Mallorca- viel mehr als nur Partyurlaub am Ballermann

Macht sich ein Urlauber in der Gruppe oder allein die Mühe, das Land hinter der Playa de Palma des berühmten “Ballermann”, dem “Balneario 6″, zu entdecken, fällt schnell auf, dass die größte der drei Inseln durch ein Flair besticht, welches weltweit seinesgleichen sucht. Malerische Fischerdörfchen an der Küste wechseln sich durch die gebirgige und trotzdem grüne Landschaft im Inselinneren ab. Im Rahmen eines ersten Urlaubes auf der Insel empfiehlt es sich, das Angebot einer geführten Tagestour rund um die Insel zu nutzen. Diese fährt die schönsten und eindrucksvollsten Orte ab, welche zum Ausruhen, Fotografieren und Bestaunen einladen. Günstige Mallorca Flüge finden Interessenten im Normalfall über das Internet und die einschlägigen Online Reisebüros.

Menorca- Kultur und Natur für alle

Auch wenn Menorca im Vergleich zu Mallorca und Ibiza ein wenig teurer in Bezug auf die Unterkünfte und die Flüge zu sein scheint, lohnt sich ein Besuch auf der Insel, die noch am wenigsten vom Massentourismus verschont geblieben zu sein scheint. Während es auf Mallorca oder Ibiza noch meist problemlos möglich ist, Fragen des Alltags auf deutsch zu stellen und eine Antwort zu bekommen, kann es auf Menorca sein, dass einen ein fragendes Gegenüber anblickt. Ein Umstand, der den Eindruck, wirklich in einem anderen Land zu sein, verstärkt.

Ibiza- mehr als nur Freak- Show

Die Insel Ibiza gilt im Allgemeinen als die Insel der ausgeflippten Menschen, der Discotheken und des exzessiven Nachtlebens. “Pacha”, “Space” und “Amnesia” laden jede Nacht zum Feiern bis in die frühen Morgenstunden ein und sind nicht selten der Anlass dafür, dass sich Urlauber eine Woche Erholung nach dem eigentlichen Urlaub gönnen.

Make hidden treasures visible

Many of us keep a room we usually tend to hide from vistors, a quick and handy “store” for stuff we don´t need right away, for scrap paper and household items. Maybe you´ve been thinking of tidying up that place for a long time, of making it a nice and friendly, well equipped room instead of keeping a far too expensive private store.

That extra bit of space could for instance be used as a private bureau when needed or maybe a room for friends and family that come for frequent visits? Usually it doesn´t take much to arrange a comfortable guest room, the essential piece you need is possibly an affordable sofa bed, which looks nice and tidy at daytime and can be used as a sofa by your guests. At night the sofa bed can easily and quickly be changed into a comfortable bed that will make your guests feel entirely at home and spend some relaxing days and nights at your place.

Some comfort to yourself

Once you treated your guests with some nice furniture, it´s about time to consider your own comfort aswell. If you´re still looking for a handy and efficient solution for your living room, take a look at the broad range of comfy sleeper sofas. Just like sofa beds they come with the advantages of both a tidy sofa and a comfortable bed!

Die klassische “Muss”-Couture im Kleiderschrank

Obgleich es verschiedene Trends auf die Titelblätter der Modemagazine schaffen, gibt es bestimmte Kleidungsstücke, die für die erwachsene Frau ein Muss sind. Das kleine Schwarze beispielsweise, die klassische Tweedjacke á la Chanel, oder auch Accessoires wie eine Perlenkette dürfen in keiner Modesammlung fehlen.

Was ist im Winter aktuell?

Wintertrends in der Mode XXL sind XL-Schals, XL-Colliers und auch Pullunder angesagt. Paillettenjacken oder Taschen veredeln das Weihnachts- sowie das Neujahrsfest.

Sommertrends 2012 – klassisch oder kreativ?

Natürlich kann man an dieser Stelle behaupten, dass in der nächsten Sommersaison, Röcke; Ballerinas, Clutches (egal in welcher Größe), Sommerkleider und Badeanzüge wieder die Magazine füllen werden.

Knallige Farben wie Rot, Pink, Aquamarinblau aber auch Schwarz und Weiß werden die Auslagen der Modekaufhäuser lebendig machen. Bei Hitze und windstillem Wetter ist mein absoluter Favorit eine weiße Hotpants mit einer luftigen Tunika, Ballerinas und eine Xl-Clutch. Das Gesicht wird natürlich von einer XL-Sonnenbrille verdeckt.

Trends kommen und gehen in der Damenmode. Es macht, so meine ich, jeder Frau, die sich für Mode interessiert, jedes Jahr Spaß sich neu einkleiden zu können. Jedoch kann man an dieser Stelle auch behaupten, dass es für jede Frau Lieblingsstücke gibt, die man, obgleich diese gerade im Trend sind oder nicht, tragen sollte. Getreu nach dem Motto: “Trends in der Damenmode Xxl hin oder her, ob Winter, ob Sommer, meine Mode bestimme Ich!”

