. It is likely to make Ukraine, for example,
even keener than it is now to join the EU. The reluctance of
some EU member states to see Ukraine join will be a source of
friction with the United States which, not having to bear the
costs, political and economic, is keener on enlargement than
many Europeans. If that European reluctance was reinforced by
fear of antagonising a bearish Russia, American irritation would
be that much greater.
The most catastrophic consequences of climate change will
probably not be visited on us in the next twenty years but the
evidence of inevitable catastrophe unless radical action is taken
seems likely to become even more incontrovertible. If so, the
perception gap between America and Europe will narrow though
friction will persist as Europe remains more convinced that the
cost of preventive action needs to be faced and met. It is likely
that Europe will remain in the vanguard but, if the mood in the
United States changed, and the United States put even more
resource into technological research, the potential commercial
gain could turn the Untied States from laggard into leader. If
that happened the United States might in turn raise the stakes
of climate change as a marker in its relationship with countries
such as China.
It seems likely that, barring a new 9/11 that provoked a
massive US military response, European and American views
on the management of some kind of world order are likely to
converge in the post-Bush era. Lessons have been learned
painfully from Iraq about the limitations of external intervention
to deliver a result which matches up to the objective.
David Owen, the British Foreign Secretary at the time of the
fall of the Shah of Iran, later regretted that Western powers had
regime and zeal for democracy, the latter not being a conspicuous
commodity in modern Saudi Arabia in any event.
After Iraq, a unilateral US intervention, pre-emptive or
otherwise, seems improbable and the prospects of an
international coalition negligible. Taking the fall of the Shah as
a model, and on the questionable assumption that the revolution
there could have been forestalled, the main gain, compared with
what has actually happened, would have been to avoid a regime
which supports terrorism and is developing a menacing nuclear
capacity. But whether trade in oil and other commodities would
have been more secure is questionable given that terrorist action
against the regime and the western forces in the country would
have increased. Even support for terrorism elsewhere, while not
on the present scale, would not have been impossible. After all,
the situation would not have been unlike that in Pakistan i.e. a
government anxious for a good relationship with the West but
without the capacity to deliver a comprehensive anti-terrorist
policy. Indeed, just as a blind eye to terrorism has been a price
the Saudi regime has paid for internal stability, so the Shah
would have very possibly had to pay a similar price in Iran.
The US and Europe may both consider themselves unlucky
in their present leaderships. The infatuation with Senator Barack
Obama on both sides of the Atlantic is a measure, not so much
of his evident qualities as of that longing for a unifying political
vision. There has never been a time in post World War II history
in which Europeans have felt a greater sense of alienation from
the government of the United States. It is alienation from both
the politics and policies of President Bush. For Britons at least,
with no tradition of a Supreme Court as the accepted ultimate
guardian of a democratic constitution, the contested outcome
of the Presidential election of 2000 contributed to an
unwillingness to accept American presidential leadership
22

Essay
Barack Obama: regime change?
unquestioningly. Insofar
as Europeans felt, after
the 2004 election, that
George W. Bush
embodied the sentiment
of the majority of
Americans that sense of
alienation extended to the
US as a whole.
However, the
intervening two years,
and last year’s
congressional elections,
have started to change perceptions. The faith of Europeans in
the capacity of American democracy to find a middle ground of
balanced policy has been partially restored, together with a
popular belief that what Europeans have to do is to keep their
fingers crossed until Inauguration Day 2009. That faith in the
redeeming quality of democracy, despite European distrust of a
particular Administration and its policies, is probably one
underlying feature of the relationship which, though sorely
tested, will survive over the next twenty years.
The European Union works because, in the end, each
member country has confidence in the democratic institutions
of the others. The EU has structures and rules to try to prevent
a breakdown of that basis of trust in any of the member states.
But if there were a failure of democracy in any member state
then the loss of that fundamental shared value would wipe out
all the other points of common interest that remained. A shared
commitment to democracy, and confidence in each other’s
democratic structures, is likely to remain the glue in the
transatlantic relationship. However far apart the US and Europe
grow on policy issues they are likely to see each other as “friends
in need”, something which will not
be true of China or Russia. That may
not prevent either Europe or the US
pursuing policies towards Russia or
China which will test the
transatlantic relationship to a greater extent than ever before,
especially as the constraints of the Cold War no longer apply.
The one thing that would prevent that happening would be the
emergence of a new security threat, seen on both sides of the
Atlantic as being as great as that posed by Soviet Russia.
That apart, just as the balance of terror and Mutually
Assured Destruction (MAD) made the superpowers shrink from
nuclear confrontation, so global economic and energy
dependence make the modern risks from military intervention
that much greater. Economic interdependence was seen by the
founders of the European Community as the key to peace and
political stability. The same should be true on a global scale but
with provisos. For that principle to work on a global scale seems
However far apart the US and Europe grow
on policy issues they are likely to see each
other as “friends in need”
to me to depend on two ingredients which may continue to
divide Europe and America. The economic interdependence of
the EU’s member states translates into political stability in part
because Europe has supra national institutions which have
authority over the individual member states. The nearest global
equivalent is the UN and European support for it will remain
stronger than that of the US. But it seems unlikely that any
nation or regional grouping will make the sacrifices needed to
implement the Annan reforms. It that is true, the main difference
between the US and Europe will be greater European regard for
the rule of international law as determined by the UN Charter
(something for which the next British Prime Minister is likely to
have more respect than the present one) but combined with a
similar reluctance to will the means to make the UN effective
even when there is agreement on the ends.
If that is so, and it fits the pattern of the last fifty years, then
the United States’ frustration with the United Nations and, de
facto, its reluctance to be constrained by international law as
determined by the UN Charter and Chapter VII action authorised
by the Security Council, will also continue and there will be
pressure on Europe to redefine the terms of international
engagement beyond the Westphalian model. Tony Blair has
sought such a model, without conspicuous success in carrying
his compatriots and other Europeans with him. The recent report
to Kofi Annan on UN reform also sought to redefine the basis
on which international intervention could take place so that it
could be proactive and preventative, not just reactive. But that
proposed reform was still firmly rooted in the notion of explicit
UN Security Council authorisation. That will remain a significant
division between Europe and America. Europeans will be much
more reluctant than Americans to participate in, let alone support,
unauthorised action. However, as I have argued, the scope for
such action by the United States seems likely to be limited by
the failure of the Iraq policy and there
may therefore be a greater
transatlantic convergence in practice
than in principle.
The second ingredient that is
necessary to make interdependence a driver of stability is what
the French commentator, Dominique Moisi, has called the
success of the culture of hope over the culture of humiliation.
Herein lies one of the biggest differences between the United
States and Europe. Both recognise the role of poverty and
deprivation as breeding grounds for disaffection, anger and
terrorism. Both have significant international aid efforts, though
the European one is much larger than the American. Both share
the millennium development goals though the Europeans,
thanks to Gordon Brown’s initiative for an International Finance
Facility, have so far done more about realising them. Both
recognise that there is more to today’s international terrorism
than an outpouring of anger rooted in deprivation.
