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Book reviews – Comptes rendus – Buchbesprechungen 153
in 1992 with the insertion of a new article 23 in the Constitution that aims at protecting the
rights of the Länder and at giving them a share in working out Germany’s Community policy.
The reservations are still tangible today in the recent European proposals made by the
Christian Democrat Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), originating from
Bavaria that advocates reducing and clarifying the powers of the European Union. Thus, in
the continuation of the work of Georges-Henri Soutou on the “uncertain alliance”, 4 the proceedings
of the symposium contribute to demythifying the idealized, almost pious image of
the Franco-German couple. At the same time, France’s and Germany’s European commitment
seems like the main point of contact between both countries, their most solid anchorage
in 50 years of basic transformations.
The necessity of cooperating that drives on the political leaders of the two countries also
urges on part of the civil society. One of the interests of the symposium was to make room
for economic, social and unionist actors often missing in the historical works on the Community
construction. The studies of Sylvie Lefèvre and Werner Bührer on the business circles
and the French and German federations of employers (the CNPF= French National
Employers’union) and the BDI, the confederation of German industrialists, emphasize that
despite divergent economic traditions, marked either by the mercantile system after Colbert
or by liberalism, they were in agreement on European integration in the name of economic
modernization. The interest of German and French trade unions, except for the communist
CGT (Confédération Générale du Travail = French Trade Union, close to the French communist
party), is well brought out in the contributions of Cédric Guinand and Sylvain Schirmann.
For the powerful German DGB (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund = Federation of German
Trade Unions), as well as for the French organizations CFTC (Confédération Française
des Travailleurs Chrétiens, Christian trade union) and FO (Force ouvrière), it is a question
of bringing an influence to bear on the Community institutions with a view to give the workers’
interests more weight. These organizations rapidly support the Community construction,
in which they see a means to improve the protection of their members, even if at the
beginning they expressed reservations towards the European Economic Community that
was less willing to lend an ear to trade unions than the ECSC. Nevertheless, the structuring
of European trade unionism doesn’t turn out to be less laborious as the national means of
expressing claims remain predominant.
The panorama outlined by the contributions of the symposium on 50 years of a vivid
Franco-German cooperation on European level bring definitively out the present lifelessness
of the relations between the two states, the lack of confidence prevailing between their leaders,
the diverging evolution of their policies. The lessons learned in these 50 years induce to
be optimistic, but the theme of the symposium, that refers to the posterity of the declaration
of May 1950, doesn’t spare the question: a temporary crisis before the nth relaunch or the
end of an adventure initiated by the Schuman plan?
Rémi Decout-Paolini
Ancien élève de l’École normale supérieure
Agrégé de l’université en histoire
4. G.-H. SOUTOU, L’alliance incertaine. Les rapports politico-stratégiques franco-allemands,
1954-1996, Paris, Fayard, 1996, 497p.