The progression of what have been adhesions of nations and what is today the enlargement of the Union will have a geographical term, but not a conceptual one. The European Union is besides geographically much more extended than man’s considers, and rather interrogating existentially on if the candidate States are in Europe, it would be more judicious to remind us where is Europe in the world. Because it is today bordering Surinam (French Guyana), it is located in Africa (Ceita and Melilla), in the Antilles (Martinique and Guadeloupe), it is in the middle of South Atlantic (Falkland Islands, Tristan da Cunha, Saint Helen), in the Indian Ocean (Maurice Island), in the Arctic polar Circle (Svalbard), and near Antarctica (South Sandwich Islands), in North America (Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, Greenland), and in the Pacific (Society Islands, Wallis and Futuna, New Caledonia). By going through the question of the territorial administration, the Union exists economically on each continent, explores scientifically the poles, the population-empty areas, the ground of oceans, the atmosphere, the space. This is because Europe is not restricted to Europe.

However, the successive integration of the different States having the right to in the European Union will end, and will subsist only the returns of the enlargements, always implementing a bit more Peace, stability, knowledge of the other, but also, more pragmatically, profitability of investments in entering countries, collective progression of social rights, driving of great technological projects, exponential increasing of the strategic levers of influence, invention of common norms, collective protection of the ensemble and diversification of the Union. It is the intensification of collectives ambitions (which are not built especially in internal or external opposition), and the permanent –because temporal– extension of application fields of our common governance which we will have to perform, quintessence of the European process, raison d’être of the Union, imaginative matrix of the Fathers of Europe.

But this Europe won’t be without the structural and systemic reconsideration of the actual needs that we recon future by inertia when it is well present. Between these ones is the dual question demography/immigration besides a rich and getting older population –the EU’s one– refuse its balanced or integrative partnership to the neighbouring, young and dynamic, populations –the Maghreb ’s one. Another question, partially linked with the previous one, and which needs its prudent and relative integration, is the one of the becoming of the work in a unique market where dominate the dematerialization, tertiary of services and quaternary of new technologies, in a morose and durable context of structural unemployment and of low growth despite the obvious economical assets (first commercial power, largest common market, consumption quite stable, low geopolitical risk, strong unique currency).

The debate on interior and exterior security (because it is no more question of considerate today interior security without the exterior one), has to concentrate for a maximum efficiency on the definition of a limit, adjustable but maintained into boundaries, between the liberties permitting an articulation of personal and collective wills and the protection of these ones. The interior security forces have to act discreetly to impeach the criminal impeachment as well to respect the functioning of democracies’ life that the forces have the security’s responsibility.

In order to lead to some positive results, the questioning of the exterior security forces, meaning what man’s call traditionally by Defence (it is understood that the risks are not any more to the military invading but to destabilization), has to progress actively. The communitarian development of these ones has to assure the greatest technological and strategic advance on the subject and the object of application of the force. As the European Union is a union of the pre-emption of the right upon the force, this one has to be precisely thought before being engaged in a way which is not the union’s one, which could not be regarding to its nature and to the one of its alternative solutions upstream of conflicts.

But the most urging point of our collective application to the resolution of common troubles is probably the tendency to the dissension and to the withdrawal, historical remainder of a time of physical confrontation in uncontrolled races going rapidly ahead toward the loose for all parties, very far from our territorial borders. In such a conjuncture which tends to be structural, it is important to remind us the spirit and the impulsion of the European project which has been invented precisely in order to counter these murdering rivalries gushing out the permanent squabbles.  It has to be remembered that if the rule of law is a chance, Peace is a luxury that a great number of people do not know yet, and that the moral extension of our union is to back their effort to arrive to it, and therefore not to yield to the old demons, to the attributers of guiltiness, to the moralist populisms or to the national egoisms, which bring only the misery of a man limited as he makes itself obligingly by his partitive interests

Will Kymlicka, in his Multicultural citizenship, pointed out three categories of rights for minorities within liberal democracy, which are suitable to explore European progresses in building an own citizenship, not dealing only with minorities protection, but rather strengthening their participation to the European land of rights.

Comparing American and European situations is nowadays interesting because, aside of a new constitutionalism, a new identity for the European Union is required to stay beyond it, being the Union, since the beginning, as a multi-national state though.

Multi-nationality of European Union is, actually on two sides: community and institution. In fact, most of European State-institutions (apart from Portugal and Greece), have within the same territory, ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities, who perceive themselves as communities, sharing common history, culture and territory, and defining thus nation. Frozen throughout all the Cold War, they re-started to claim for more autonomy or even independence in the nineties, in what A.D. Smith called the ethnic revival. Recognizing the latter form of multi-nationality, deeper, level, is notwithstanding, difficult in Europe, because the construction of the national identity started from the building process of the State-nations. The State-community became, then, all the territory under the same State-institution.