23

Report
Understanding Muslims as
Senior scholars and young researchers met in
Bologna to locate the place of Muslims in European
societies. LEON BUSKENS reviews the debates.
Europaeum has sponsored several scholarly meetings and
seminars on Islam-in-Europe during past years. On two days
last November, an international workshop on Islam and
Citizenship in Europe was held in Bologna, coordinated by Dr
Ruba Salih, well-known for her research on Moroccan immigrants
in Italy and on multiculturalism and gender.
Our meetings took place in the Dipartimento di Politica,
Istituzioni, Storia. The scholarly exchanges were made a success
by the active participation of several faculty members, including
Professors Tiziano Bonazzi, Gustavo Gozzi, and Pier Cesare Bori,
other scholars and more than 200
young scholars and students.
After opening speeches by
representatives of the university
and Europaeum, including Secretary General Dr Paul Flather, Dr
Salih introduced the aims of the workshop: immigration of
considerable groups of Muslims has challenged, in many
European countries received ideas about citizenship, and
established dichotomies between the private and public, and
religious and secular spheres. It is clear that nation states cannot
continue to pursue an exclusionary policy. Yet multiculturalism
Muslim dress: dividing Europe?
The presence of Muslims prompts Europeans to
rethink their “natural” ideas about citizenship
seems to destabilize many classical categories of “modernity”
and demands new ways of thinking and policy-making.
In the first session two senior scholars of international
renown, Professor Tariq Modood (Bristol) and Professor Nilüfer
Göle (Paris), offered ideas for such a new conceptual framework.
Professor Modood scrutinized the notion of equality in his plea
to go beyond tolerance and secularism. Equal respect meant,
for him, actively accepting and respecting differences of people
within a multicultural society. It also leads to the questioning of
the idea that religion should remain a private phenomenon. He
called for a pragmatic, non-ideological approach, in which
conflicts were negotiated. Islam could thus be integrated into
the institutional framework of the state.
Professor Göle started with a detailed analysis of the mock
veiling of three young women,
whom she had seen that very
morning at Bologna airport. The
presence of Muslims prompts
Europeans the rethink their “natural” ideas about citizenship.
She took the headscarf issue as a way of analyzing an emerging
transnational vocabulary of what it means to be a Muslim in
Europe. Public space is becoming transnational, she agreed, as
the Danish cartoons’ affair also demonstrated. In current debates
about citizenship in Europe, much centered around the body,
space, and memory. Thus, the current debate about Muslims is
also a debate about Europe, democracy, and indeed, modernity
itself. A lively discussion ensued.
The next two papers focused more on the national than on
the European level. Professor Chantal Saint Blancat at Padua
University portrayed the relatively recent formation of Muslim
communities in Italy. She focused on the multiple ways in which
Muslim immigrants developed ties at the local level. Especially
illuminating, and entertaining, was her ethnography of the
owners of kebab restaurants, who had managed to carve out a
place for themselves in Padua – where it was much more the
quality of the food than their religion which mattered. Her analysis
also showed the importance of economic aspects in the debates
about citizenship and identity.
Next, current debates about Islam and citizenship in the
Netherlands was discussed by Professor Buskens. For Dutch
opinion makers, the main issues were women, criminality, and a
renewed interest in national history. Even leading intellectuals
could hardly think outside an established alterity discourse,
dominated by stereotypes. Gradually the key notions in the
debate had changed from ethnicity and culture to Islam. The
Dutch case was seen as part of a much larger, international
debate, but also showed some national particulars. Only sound
empirical research might change the aggressive misconceptions
which currently dominated the public sphere. The day was
concluded by a fine summary of the main points by Professor
Gozzi, and an animated debate, in which many students also
24

Report
citizens of Europe
took an active part.
Our second day began with three illuminating case studies
by young researchers, who offered fascinating ethnographic
case material to supplement the theoretical and national analyses
of the first day. Dr Laura Mijares of the Universidad Complutense
de Madrid, presented her research on Muslims in Spanish
secondary schools. Again, the veil turned out to be an important
symbol. Some authorities understood the veil as an obstacle to
“integration”, and denied those girls wearing it access to schools.
Here, a so-called “secularist” discourse of women’s rights was
used to oppose the young women’s understandings of their
own religious identities.
Julia Hieber, at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, offered a micro
analysis of the ways in which mainly Turkish immigrants in
Munich were constructing their new identities through all kinds
of local organizations. Their views of Islam very closely tied to
specific characteristics of time and place. Thus, on the local
level, the idea of the umma, the universal community of Muslims,
was not a lived reality. Internal differences proved to be more
important as organizational principles. Julia Hieber evaluated
the activities of the Muslim youth associations as highly positive
contributions to integration and social coherence. Indeed, it
was argued that the Munich experiences could be a stimulating
example for other European cities.
Dr Annalisa Frisina dealt with a similar theme in the Italian
context. An association of Young Italian Muslims actively tried
to counter Islamophobic tendencies which had emerged in Italy
after 9/11. These young people went beyond defensive ideas
about Islam, by focusing on the notion of citizenship itself.
Thus, the debate also became a mirror for Italians, and an
invitation to rethink allegedly “normal” categories, linked to
nationalism and Catholicism.
As such, Dr Frisina’s case
study invited a return to the
theoretical debates initiated
and by Professors Modood
and Göle on .
Finally, the anthropologist Dr Ahmed Al-Shahi from St.
Anthony’s College, Oxford presented some challenging
thoughts on culture, integration, and citizenship. He referred to
many examples from his personal experience, both as a researcher
and teacher, and as an adviser to policy makers. He pronounced
himself strongly against “a ghetto mentality” and isolationism,
and challenged many of the earlier expressed views. He
particularly turned against the political use which some
immigrants made of Islam.
The ensuing debate was ably moderated by Professor Cesare
Bori. In passing he contributed one of the most important and
practical lessons to the workshop, when he mentioned his efforts
to translate important philosophical and mystical texts from the
Arabic, in collaboration with Muslim prisoners.
Muslims in the Netherlands: seeking full citizenship?
...by focusing on the notion of citizenship itself...the
debate also became a mirror for Italians, and an
invitation to rethink allegedly “normal” categories
The debates had been so lively that there was little time for
conclusions. However, Dr Flather undertook a courageous
attempt to sum up the main themes and issues. First, he pointed
to the link between the debates about Islam and the crisis in
European citizenship. To what extent were the particular national
debates specific expressions of this more general concern?
Second, could we discern any patterns in the national experiences
of the different European countries? The case studies presented
offered valuable material for this kind of research. Muslims
constituted, in practice, highly varied communities, although
many Europeans had constructed a uniform image which was at
odds with this diversity. The way in which various European
countries deal with the idea of secularism proved also to be
very diverse, embedded in different historical trajectories.