Focusing on North American minorities (firstly indigenous and later immigrant), Kymlicka sorts out three subsequent categories of rights, which minorities achieved, three subsequent attempts to fix some bugs within the liberal democracy: rights of self-government (for indigenous minorities), polyethnic rights and special rights of representation.

Rights of self-government concern right of indigenous minorities claiming for independence. It deals with the difficulties It would eventually lead to the right of self-determination, but more often it comes out to be administrative autonomy.

Polyethnic rights have nothing to do with multi-juridical systems: this concept, according to Kymlicka, started to come out in the 1960s, when most of the States in the West “discovered to be polyethnic (due to immigration), as well as multi-national (indigenous people). The dominant political majority eventually recognized the impossibility to assimilate immigrated minorities into the liberal mentality (anglo-conformity); and decided, rather, to promote a diffusion of every culture’s contribute to the national identity.

Eventually, the special rights of representation take a step forward from protection to expression and participation of minorities’ representatives within liberal democracy.

Kymlicka’s analysis shows how minorities’ rights passed from reconnaissance to protection and eventually to participation and representation, without those could led to re-discuss the liberal democratic framework. Coherently with North American constitutional culture, Kymlicka does not see re-foundations (as in European modus operandi) but rather amendments.

This step-by-step classification of rights fits for Europe, whose recent history is a remarkable application of functionalist “spill-over”, and moreover, it permits to compare (taking into account the other differences) American and European concepts of citizenship, forwarding considerations about the state of European citizenship.

A first consideration about European and American citizenship deals with the construction of national identity. The later United States, the process leading towards a political community starts recognizing colonies’ inhabitants’ fundamental rights, and, subsequently, a new national identity started to spring (as Tocqueville stated in his most famous “Democracy in America”). Vice versa, in Europe the construction of the national identity started from the building process of the nation and fundamental rights arrived later. The new European Constitution is actually following the path of the old American Unionism (expressed in Madison’s and Hamilton’s “Federalism”), recognizing firstly European rights (Treaty of Rome) and then trying to build a new European state, with its rights and its constitutionalism as founding part of its identity, but lacking in the national identity building process.

The land of rights and its citizenship

Europe is nowadays a polyethnic area, composed by multinational states, but still recognizes it complexion from a national (State-institution) point of view.

Referring to the first of Kymlicka’s categories of rights (self government), national minorities in Europe had their first rights as nation (not simply religious or linguistic minorities, but considered as a whole, as outlined, with their territory and culture) after the end of the Second World War, but could fully express their claims only after the end of the Cold war and dictatorships in Europe. Yet, though they could not claim for self-determination, development strategies set out for European Regions reduce the distance from minorities and their claims for autonomy.

Analysing minorities’ rights in Europe from the point of view of polyethnic rights, few immigrants in Europe can affirm they are actual subject of rights and duties, as many of them are only passive subjects of law, not admitted to decide the government they have to pay taxes to.

Finally, special rights of representation are provided within the universities, through quotes reserved for not-EU citizens. But there are no special rights to gain access to representative institutions, neither for immigrants, nor for EU women citizens.

Europe has always been polyethnic and multinational (within the same State-institution), especially (at its southern borders) because of its geographical position, but it is now recognizing its complexion only its latter feature, and limited to European national minorities.

Reasons for what Barnett Pearce would call a “mono-cultural communication form” in Europe about itself might be sought in two directions: firstly, in the function developed by the Nation-State through out all the continental history. As outlined above, State came before rights and so the national identity rose around the State-institution, rather than around the State-community. Indeed, the latter has often been a profusion of the former one. Secondly, the historical trend in European law has been systemizing the subsequent, fluid, cultural sedimentations into written Constitutions, institutionalizing not only the juridical and political system, but the symbolic level, which leads to discuss a community’s identity (from the institution to the community). Furthermore, reforming a Constitution means to reform every relation within it, thus also the political symbolic field in which that Constitution took place.

European constitutionalism is actually lacking in what is able to perform at its best, that is to systemize, organizing rights into the coherent whole of a constitution, producing new original values, reflecting the society beyond it, not rather forcing it to follow a juridical path. Amending is not in European constitutional features, a new spur to re-discuss European identity should appear in order to pass, from social reconnaissance, to political participation of European minorities.

Francesco Navarrini

Bush aides have been insisting that he would present a vision of an ownership society. That he would differentiate between his programs that bring choice and accountability as opposed to Democrat’s programs that, in their view, bring either of these. However, Bush did not take the opportunity to make this case in his State of the Union address. Nor did he mention the ownership society in his February 19th speech as aides were foretelling he would. He made the by now familiar case with tax cuts instead. So far he has signed plenty of bills that changed lives of thousands of Americans. They have favored some, damaged others. After he is sworn in January 2005, a new era of American politics will begin. What does it mean for Europe? Will it benefit from Bush’s reelection or will it lose?

Europe, generally supported, Clinton/Gore democratic socialist ideology and vehemently opposed Christian-right, Bush’s conservative, anti-gay marriage, neo-conservative politics. Together with the democratic-left in America they kept their fingers crossed during the entire presidential battle and were very hesitant to do anything to enhance his 2004 reelection despite the fact that Bush was warning that this is only to jeopardize their prosperity as well as security interests. Before Bush declared the international war on terrorism and declared the war on Iraq and Afghanistan Europeans have developed a hostile, self-righteous, attitude toward Bush on policy issues.

Following September 11th, there was an empathy, which now has worn as political and ideological realities resurface. Academics as well as other analysts generally agreed that: “winning the next election or returning to power will lead to a mentality lessening the seriousness of the moment leading to obstructionism rather than cooperation on security and economic policies.” The predominant agenda of leftist, democratic, socialist mindset simply want to make him look bad. The major question remains, however, is this a right decision? Shouldn’t we just “forgive” him no matter how uncomfortable we feel while dealing with him, leave this selfish idea aside and focus on dealing with broader, global issues?

The leaders of the European Union, including for example Greek prime minister Costas Simitis, at that time president of European Commission, or EU foreign policy coordinator Javier Solana arrived in Washington D.C. in 2003 for a summit at the time when the relations with the Bush administration were “under strain.” The purpose of their mission was to rebuild the transatlantic relationship after the Iraq invasion many European governments openly opposed. “There is much more to the US-EU relations than military action in Iraq,” led his voice heard one of the senior EU official. He also added that there are many contentious trade issues between these two world’s leading economic superpowers. “The EU has moved to defuse some of the issues in relation to terrorism by offering to sign an extradition treaty with the US, and by backing plans for US cargo inspections in EU ports,” commented British BBC. On the broader issue, however, there are no firm commitments so far on how far will Europe contribute on cost of post-war Iraq reconstruction.

Two major US-EU projects are currently under way. US is collaborating with Europe and the UN to contain Iran’s nuclear programme. EU is also one of the four parties involved in the roadmap framing for peace negotiation in the Middle East. The EU foreign affairs commissioner Javier Solana wanted “tougher, more coherent EU foreign policy, which accepts some elements of preemption.”  Not all sorts of cooperation are supported by European citizens. On his first trip to Europe after his recent reelection, Bush faced angry demonstrators trying to repudiate him back to his homeland. Europeans are generally angry that his administration turned his back on the Kyoto treaty on tackling with global warming issues.

Despite a huge volume of transatlantic trade as well as political cooperation between Europe and the United States of America there exists seemingly immense cultural divide. From the issues of defence and the environment through abortion, same sex marriage to death penalty it seems there is increasingly growing rebellion against American values and culture. ‘Can the gulf between two western power blocks be bridged or is the transatlantic alliance coming to an end? Is America thanks to the attutude of Bushe’s administration out of touch with the rest of the world? Europeans are heavily protesting against every Bush’s visit of the old continent, calling him a “terrorist” and many American citizens are equally depressed.

Phil from Boston remraks: “It is all regarding Europe not being a military super-power, claiming that the EU could not exist without the US! Only the USA is INTERESTED in being a military super-power! Despite what the UK government (the US’ lapdog, might I add) thinks, the REST of the EU in no way “needs” the USA, nor their interference in European affairs. Two thumbs up to France and Germany for giving the two-fingered salute to George Bush. Not all Americans like this president, nor their government. I am hoping to soon become an EU citizen myself.”

Šárka Havránková

Man sees frequently, by the simplistic eye of mass medias, the electoral release as a revolution, even if these ones do not have the quintessence. The charm of the armed deflagration driving to a national virtuous rebirth by the end of a vicious system and the advent of contemporary ideas comes mainly from revolution in England (1642/1660), France (1789, 1848, 1878), Italy (1860), Germany (1918), Spain (1936). If the Italian and German revolutions had for goals to constitute or to re-constitute geopolitically the State-nation, the countries of Central, North and South East Europe, have a conception of revolution more pointed on the exogenous domination, as much political as cultural, maintained on the people. The affirmation of the independence is therefore a huge factor of beginning a revolution, as have shown the one of Serbia (1805), Poland (1830), Hungary (1858), Finland (1918).

But it is well understood that what is sometimes named “democratic revolutions” are within an action sensibly different. If the notion of national rebirth is present in the popular post-polls movements, and, according to the cases, a high will of State independence, it is primarily the end of a regime which is targeted. The totalitarisms of right and from left will provoke the movement. Budapest (1956) and Prague (1968) will be examples, with the reunion of the both characteristics of the revolution –the political clash and the independence–, with in plus the end of a regime written in a no revolutionary but evolutionary frame, democratic, and more or less pacific. It does is by the tetanization of State powers by the low, decided, persisting, tenacious, massive movement, without violence, that these pass from omnipotence to impotence, until their definitive implosion under the cold pressure of the street.