Dr Flather concluded with a plea for more comparative
research, both on common themes such as veiling, youth
associations, and the media, and on national policies. For
example, European countries could learn much form each other
on the ways they were dealing with legal issues, as well as
questions of representation.
The ‘oldest’ European
university proved to be an
excellent venue for this
learning of each other through
comparison. The bringing
together of researchers from various European countries,
holding differing points of view, lead to fruitful debates and
exchanges.
Italy had relatively recently been confronted with the
immigration of considerable groups of Muslims and scholars
and students showed great curiosity and openness. This new
look on problems which are for North/West Europe riven with
conflict and difficulties was fresh and stimulating.
Thanks to the generosity and savoir vivre of our Bolognese
hosts, and the stunning setting of a Medieval city, scholarship
turned out to be not only an intellectual, but also a sensuous
pleasure.
Léon Buskens is a lecturer in Islamic Law and the Anthropology of Muslim
societies at Leiden University, and a professor at Utrecht University.
25

Report
Prague looks to
Europe’s future
The European Union is celebrating its 50th
anniversary year. PAUL FLATHER reports the
Europaeum was also at the parties.
As part of the Europe Union focus on the 50 th anniversary
of the signing of the founding Treaty of Rome, the Europaeum
has co-supported inter-disciplinary events in Prague and Oxford,
and will also participate in a major conference in Lisbon.
The international conference in Prague last Spring reviewed
questions on European Integration, asking where Europe is now
heading from this particular crossroads, after the Constitution
debates, after Enlargement, in the light of mixed views on the
Euro-zone, and in the face of stiffening global competition.
The event, co-ordinated by Professor Lubos Tichy,
Professor of Law at Charles University, Prague, and colleague
in Politics. Economcis, Law and Social Sciences, featured a key
note address by Czech Foreign Minister, Karel Schwarzenberg.
He told 300 participants, including policy-makers, politicians,
and Europaeum colleagues from Prague, Oxford, Bologna, Bonn,
and Leiden, as well as many other universities, including the
London School of Economics, Heidelberg, Stockholm,
Copenhagen, Munich, that the story had been one of a
resounding success which few could have
foreseen given World War II and the Cold
War.
But such peace, propserity, and secure
welfare, also created burdens, he warned.
The integration process suffered from an
apparent gap between the Union and its
citizens. The lack of any sense of a European identity among EU
citizens was a key challenge for the future of the EU, he warned.
Europe Minister Alexandr Vondra then highlighted the key
role of the USA in the process of European integration, through
its influence in NATO and the post-war Pax Americana.
Karel Schwarzenberg and Alexandra
Vondra: spoke on Europe
The event
was cosupported
with
C h a r l e s
University, the
Konrad Adenauer
Foundation, the
European Union,
and the Czech
Foreign Ministry.
The conference
focussed on how
the EU is and
should be
governed? What
are the forces
behind the EU?
Prague: giving fresh heart to Europe’s future?
And whether the EU able to take over the vital functions of
nation-state in the globalised world ?
A key feature was the Czech contributions to these key
debates. Other Europaeum participants included Professor
Riccardo Rovelli (Bologna) who spoke on competing economic
and social models in EU Member States, Professor Madeleine
Hosli (Leiden) discussed cleavages and bargaining outcomes
in negotiating the European constitution; while Dr Katja Ziegler
(Oxford) spoke on the European Court
System, warning against self-expansion of
ECJ powers
Fierce debate ensued in the final session
on where the EU goes from its current crossroads,
with differing national perspectives
and even divisions over whether the EU was
a net benefit the merits of trying to deliver a new (mini)
constitutional treaty, without the need for referenda. Work is
now underway, with Europaeum support, to produce a
publication based on the keynote papers.
In Oxford, a day of discussions were held on what has
been achieved, what lies ahead, as well as what it means to be
European. An Oxford panel debate explored the rights and
wrongs of pursuing a new Constitutional settlement, generally
opposed by Professor Paul Craig, somewhat irrelebvant
according to Professor Stephen Weatherill, though winning more
support from Professor Kalypso Nicolaidis. It was noted that
the raising of the EU flag at St Antony’s College for the day had
even caused consternation. The day was rounded off with a
lively ‘get together’ disco in to the small hours.
In Lisbon, an international event organised by a team led
by Professor Joao Espada, professor of politics at the Catholic
University, with speakers from America and Europe, will meet
for four days to debate the European Project, demography,
welfare, security, international relations and flexisecurity. The
President of the EU, Jose Manuel Barosso will be a keynote
speaker, as the event heralds the start fo the Portuguese EU
Presidency.
26

Viewpoint
Czechs sustained by idea
of American liberty
America has long represented freedom,
independence and progress for Czech society,
explains LENKA ROVNA.
It was back in 1865 that the Club of American Ladies was
founded in Czech lands by the writers Karolina Svìtlá, •ofie
Podlipná and Anna Holinová, gathering the most progressive
women of that time, and concerned in promoting education and
healthier life among women. The Club was only dissolved in
1948, after the Communist coup, but re-established its activities
after 1996.
Antonín Dvoøák, the famous Czech composer, embodied
his admiration of American modernity in his Ninth symphony,
From the New World, in 1893, during his stay as Director of the
New York Conservatory. The dynamic, modern and democratic,
society inspired him, as well as native US songs and the
American countryside.
Indeed, the American way of life and culture greatly
influenced Czech society at the end of 19th and beginning of
20th centuries. The young nation was searching for models –
and the US was the inspiration. American culture appealed
especially to the young generation. Czech youth and scouts
gathered around their fires with
guitars and sang American folk
songs and jazz was adopted by
domestic bands.
The role of the US in the
foundation of the Czechoslovak
state was also significant. The first Czechoslovak President,
Tomáš Gariggue Masaryk, prepared the basic principles of
Czechoslovak democracy during his exile in the US during World
War I. The treaty between Czechs and Slovaks on their common
destiny was signed in Pittsburgh in 1918, and later that year in
October, the Washington Declaration proclaimed an
independent Czechoslovak state. The 14 points of US President
Woodrow Wilson helped to form new successional states after
the break-up of the Hapsburg monarchy in 1918.
The ‘special’ relationship of the first Czechoslovak President
with the US, was enhanced by his American wife Charlotte, and
Masaryk even adopted her name,
Gariggue.
However, this new Czech
democracy was fragile and did not
last many years after the death of its
founder in 1935. It was the American
army, which next liberated the
Western part of Czechoslovakia in
1945.
The desire of the liberated nation
to create democratic and prosperous
state was not fulfilled. During the
During the Communist era, America served as a
reference point for liberty, democracy and
individualism...
Presidental allies: Wilson (left) and Masaryk
The US Army liberates Ceský Krumlov in 1945
Communist era, America served as a reference point for liberty,
democracy and individualism. Very important roles were played
by radio, Voice of America, as well as Radio Free Europe, which
helped citizens to keep informed.
Their support for the dissident movement and the immigrants
cultivated opposition towards the totalitarian regime, and helped
preserve the sparks of democracy, based on the traditions of
the pre-war democratic
Czechoslovakia.