In Portugal, against the Salazar’s ethocracy, in Serbia against the human factor which had triggered four wars, in Georgia and in Ukraine against the figures of the post-socialist inertia, young people have proved the responsibility of their civic action. And now? Will it be at least the turn of Belarus? If the movement of the anti-totalitarism youth has been initiated by the activists of Otpor –“resistance” in Serbian–, fighting against “Slobo” (Slobodan Milosevic), the repeated phenomena is today shown for example, even taught, and applied in appropriate situations to the evolutionist step. Because the theory of evolution as a long transformation step by step, not contradictory of the others, is applicable to theses phenomena.

Today, it does is the young Zubr –« buffalos » in Belarussian, group of opposition of which we published already the interview in July 2004, see Archives– which demonstrate their will in Minsk, calling “Sasha” (nickname of Alexander Lukashenka) to free the country from its dictatorial grip. They live in Europe. In a soviet State. The last one. Man has a lot analysed and regretted the inaction of Western Europe during the attempts of real democracy in the so-called “popular democracies” from 1948 to 1989. Here is the occasion to forget the old west-European bargain’s pursuits to deal with the real stakes. The backing to the young Ukrainians has functioned, and has been a success of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). It has not been a revolution. Like the Georgians, they won’t join the European Union next year. Because there is a lot of work, transforming the individual energies in national dynamism: it has been done in the 90’s in the Central and Oriental European countries which carry currently the European voluntarism.

The risk is to pass through, by tiredness for a well-known historical serigraphy, which could be boring for the medias. The risk is that the west-European youth, comfortably installed in an atone conformist consumerism, could be uninterested in its pairs for which the life is a condition of the actual regime. The risk is that the revolution won’t be fashion anymore, even if the phenomenon is not one. The risk is to be afraid of a Russia which just has congratulate Lukashenka for a re-election by a factice poll, because our fear of the energy weapon. The risk is to hush the ENP. The risk is to negate the principles on which is based the European Union. The risk is to not believe anymore in a united Europe in a particular and communitarian democracy. The risk is to let down and let go, to abandon, and all the reactions what man can wait from this political gloom. The risk is to have a too much weak will to evaluate, to influence our collective evolution by the expression of man’s cultural prism. The voluntarism, when man’s live in a country without free press, without real multiparty political system, without development, where money is nowhere, where it is hard to survive, is natural. The obliged values are solidarity, will, and generosity. Indolence is the luxury of societies without consciousness of world’s reality. The hurt youth tries the recall, hoping that Europe play its advantages. But this one should be conscious of it, and that every part of it then put it in exergue for commune efficiency, responsible and thus confessed, energetic and thus reactive, for the people inside, as for those which had the misfortune to be born on the other side of the border and which demonstrate actively their existence, just there

If we examine the various reactions caused by the major event of the French political history which constitutes the starting point of the large currents of the political thought, the Revolution of 1789, it is possible to notice that the traditionalists refuse this upheaval which they regard as harmful. They note that it led only to disorder and regression. They recommend a return to the former situation, a restoration of the past and a rehabilitation of the ancient values. This current is manifest since 1789, when it took shape in reaction against the Revolution, but it takes, undoubtedly -at least at its early years- its sources from the Ancien Régime. It is backed on and refers to the experiment and the values which were devoted by the last centuries: respect of the ancients, of the age, of the traditions; reference to the elites, hierarchy, order, nature, providence. It recognized the importance of the authority, the obedience, the discipline and the honor. It is also the attachment to the institutions, to the Church, the family, the school, the army, the Fatherland. It is also the recognition of the corporations, groupings and associations. The individuals should not be let by themselves, they must be supported, helped, be framed. Traditionalism is, finally, the primacy of the Nation upon the individual, a Nation often represented by a providential man at the head of, according to times, monarchy, empire, fascism, the regime of Vichy or Gaullism. Within French traditionalism are the ‘father founders’: Joseph de Maistre and Louis de Bonald at the beginning of the XIXth century, then, in a different context, the father of positivism Auguste Comte. Lastly, with the development of nationalism, Maurice Barrès and Charles Maurras representatives of a restrictive nationalism, where Charles de Gaulle, incarnating a more open and pragmatic nationalism, i.e. a modernist nationalism.

The liberals, on the contrary, accept the transformations brought by the Revolution they initiated, but they recommend quickly a stabilization of the assets in order to organize the present. It emerged really in France during the XIXth century, although the liberal thought appears as of the XVIIth century. This current is based on the primacy of the individual and the respect of individual autonomy. The liberal thought is wary of the power and more particularly of the centralized power, considered as a permanent danger to freedoms. Liberalism is inclined to give the priority to the current problems, with the short term. From the economic point of view, it is the attachment with the private property, the need for competition, stimulation by the search of profit; it is the efficiency, the realistic and pragmatic spirit. This ideology supports the initiative, the individual blooming, but it is also accompanied by a certain selfishness. As for traditionalism, there is a conservative liberalism and a progressist and innovating liberalism. The liberalism, inspired of Montesquieu, is represented in the XIXth century by Benjamin Constant and Alexis de Tocqueville. During the XXth century, it is expressed through Alain under the third Republic, and then it will undergo the influence of Anglo-Saxon authors such as Hayek or J. Rawls.

The Socialists, not only accept the change introduced by the Revolution, since it reversed the old society, but they wish new transformations in order to set up a better social organization. It has been developed practically during the XXth century, although the socialist thought was shaped throughout the XIXth century. This current is founded on the belief that it is possible to build a future allowing the realization of a greater justice between the men, including a better harmony in the social organization. It stresses the primacy of general aims and of change. It should logically result a priority from medium term on the short term. In fact, it is not always the case, the socialist programs often claiming the immediate satisfaction of the social demands, and not always to the profit of the most underprivileged. Socialism is founded on a certain generosity, on a certain altruism, but it resulted in immediate sacrifices for a dubious future or even, completely utopian. Here also, there is a constructive socialism or of a destructive socialism. The socialism which, at the beginning, is subject to various influences, the one of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, or Babeuf, took very different forms: utopian, libertarian, revolutionary or reformist. He was also constantly pulled between two main tendencies: one centralizing, the other federalist. The result is the oppositions between Marx and Proudhon, then Bakounine, during the XIXth century, and then between Lénine and Blum, between the so-called “real” socialism and the social-democracy during the XXth century.

These three currents of thought crystallized in France by three main political tendencies: the right, the centre and the left ; but frequently in an approximate way. Each current reacts in a different manner, according to times and relatively to major political problems, in particular with respect to the religion, of the Church, the State, the Revolution, the social classes or the market economy. Moreover, the political parties are far from being always faithful to the ideologies that they claimed. Thus, the left was often conservative and the right was sometimes reformist. If in many countries, the grouping in two main tendencies prevails: republicans and the democrats (United States), the Tory and the Labour Party (Great Britain), the Christian democrats and the social-democrats (Germany), etc., France is characterized by its great diversity and by the fact that right and left hardly shaped coherent movements. In fact, the political culture of each country is strongly influenced by its history. In France, the right and the left can be defined only historically. Each current followed different evolutions. The beginnings of socialism were often reactionaries, this appeared during the XIXth century by its opposition to technical progress, mechanization, to industrialization, its reserves regarding to the vote for all and of the democracy. Thereafter, it sometimes deviated towards centralism, nationalism or even totalitarianism. The liberalism constantly hesitated between order and movement. Its natural tendency tends to conservatism, each time it reaches the power. On the other hand, it becomes reforming when it is in the opposition. Traditionalism took very different forms according to times. It currently tends to be assimilated to nationalism. Since the Vth Republic, and even more since the election of the President of the Republic by the direct universal suffrage, the distinctive phenomenon of the French political life contributed to reinforce the right/left opposition. Although it has become artificial on the plan of the ideas, it still remains important and cannot be ignored.

Aymeric Thareau January 2007

The juridical regulation that must be addressed, translated by an efficient juridictio, is the cement of the Kantian concept of the perpetual alliance, carrying the eternal Peace. The reign of the Law is thus firstly an imperative touching the very first aim of the European Union: the Peace on a continent which has ripped itself, which has precipitate itself twice, carrying in the same time the rest of the world, in a collective suicide with the power of identity. Linking the strong to the weak, the reign of the Law re-draws the traditional juridical debate by giving the sense of responsibility from the first to the second, avoiding all coercive constraints on this one and installing dialogue. The tool is the interdependency and the pedagogical goal is the consciousness of the repercussion of its own actions upon the other actors. The Law is in this way  imposed imperatively to the strong, and thus to the force, while the European History was constellated of juridical cases legitimating a priori and a posteriori the use of the force, the force making the Law, by the jus ad bellum (casus belli) and the jus in bello, in order to justify its own existence. The European Law is thus not a part of the International Law, it is far more than this one: it is the Supranational Law. It permits the European cosmopolicy. It is a guarantee of Peace, and the undisputable progress to evolve in an area of juridical equity, of equality –admittedly relative, depending on the States, function of the demographical and economical variables– between the strong and the weak.