The US became the first ally
of the newly formed democratic
state after the Velvet Revolution
in 1989, and after the split of Czechoslovakia in 1993. The main
slogan was “the return to Europe” and “to Euro-Atlantic
structures”. Membership of NATO in 1999, and in the EU in
2004, represents the fulfilment of both.
The relationship between the Czech Republic and the US is
not of course, without clouds either. Several months after joining
NATO, the Czech public was embarrassed by the bombing of
Belgrade. The outbreak of war in Iraq did not get much of public
support either. On one hand, President Václav Havel, just before
finishing his mandate, signed the letter of six Presidents
supporting the American and British actions. But, on the other
hand, the new President Václav
Klaus, the Czech government and
public were lukewarm.
Still, overall, the Czech Republic
values very highly America and the
way it has contributed to new
democracy.
Professor Rovna is holds a Jean Monnet
Chair in Western European Studies at
Charles University, Prague. This article is
based on a talk given at a Europaeum
panel in Oxford last year.
27

Report
TransAtlantic Dialogue
The Jagiellonian University hosted the 2006
Europaeum Summer School in Krakow - MICHELE
CARACCIOLO DI BRIENZA shares his memories.
The fil rouge of the week was the relation between the
European Union and the United States for a whole week of
lectures organised by the Centre for European Studies, under
the direction of Professor Zdzislaw Mach. It was a unique
opportunity for the participants from all 10 Europaeum
universities to confront their own experiences and to exchange
their ideas. Many lecturers were encouraged by leading
discussions from different points of view.
Contemporary security issues and cultural identities were
among subjects of the first day. Professor Wim van den Doel
(Leiden) centred his opening intervention on EU-US relations
in light of the Iraq crisis. He underlined the American belief of
being an example to the entire world. He tried to give a definition
of the concept of the West and its development in a political
sense. In fact, the West is seen as a product of the Cold War, as
a political construction. He ended, quoting President George
W. Bush in his last speech in Warsaw; “No tyranny can stand
against Europe and the US if they are united.”
Professor Mach (Krakow) continued discussing the EU and
the US after the Cold War, with particular regard to values and
identities. He approached the subject of a possible enlargement
of the EU to Turkey, which he felt unlikely to happen even if the
US puts pressure for Turkish membership in the EU. The key
problem, according to Professor Mach, is whether the EU is
prepared to change its security strategy and the “mental maps”
that represent Europe, or not.
On the second morning the floor was left to three student
debates: (a) Has Bush revolutionised US foreign policy?, (b)
What is the new world order?, and (c) Who is in charge of
Students in Debate: Who is in charge of global security?
global security? In the afternoon, another outstanding lecture
was delivered by Dr Andrzej Olechowski, former Foreign Affairs
Minister of Poland (amazingly, also a former student of the HEI
in Geneva). on the theme of Global Economic challenges. He
showed, using economic data, that the US and the EU are the
two most integrated regions in the world in terms of international
trade. No real boycott is actually possible between the two
regions due to the high level of reciprocal dependency. After
the Iraqi invasion, when political dissent was rife between the
two shores of the Atlantic, French fries became Freedom fries in
the US. However, the US did not take any real action against
France and Germany as a repercussion of their dissent.
On the third day Dr Grzegorz Pozarlik (Krakow) made a clear
comparison of the security strategies of the EU and the US. In
the afternoon, participants had the opportunity to ask direct
questions to a US diplomat, Mr Duncan Walker, political and
economic counsellor in the US Consulate in Krakow. Some of
the participants politely disagree when he stated that the war
on terror is a success. Mr Walker was a Navy pilot who took
part in the First Gulf War, joining the State Department in 1998,
and serving in the White House during the elections in Iraq.
He underlined the concern of President Bush about the Iraqi
democratic process. In my opinion, a diplomat should work
towards making the army be redundant; however, it does not
seem that this attitude is widely accepted among US diplomats.
A question was posed to Mr Walker: “Is the US government
doing something to conquer hearts and minds in those countries
where anti-Americanism fuels terrorism?” Mr Walker answered
that the State Department basically has to be pragmatic, and it
has to achieve measurable goals in the short term. In the end,
the answer of the US government is: “Let’s go and fight the
Escape from Cold War helps Poles warm to US
I would like to thank the Europaeum very much for the generous
funding of the Krakow summer school, the possibilities to get to know
many new and fascinating students and scholars and for providing a platform
for assisting to further conferences, exchanges, trans-European and -
Atlantic discussions and for its publications. This platform for exchanges,
new ideas and creating networks – or I prefer to say friendship, has been
very useful and challenging for me. I especially enjoyed the discussions
with Professors Wim van den Doel and David Ellwood: both of them were
very open to the comments of all participants and started lively discussions
for the whole group. Those exchanges continued into the evenings, in the
restaurants and bars we went to after the official program. But I would like
to add some different perspectives to the piece prepared by Michele.
First, I do not understand why the pope should give “perhaps a sense
of hope and happiness regarding the future”, especially seen in the context
of the subject of our summer school. During our discussions, religiosity
was pointed out as a main difference between US and European foreign
policies: the EU can essentially play a role abroad not constrained much
by the influences of one or several churches. This is not the case in
Washington, which usually follows a “value-based” foreign policy,
particularly strong under the current administration. Having closely
followed the process of the elaboration of a new European constitution,
I also vividly recall how the Vatican, under John Paul II, sabotaged with
28

Report
amid Krakow cafés
bastards!” Well, that phrase, from a
US diplomat, made quite an
impression!
On the fourth day, Professor
David Ellwood (Bologna), spoke
about the imitation of many aspects
of US culture and legislation that is
taking place in some European
countries. His examples were
commercial television, and the film
and music industries. Then, Dr
Krzysztof Kowalski, (Krakow),
explained the origin and the decisionmaking
process that led the Council
of Europe to choose the current
symbol of 12 yellow stars on a blue
flag.
Friday was our final day. The
evening before the participants
prepared themselves for two crisismanagement
simulations. One was
on the Iranian nuclear programme
and the other on the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. In
the afternoon Professor Ryszard Stemplowski (Krakow), former
Polish Ambassador to the UK, gave a definition of leadership
as a commonly agreed role. Today the US leadership is probably
in crisis because it is becoming less and less based on general
consensus. The Summer School was over after concluding
remarks by Professor Mach. The final dinner was in a night
club called Rewolucja (Revolution) where a portrait of Lenin
with ski glasses welcomed all people.
the help of a few countries some parts of this new constitution, wanting
to impose on Europe a more “value-based” or what they then called
“roots-conscious” policy. With regards to US-EU relations, I do not
think that the Vatican has an important role.