The Reign of the Law has a political quintessence. Because imposed to everybody, it affirms and obliges to a group consciousness, higher than the individual and national consciousness. And that is the fundament of the policy. The European Union is not an economical union. If its first object, its initial content, its launchpad, has been the communitarization of economical sections by the European integration of national markets, from industry to currency (and perhaps one day the budgetary achievement), the union is in itself ontologically political. It is the Reign of the Law which is the ontological link between the technical policy and the philosophical reality. Despite it has been untold in a first time and then formalized by the Court of Justice of the European Communities in 1963 by the rulings Costa versus ENEL and Van Gend en Loos versus Nederlandse administratie der belastingen, it is obvious that the reign of the Law was the key-point of the visionary initialization of the Union’s fathers. Because when Robert Schuman impulses, the 9th may 1950, the creation of the European Coal and Steal Community, there is, in the heart of his constructive thought, a Court of Justice, this CJEC precisely, which proves since its creation, like it was predict, its essentiality by jurisprudence in the communitarian affirmation of the reign of the Law. This one corresponds in the same time to the imperative cement of Rousseau’s social contract and the Weber’s conception of rational legitimacy. But if the European Law is imposed to the States (The Queen versus Secretary of State for Transport, 1990), what constitutes what we may call a “magna politica juridictio”, it makes it –and this is the proof of its anti-totalitarian quintessence– in the interest of the citizen (Francovitch and Bonifaci versus the Italian Republic, 1991), and reveals itself also what we may call a “proxima politica juridictio”.

If the reign of the Law is the first acquis communautaire to adopt, the notion of acquis communautaire is integrated in the reign of the Law, in such a way that the one and the other draw, at the top of the juridical communitarian connexions, a correlative and rot proof diptych. It remains to the institutions the prerogative of forming the different ways of communication and power relationships, to the people the most important act: to decide. The reign of the Law spreads out all of these: the Commission by its prerogative of guardian of Treaties, the Council for the legislating decisional and the engagement of the absolute –and questionable in a globalizing world– sovereignty of the State, the Parliament because the reign of the Law could not exists separated from democracy (it is its child), the CJEC, of course, mentioned above. The people, the European people, has to create, but also to respect the Law. The institutional connexions, backed by the hierarchy of the communitarian norms, are balanced in order to make the Law have a reign in share, in order to provide the institutional plurality, proper to the partition of powers, as the guarantee of this reign which exists, which can exists uniquely like a transversal expression coming in from the people. Here is why the reign of the Law is inseparable from democracy.

The expression “reign” calls in evidence the notion of absolutism. But if the political absolutism is the logical consequence of the divine immanence of the monarch, the juridical absolutism can be theological or secular. And it is this last one which is here relevant in the collective constructing of the European area of Law. Because this precise reign is not placed in the dichotomy between regnum and sacerdotum, but overhang the debate, so that the personal or collective idea system can live by its theoretical beliefs in an earthly or celestial immanence of this reign, while the real immanence of the reign of the Law is in fact transcendence. This property confers, at the first sight, an ascendance more Romano-Germanic to the absolutist nature the reign of the Law. But, obviously, it’s by consensus that it’s built, that it’s applied, that it’s adapted. And this is the answer both to the political side of absolutism (which is proved here democratic and not tyrannical) and to the juridical side (which tells what is and rules it). And the jurisprudence of the judge is at least as fundamental (it revealed besides decisions more communitarianist and less biased toward this or that national partialities) as the work of the legislator. Consequently, by the repartition “rational Romano-Germanic juridical principles”/“pragmatic casual relativism of the Common Law”, the reign of the Law alienates any juridical system. It melts these ones. While the different applications are sometimes indicative sometimes imperative, it can be defined neutral or balanced. In the both cases, and even in the absence of advance in the European process, the reign extends itself, conformably at its obligation of optimization of its service toward the collective and the individual.

It could be frightening, like a multiplying-tentacles octopus, an awful antic myth, where the gorgon would threat the individual freedom. The troubles exist: permanent legislating, congestion or even asphyxia of the tribunals, administrative amplification. Judiciarization and juridicization go together, and need absolutely fast adaptations, an integral efficacy, data compilations, and decision’s efficiency. But doesn’t condemning the end because of its means reveal defeatism? Isn’t it an easy escape to avoid the healthy political work and to fall into the always facile populist solutions? The reign of the Law is not itself the impeachment, because every structural organization faces today its overtaking by the global systemic functioning. The reign of the Law is much more than that, it is the canal for the social and economic development, it is the juridical pedestal of democracy, it is the substantiality of the democratic policy, it is a protection of the citizen, it is the regulation of the disorder carrier of inequalities, it is written in the walk of History.

Thus, let’s not blame the reign of the Law for the infrastructural applications which it demands. And let neither the bad omen put the discredit on it. Because the reign of the Law is individual and collective, it is societal and political, theoretical and practical. If by its reign the Law is not omniscient, its ubiquity is a chance. It doesn’t respond to the Moral –let to each person– but to the Ethic. It is as a proof of democracy as an indicator of its state. It contents its own guarantee. So we have to enjoy it, but also to consolidate this fantastic collective construction, to extend its application area, technically and geographically within the continent, and to plead for its principle’s extension outside its European birthplace.

Julien THERON – Novembre 2005

In exchange, it support the US -led war in Iraq with troops and refuel- basis in the southern port of Constantza. As one of the countries of what US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called last year “the new Europe”, Romania had to take in many occasions circumstantial solutions, based rather on the immediate interest, than on a long-term strategy.

The ICC – why?

Romania has been the first country to sign with the US a treaty on immunity for American citizens against the International Criminal Court, in 2002, a decision harshly criticized by the EU, but also but the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The decision had been take without previous consultations with the European Union. The Treaty has been signed in Bucharest, but for becoming effective – or not – it should be discussed and voted in the Romanian Parliament. Two years after the signature, the treaty haven’t been yet discussed and now, in an electoral year, nobody is talking about no more. The Romanian political class reacted very slow and only after the EU expresses its critics and since then no open and broad discussion took place about that subject and no strong position – for or against – haven’t been express from the part of the Romanian civil society.

The 2002 European Commission country report on Romania outlined that the ICC agreement is “regrettable” and recommends to the Government to orient its foreign policy in accordance with the EU diplomacy. The Romanian authorities outlined that by signing the controversial Treaty, haven’t been intended to gain the favors of the US. On August 30, 2002, Romanian Foreign ministry Mircea Geoana said in an interview for Reuters that: “Romania hasn’t signed the treaty for gaining the Washington’s favors for NATO admission, because that, is already agreed”. Most part of the European media seen the decision of Romania as an example of the geo-political changes taking place in Central and South-Eastern Europe, in terms of reorientation of US policies. An article on German newspaper “Berliner Zeitung” from August 15 2002 considered that the “Romanian example”, if followed by other countries, can bring to an “bankruptcy” of the EU foreign policy. Facing the hard conditions of admission in the European Union, many of the Eastern Europe candidate countries, among which Romania, don’t have many expectations from the Union and choose to support US demands, that are offering more in terms of geopolitical advantages or economic support. In that respect, it have to be noted that Romania obtained the last year from the US the status of “functioning market economy”, a position still not obtain from the European Union. In short, Romania signed against  the ICC Treaty with the US, but the legislative follow-up haven’t been completed. The Treaty isn’t effective, but the decision in itself contributed to some advantages from the part of the US, on the short-term. On the long-term, it create frictions with the EU.

Adoptions, “Achille heel”

Another subject of dispute – but more vocal in Romania and abroad – is the subject of international adoptions. From the communist regime, Romania inherited hundred of thousand of orphanage children and a lack of culture in terms of family planning. The poor conditions of many of the Romanians continue also  to be one of the main cause of many orphans. Teenage mothers from the countryside and with low level of education abandon its children on the streets or on the hospitals. The children are taken by the state system, a system that often is lacking the proper resources. A lot of support came in the last decade from the foreign foundations established in the country having in their aim the support of the children with aliments, clothes or other basic needs.

The lack of proper legislation of child protection – the legislative package have been adopted by the Government only in 2004 and the laws are still waiting to be discussed by the Parliament, occupied now with the electoral campaign – created many dysfunctions in the system of child protection and adoption in Romania. The big problem is concerning the international adoptions. In 2001, Baroness Emma Nicholson of Winterbourne, the European Parliament rapporteur for Romania, ask the suspension of Romania’s integration process, because of the problems discovered in the system of international adoptions. She outlined that a real “baby-market” have been created with the Romanian children, effectively “sold” outside to foreigners. A moratorium on international adoptions have been then imposed but the many derogations from the moratorium – allowing child adoptions in US, as well as in Spain, Italy or France – created a continue problem in the discussions between Bucharest and Brussels. The last episode of the scandal consumed some months ago, when again Baroness Emma Nicholson warned against the corruption in the adoption system. According to the Romanian National Authority for the Child Protection and Adoptions, in December 2003, 187 international adoptions have been allowed, and during the moratorium – 2001-2003 the Government accepted 1.115 adoptions.

Beside its aspects dealing with the child protection and the social system, the adoptions have also  a foreign policy side. US supported Romania to reform its system, but also was one of the main supporter of the international adoption system. The new legislation allowing international adoptions only for grandparents have been criticized by US representatives – including 22 US congressmen asking to the Romanian MPs to ease the ban on international adoptions. The new Romanian legislation is following the previsions of the UN Convention on the rights of the children, a international document not ratified by the US. It can be one of the explanation of the different views in Brussels and in Washington on the international adoptions. In the same time, for Romania it create a subject of frictions in international relations. In a recent article for the International Herald Tribune, US deputy – state secretary Richard L. Armitage considered that the new law of adoptions will represent a “tragedy” for the Romanian orphans, because, among others, they will not had the possibility to have a better life outside the country.

After many oscillations and derogations from the EU-imposed Moratorium  the Romanian authorities look very decided to finally solve that problem. But he way in which the problem have been handed shows that the transition is still continuing in Romania. The responsibility for the decisions took is a very important aspect of any consolidated democracy. It means that the authorities have enough autonomy to decide independently the proper solutions and also to have the possibility to explain the reasons why a certain decision have been taken. The two case-studies we’ve analyzed are showing that we still lack the coherence in addressing such issues.