Another point is the presence of Communism. I am of the opinion
that although a certain Coca-colonization of Central Europe has indeed
taken place, behind all the Western shops and other façades, the remnants
of 45 years of Communism are still present. In the context of our
conference, the strong and comprehensible fear or mistrust of the Polish
speakers of Russia (e.g. on energy security) is a sign of this. Polish foreign
policy towards the US and within the EU is much more than just about
interaction with the former Western block, it’s also about Warsaw’s stance
towards Moscow: saying “no” to Moscow is a sign of independence which
Poland didn’t have for most of it’s history and getting closer to Washington
is perceived in Poland as leaving farther behind a sphere still dominated
by Russia.
Finally, while I do not personally recall the US diplomat saying:
“Let’s go and fight the bastards!” I think, if he did so, this was rather for
showing us the current view of the US Defense Department or the Bush
administration’s opinion, but not the one of the State Department. I still
believe – and that’s how I understood the invited diplomat – that this
Department prefers diplomatic to military solutions.
Johannes Schneider is a graduate of the HEI Geneva
Students listen to Dr Andrzej Olechowski, former Foreign Affairs Minister of Poland
In Krakow, little heritage of the Communist period is easily
perceived by the common tourist. The magnificent churches
around the city and the medieval structure of the Market Square
remind us of the past that Polish people want to recover and
keep alive. The city is open and the air is sparkling. Pubs and
night clubs in the neighbourhood of Kazimierz show a joy of life
that all participants to the Summer School (professors included)
did not refuse.
It is not possible to spend a week in Krakow without thinking
for a moment about one of its most famous citizens: Pope John
Paul II, whose main heritage in the city where he was Archbishop
from 1964 to 1978, is perhaps a sense of hope and happiness
regarding the future.
On Saturday, many participants went to visit the German
Lager (better known as Auschwitz). This was an occasion to
remember the spirit by which the Europaeum Summer School
was founded: to spread in the minds of young Europaeum
Scholars a sense of tolerance, curiosity and reciprocal respect
towards other cultures.
All participants consider this week an exceptional
opportunity to enrich their academic back-ground on such an
important and current topic. However, perhaps the main result
of the Summer School is above all to have given the participants
the chance to establish friendships among themselves.
Therefore, it has contributed to the strengthening in Europe of
that république immense d’esprits cultivés so dear to Voltaire.
Michele Caracciolo di Brienza is a graduate of the HEI Geneva
29

News -in-brief
Is there still a West?
Fissures in the TransAtlantic alliance
– which has dominated world affairs for
the past 60 years – following the end of
the Cold War, the 9/11 attack, and the
Iraq invasion, were under the spotlight
at a major international conference last
Spring, co-sponsored by the Europaeum.
The conference in Washington DC,
set out to investigate if solidarity of the
West was cracking? – and featured key
contributions from Henry Kissinger, Lord
(Chris) Patten, former EU Commissioner,
Richard Haass, Chair of the Council for
Foreign Relations, Lee Hamilton, former
chair of the US Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, Joschka Fischer, former
German Foreign Minister, Nicholas R
Burns, Under Secretary for Political
Affairs, Professor Joe Nye, Kennedy
School, Harvard University, among many
others.
It was co-organised and supported
by he Weidenfeld Institute for Strategic
Dialogue, and the Woodrow Wilson
Centre, which hosted the event, and the
Europaeum, as part of the association’s
continuing US-Europe Dialogue
Programme.
Key arguments during the two dayevent
included security and combating
terrorism , the emergence of energy
competition, the importance of
underlying values binding the Western
alliance, and significant views from other
key global players – notably China, India,
and Russia.
Perhaps the neatest summary came
Mr. Kissinger at the conference in DC
from Richard Haass, who likened the West
to a maturing marriage, where the couple
may not be in the early flush of romance,
but will clearly ‘stay together for the sake
of the kids’.
Europaeum participants were invited
from the universities of Oxford, Bonn,
Krakow, Bologna, Geneva and Leiden. A
special on-line Europaeum Debate
around themes raised at the event, has
been created on the association website.
Meanwhile the association’s US-
Europe programme is set to continue in
2008 with a workshop reviewing the
relationship between Enlargement and
Atlanticism, and a possible follow-up
event involving leading European and US
policy-makers.
Joschka Fischer makes his point
Eastern views
on Christianity
Plans to set up a network of graduate
students were formulated during a second
research workshop meeting of the Eastern
Christianity in Context research group
in Oxford last December. Linking
academics and students from Leiden,
Bologna and Oxford, the event followed
a previous meeting in Leiden in 2004.
Papers provided glimpses into
cutting-edge research on Eastern
Christianity from the Sudan to Mongolia,
and included examinations of materials
preserved in Syriac (Christian Aramaic),
Arabic, Coptic (Christian Egyptian),
Nubian (ancient Sudanese) and
Armenian. Papers on art history and
St George: coming in from the East
archaeology further broadened the
context in which Eastern Christianity can
be understood.
The workshop highlighted student
participation, with each paper allocated a
student-respondent to avoid sessions
being dominated by professorial
participants.
Networking was also encouraged, to
help overcome students’ frequently
expressed sense of isolation: in addition
to the formal sessions, participants met
over dinner and the Oxford students gave
a tour of Oxford and its Colleges. Senior
members were also able to strengthen old
contacts and establish new research links.
In addition to the speakers and their
professors, a sizeable audience was
present all day from a wide variety of
faculties and departments in Oxford. The
organisers plan to continue development
of the project, with further meetings to be
held as research progresses.
.
New Jenkins
Scholars selected
Seven new Jenkins Scholars were
elected for the current academic year.
They were chosen in open
competition from all 10 University
partners for the first time.
Previous awards have been ringfenced
to partner universities in turn.
The scholarship scheme, which
honours the lifelong devotion of the
former President of the European
Commission and the Chancellor of the
30

News-in-Brief
University of
Oxford, is
linked to the
Europaeum,
which Roy
Jenkins helped
found in the
1990s.
Jenkins
Roy Jenkins
Scholars
currently at Oxford are: Anna Valerius
from Bonn, studying for an MSt. in
European Literature at New College;
Agnieszka Kubal from Krakow, studying
for an MLitt in Law at Wolfson College;
Julie Francastel from Paris studying for
an MJuris at Trinity College; and Michal
Simecka from Prague studying for an
MPhil in Russian and East European
Studies at St. Antony’s College.
Meanwhile, Charlotte Filial is
continuing her research on a DPhil (Phd)
in Development Studies, attached to the
Ortega Gasset Institute at the Universidad
Complutense; Ayelet Banai is carrying out
archival research and fieldwork on a DPhil
in 20 th Century European Political
Thought, at Paris I; and Richard Niland,
working on archival research on Joseph
Conrad, for a DPhil in English Literature,
at Paris I.
The success of the scheme is being
celebrated at a special event in Oxford in
the summer in the presence of Sir Anthony
Kenny, who coordinated of the
Fundraising Committee, and of Dame
Jennifer Jenkins, wife of Roy Jenkins. Lord
(Andrew) Adonis, biographer of Lord
Jenkins and Minister of Schools in the
UK, will give the address.
Oxford-Geneva
ties strengthened
Academic collaboration linking the
Graduate Institute for International
Relations in Geneva and Oxford has been
given a boost with the renewal of a special
grant to the Europaeum - half of which is
earmarked for this bilateral link.
An initial grant from a generous
benefactor, in 1998, enabled an annual
programme of
bilateral links to be
developed,
including an annual
student research
bursary. Now the
annual Europaeum
Lecture series is to Hew Strachan
be continued.
Recent lectures were given by Professor
Hew Strachan, Professor of War Studies
and Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford,
who spoke on the Character of War at
the HEI, while Professor Henryk
Kierzkowski, Professor of Economics at
HEI, spoke on
Globalisation and
Outsourcing, in
Oxford.
The bursary
programme has been
revived, enabling
Henryk
graduates from
Kierzkowski Oxford and the HEI,
to undertake study
visits at the link institution, with grants
worth €1,500 each.
This year’s bursaries have been
awarded to Cristiano d’Orsi, from the HEI
law centre, who will be in Oxford in April/
May to work with Dr Roger Zetter at the
Refugee Studies Centre in Oxford, while
Maria Banda, a DPhil (PhD) student in
International Relations at Balliol College,
Oxford, working on The Responsibility to
Protect, will be in
Cristiano D’Orsi
Geneva to setup
discussions with
representatives of
international bodies.
Other funds have
also been used to
promote the study of
US-Europe
Transatlantic
Dialogue Programme, plus a planned
research workshop, linking Geneva and
Oxford, on Atlantacism and Enlargement:
the Place of Central Europe.
Race focus in
universities survey
Inter-racial and intra-racial diversity
inside European universities, is the focus
of a new research group to be launched
shortly, led by Professors Anthony Heath
and Herb Marsh of Oxford University, and
will comprisE analysis and data collection
from five Europaeum universities to
discover how well students of different
cultures and races mix, socialise, and work
together.
Much research at the post-secondary
level shows that educational systems that
are highly segregated in terms of
socioeconomic status – as measured by
ability, achievement, race, language,
nationality, immigration - can typically
produce lower learning outcomes for more
disadvantaged students.
Under-representation of ethnic
minority and low socioeconomic
background students has been a
persistent problem throughout leading
European universities.
“It is imperative to identify individual,
family, group, social and institutional
characteristics and experiences
associated with student experiences,
including educational persistence and
achievement” explained Anthony Heath,
Professor of Sociology at Oxford.
Understanding student diversity
31

News -in-brief
The new project aims to survey ethnic
and non-ethnic minority students at a
group of leading universities across
Europe to study assumptions about
social, cultural, economic homogeneity,
and good intra-racial relations.
This inquiry has been inspired by the
Future of European Universities Project,
hosted by the Europaeum association of
universities, sponsored by
DaimlerChrysler Services, looking at
university reform in the age of
globalization (2001-4). This new project
also sets out to produce both descriptive,
cross-national research, and collaboration
amongst European researchers.
“Surveying students will allow the
universities themselves to better evaluate
the current relations of their students, how
these findings mesh with their goals, and
make practical changes accordingly”,
explained Professor Heath.
New bursary for
joint History MA
2005-6 cohort at Matriculation in Oxford
The Europaeum is now offering a
bursary worth €2500 to support one
outstanding student on the Europaeum
MA in European History and Civilisation
at Oxford, Leiden and Paris, starting in
late September. The scholarship is open
only to graduates of Jagiellonian
University, Krakow, and Charles
University, Prague, (applicants must have
graduated within the last two years).
The Europaeum’s pioneering MA in
European History and Civilisation was
formally launched last year. The
universities of Leiden, Paris 1 and Oxford
are now recruiting for the 2007-8 academic
year for their pioneering , jointly–offered,
MA in European History and
Civilisation.
This aims to tell the story of the
European Project from its medieval roots
to the current integration debates, via the
Holy Roman Empire, Napoleonic and
Habsburg Empires, and the rise and
perhaps fall of nation states
The student cohort on the working
programme is currently at Oxford for the
summer term, where they will have a
special lecture series together with tutorial
support for their chosen dissertation topic.
Tuition costs have kept to a minimum,
currently c €6,000 for EU students and
€12,000 for non-EU students and students
spend a trimester at Leiden, Paris and
Oxford. Applications should be in by July
(see website for further details).
Other jointly offered MAs under
consideration are on Europe and
Globalisation; European International
Relations; Human Rights in Europe,
European Economic Integration; and
European Theology, each aims to link
three Europaeum university partners.
Taiwan shows up
cultural difference
The shortcomings of the Bologna
Process in European higher education, the
plight of Europe’s Roma population,
military public rituals, linguistic traditions
in Medieval Europe, Russian identity, as
well as views from Korea, Spain, Poland
and Austria, all featured in a third
colloquium in the Europaeum series
examining cultural differences in Europe.
The event was held in Taiwan, with
the support of Tamkang University, with
participants from Oxford, Krakow,
Heidelberg, as well as Taiwanese
universities, and follows events in Prague
and Krakow. Key members are invited to
take part in each event to ensure
Roma women: stigmatised
continuing.
Professor Judith Okely of Queen
Elizabeth House, Oxford, discussed the
Roma/Gypsies throughout Europe, the
‘most stigmatized community in Europe’,
using wide ranging research from Europe
and documentary photographs. Roma
have featured extensively in the
development of nations seeking EU
accession, with greater scrutiny than in
West Europe. Discussion focused on
pollution taboos among Roma, linguistic
connections to India, and their fate in Nazi
concentration camps.
Professor Michael Nickl of Tamkang
discussed European intellectual, ethical,
linguistic and economic traditions that
were an often-unrecognized legacy of the
Middle Ages, and its transition into
modern times. Medieval naciones were
simply groups of peoples sharing certain
features, and, eventually, communication
competence.
Professor Grazyna Skapska gave a
highly informed sociological presentation
based on the history of funding in Poland,
moving from a communist government
corruption in the distribution of state
funding, to membership of the EU and
recipient of massive subsidies. Yet her
case study revealed (to her own surprise)
little on corruption.
Professor Herbert Hanreich spoke on
the intellectual ideals of Wilhelm von
Humboldt distinguishing knowledge from
information, and went on to lament the
principles of the Bologna process,
emphasizing short-term utility. Thus,
32

News-in-Brief
University departments are closed when
their discipline is considered ‘useless’, for
example the teaching of Islam in the USA,
but now much needed after 9/11.
Overall, participants recognized that
they shared an identity as intellectuals,
although with diverse backgrounds of
culture and discipline. Their perceptions
of culture(s) confronted both stereotype
and other deeper forms of identity and
difference across time and space.
“Our discussions were heightened by
taking place in the magnificent campus
location of Tamkang University far from
Europe. Speakers and discussants from
Taiwan brought insights from their own
cross-cultural experience and
knowledge”, explained Professor Reinhart
Duessell of Tamkang, one of the series’
coordinators who took part in Taiwan.
Remembering
Jewish survival
Christopher
Browning
Professor
Christopher
Browning, worldrenowned
historian
of the Holocaust,
gave a revealing
series of lectures
with micro-history
of how Jews
survived the factory
slave camps of
Starachowice and
Wierzbnik in Poland, as well as the
conditions of their final days, flight,
evacuation and survival.
The series, entitled Remembering
Survival, was delivered by Professor
Browning as the 2007 Bertelsmann
Europaeum Visiting Professor of
Twentieth Century Jewish Politics and
History, at Mansfield College, Oxford.
During the series he laid bare a series
of contested issues facing historians
studying the Holocaust, including the
validation of survivor testimony;
explaining the range of survivor
strategies; and contextualising the very
entrenched differences in Polish and
Jewish perspectives since the 1940s.
Professor Browning is Frank Porter
Graham Professor of History at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
author of Ordinary Men: Reserve Police
Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in
Poland and Origins of the Final
Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish
Policy, September 1939-March 1942
(2004).
Evaluating a
papal legacy
Pope John Paul II: an intellectual
The values and ideas of Pope John
Paul II, formerly Cardinal of Krakow, in
terms oh his Aristotelian, Thomist and
Phenomenological thought - especially
his book The Acting Person – were
featured in a one-day workshop and a
Europaeum lecture last autumn.
Professor Wladyslaw Strozewski,
Professor of Ontology at the Jagiellonian
University, Krakow, spoke on
Phenomenology and Scholasticism in
Karol Wojtyla’s Thought at the one-day
event organised with Gresham College in
London, and the Forum for European
Philosophy, and the Europaeum.
The following day, Professor
Strozewski lectured on Human Being and
Values, developing themes from his own
philosophical experience in the Krakow
Phenomenology Group, in which he and
Karol Wojtyla were colleagues (available
on www.europaeum.org).
Other papers at the London workshop
were by Dr. Laurence Hemming, Heythrop
College, London University, who explored
John Paul II’s call for a renewed Theology
of Being; Professor Keith Ward, former
Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford, on
Veritatis Splendor; and Sir Anthony
Kenny, President of the Royal Institute
of Philosophy, former Master of Balliol
College, Oxford, on John Paul II as a
Thomist.
“Professor Strozewski’s Europaeum
lecture explored the place of values in
both a secular and religious philosophical
anthropology of the person” explained Dr
Bunin, University of Oxford and the Forum
for European Philosophy, who coordinated
these events.
“His presentations were welcome
reminders of the importance of Polish
philosophy in the development of both
philosophical analysis and
phenomenology over the last century”.
Helsinki hosts
Euro Economists
The fifth meeting of the Europaeum’s
economic research project group,
focusing on European economic
integration, was held at the University of
Helsinki last autumn.
Themes included citizenship policy as
it related to processes of European
financial integration; measures of
transition, such as the privatisation
process and political pressures on central
Frantisek Turnovek (left) in Helsinki
33

News -in-brief
banks; and the determinants of migration
policies, such as brain drain and trade
union monopolies.
The workshop was coordinated by
Professors Tapio Palokangas (Helsinki),
and Otto Toivanen (Helsinki), supported
by Professor Gianfranco Rossini
(Bologna), Hubert Kempf (Paris), and
Frantisek Turnovek (Prague).
Plans to publish a collection of essays
distilling key findings from past meetings
are being considered.
The sixth workshop on European
Union 50 Years After: Modelling
Economics and Politics is being
organized by the Institute of Economic
Studies at Charles University, Prague in
autumn (see website for details).
Previous workshops have focused
Enlargement and Regionalisation
(Oxford 2002); European economic
integration (Oxford 2003), Politics and
economics of European integration
(Prague 2004); and Factors, goods, and
externalities (Bologna 2005).
Boosting links
between libraries
The Europaeum is exploring ways of
encouraging direct links between its
partner libraries, including possible
Main Library at the University of Helsinki
34
librarian exchanges, discussing common
platforms and sharing the fruits of
digitisation.
The Europaeum Council has
approved a proposal to explore ways to
develop a single web portal to link
digitised holdings across all 10
Europaeum university libraries, as a
useful research tool for European Studies
scholars.
Plans are underway to stage an
international conference analysing “the
dilemmas” of digitisation, as libraries
continue to explore new ways of
digitalising their collections, in
partnership with the Maison Francaise
and the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
Questions arise about who pays, who will
gain access to new materials, how do we
share and publicise availability, and who
decides which collections should be
digitised? Oxford’s Bodleian Library has
embarked on a major collaboration, worth
some €24 million with Google, to digitise
19th-Century collections.
“The plan is to contribute to the
growing debate over digitisation, which
is progressing in a piecemeal and uneven
way across Europe. The EU is working
on plans for a new European library and
top universities need to take a leading part
in this debate,” Dr Paul Flather explained.
European Studies
flourish in Prague
The Department of West European
Studies was deemed a Jean Monnet
Centre of Excellence in European studies
a second time last year, following an earlier
recognition in 1999 - the first to be so
named in the ECE region.
The department offers degrees at
BAs, MAs, and Phds in West European
Area Studies and European Integration
Studies. European Studies MA
programmes in English are under
preparation.
Meanwhile the department launched
a French Studies programme in 2001, in
cooperation with the French Embassy and
Charles University’s Carolinum campus
Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle. In 2006/7, a
British Studies specialism was opened,
with lectures by Oxford professors, with
the support of the Europaeum, also linked
to Bath.
Professor Lenka Rovná, Jean Monnet
Professor, who sits on the Academic
Committee of the Europaeum, welcomed
Europaeum collaboration. “For us it is
very good to have European universities
as partners to develop our international
programmes”, she said.
Other projects run at the department
include: Euromasters/Transatlantic
Masters; IGC Net together; Governance
thematic network; CONSENT; CONNEX,
a Volkswagen project on European
Debate, co-opertating with many other US
and Euorpean universities, including
Paris and Madrid. The department is
preparing a publication on
Europeanization in EU states.
Making sense out
of globalization
The apparent ‘triumph of capitalism’ -
and the consequences - featured centre
stage in an international conference
investigating globalisation held at the
University of Helsinki in May, supported
by the Europaeum, with participants
drawn from the universities of Oxford,
Leiden, Paris 1 and Helsinki amongst
others.

News-in-Brief
Getting to grips with globalisation?
The event, coordinated by the
European Studies Network at Helsinki
University, brought together diplomats,
academics, politicians and policy makers
seeking to answer what we really know
about the concept and phenomenon of
globalisation, and how far studies of
globalization have contributed to
structures and policies in both academic
and real life.
A range of talks dealt with political
rules of globalization, economic
influences, trade patterns, human rights,
cultural dialogue, contract making and the
role of the EU itself, with a keynote
introduction given by Dr. Erkki Tuomioja,
Chair of the Grand Committee, the Finnish
Parliament, and an important insider view
from Dr. Erkki Ormala, Vice President,
Technology Policy, of the Finnish-based
Nokia corporation.
Professor Laurens Jan Brinkhorst,
professor of politics at Leiden University,
and a former Dutch Finance Minister,
pointed out both the achievements of
Europe and the EU over the past 50 years
in terms of peace and prosperity, while
warning of fresh global challenges ahead,
and the need to reinvigorate the European
Project, and to reengage its citizens.
There was also a lively discussion
about whether Europe operates an
‘empire’ – good or evil – launched by a
former UK ambassador, Alyson Bailes,
and the challenge was taken up with gusto
in discussion, with a generally ‘good’
conclusion, given that membership was
voluntary and the Empire did not seek to
subjugate member states and peoples
even if it sought that they follow the rules
of democracy and capitalism.
Lord (Meghnad)
Desai, former director of
the Globalisation Unit at
the London School of
Economics, heralded
the positive benefits of
globalisati0n, not least
to the millions of the
poor in developing
countries such as India
and China who had
seen their standards
improve, while
recognising that
essentially there was
little choice for
mostexcept to go along
with the process, trying
to steer a best course on
the sea of globalisation.
Africa though had not
yet been brought into
the equation.
The event was
coordinated by
Professor Teija
Tiilikainen, who has just
been appointed to join
the Government’s
Ministry for Foreign
Affairs, dealing with
Europe.
New publications
from workshops
Recent publications from the
Europaeum include a booklet on US-
Europe relations, a report on corporate
governance, and a collection of
perspectives on The Other.
America and Europe: Moving
Towards 2020, includes two essays,
imagining Europe without the US by Sir
Stephen Wall, former Europe Advisor to
Tony Blair; and imagining America
without Europe, by Professor Jim
Goldgeier of George Washington
University. It was linked to the recent
Washington Conference (These papers
Europaeum.org re-launch
The Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, Dr.
John Hood (pictured left with Dr. Paul Flather of the
Europaeum), pressed a button at a special
ceremony of Oxford Europaeum colleagues and
supporters last year to launch the Europaeum’s revamped
website. The new design of the website
includes a search facility, an archive retrieving
original Europaeum Newsletters and lectures from
the 1990s, a NoticeBoard, Thematic groupings, and
Events pages. Dr. Hood, who sits on the Europaeum
Council, praised the Europaeum’s for its
international work, and in particular for helping
Oxford keep open its window to Europe, and also
the energy of the Secretary General and the staff.
can also be found electronically under the
new Europaeum Debate section of our
website).
Derived from a Europaeum workshop,
Meeting the Other: here and there, which
brought together more than 30 academics
to Charles University, was recently
published, by Studia Historica, LVI, AUC,
Philosophica et Historica, edited by Luda
Klusakova and Karel Kubi.
Corporate Governance - a New
Agenda for Europe is based on an
international Europaeum policy forum at
the Säid Business School in Oxford. It
features pieces by Sir Ronald Grierson ,
Professor Colin Mayer, David Jackson,
George Dallas, Alastair Ross Goobey, Guy
Jubb, and Antonio Borges.
35

Viewpoint
Ora, labora et
vivere in Geneva
CHRISTIAN GLOSSNER, recalls mental, spiritual
and physical well-being as an Oxford-Geneva
Scholar
Upon arrival at his estate near the lake of Geneva in March
1755, Voltaire romanticised: “Enchanting Scenes! What pleasure
you dispense; Where e’er I turn, to ev’ry wond’ring sense!”
When I first arrived at the shores of Lac Léman, I was equally
overwhelmed by the beauty of the landscape and I could only
agree with the French Enlightenment philosopher.
However, no enlightenment was necessary when I applied
for the Oxford-Geneva Bursary to spend an academic year abroad
at the renowned Institute Universitaire de Hautes Études
Internationales in Geneva (HEI).
Since my undergraduate studies at the Université de Fribourg
in Switzerland, I have been acquainted with the amenities and
advantages of the HEI with its proximity to international
organisations such as the WTO and the UN, and the wonderful
city surrounded by the Jura and Alps mountains.
I had never dared to apply for graduate studies at the
presitigous HEI, but after a Masters degree at the London School
of Economics and an M.Phil. in Modern European History,
followed by a doctorate on German constitutional economics at
Oxford, it was finally possible.
The combination of my experience with Swiss federalism, an
English education in politics, and an interest in German
economics and pan-European history, had already brought me
to the 2003 Europaeum Summer School on Old and New Ideas
of European Federalism at Charles University (Prague). Here,
in a Hegelian way, the circle completed when I first met HEI
doctoral students. While exchanging experiences, ideas and
information with the young scholars, I learned about the Wilhelm
Röpke Archive at HEI.
Due to the Nazi Regime, Röpke, a German academic and
leading figure in the formulation of the German postwar Social
Market Economy, emigrated to Geneva and left HEI his
substantial archive – invaluable for
my own research. I immediately
applied for the Europaeum’s Oxford-
Geneva scholarship and received it a
year later, made possible by a
generous grant by a Swiss private
banker.
At the Villa Barton, domicile of the
HEI, I was well received by Daniel
Warner, Deputy to the Director, and
in my new home, a little study with a
great view on Lake Geneva, I met my
flatmates Anabelle, Kathrin, Olim and
Josh – the latter from the University
of Chicago.
Christian Glossner with Professor Ernst Bollinger
Outside the Villa Barton: work and play in one
I started academic (and less academic) conversations lasting
for hours, while (equally inspiring) were the endless discussions
with my predecessor, Catherine Ng, who finished her D.Phil. in
law at Oxford, but returned to Geneva soon after.
We were both enthusiastic about Switzerland’s beautiful
landscapes, which we discovered by using the cheap communal
train tickets on weekends, the church services at the Basilique
de Notre-Dame which we frequently attended after private
lectures at the Café Demi Lune on Sundays, and, not least, the
attractive learning environment at HEI.
As important as spiritual and mental well-being, is certainly
physical welfare, as mens sana in corpore sano. Thus, occasional
skit-trips and morning running – always with a pocket camera in
order to take photos of the mountains, the lake, or simply the
animals and flowers in the botanic garden nearby – was followed
by daily library visits, intensive study and more interesting
discussions.
I benefited from numerous lectures and seminars at HEI, the
rich book inventory of Uni Mail and the UN, and, finally, from
the motivating and informative discussions with Ernst Bollinger,
my former supervisor, friend, and mentor, in one of the lovely
cafés.
At least as enriching in an intellectual and physical way,
however, were the numerous barbeques in front of Les
Pavillions, gatherings with my friends and fellow students.
It was a fruitful time, personally
and academically: making friends for
life and completing two chapters of
my thesis.
I can only thank the Europaeum
and its staff and the HEI for providing
me with the opportunity orare,
laborare et vivere, at one of the most
prestigious institutions at one of the
most beautiful locations in the world.
Christian Glossner is a doctoral student at
the University of Oxford, currently working
on the formation of the social market
economy in Germany, 1945-1949.
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