Abstract
At some 500 pages, Sixty Years of European Integration and Global Power Shifts is not a brief bedtime story. Yet its page range reflects one of the book’s major strengths: its comprehensive nature, which has become so characteristic of Julien Chaisse’s work. Another of Chaisse’s fortes, to bring together a wide variety of people working on different aspects of a certain theme, is equally displayed in the book, which includes contributions from academics, legal practitioners (including arbitrators), policy advisors and consultants, and a judge of the Court of Justice of the European Union. These authors are, moreover, located around the globe, and their different socio-cultural and linguistic backgrounds allow for important insights into the potential for both European and global integration.
The book aims to do two things: first, to provide ‘a critical analysis of EU [European Union] integration and how this integration is perceived (internally and externally)’, and, secondly, to explore ‘EU interactions with a number of other countries and organisations [to assess] the EU role in global governance’ (p. 1). In respect of these objectives, the book is able to link to broader issues of political integration, whilst remaining firmly embedded in a trade perspective—a feature that is likely to be of interest to readers of the current journal. Beyond its stated objectives, a third aim appears to be that of advocacy for the EU. The introduction written by Chaisse is not merely an overview of the book’s contents neatly woven together; it is a statement of advocacy in favour of European integration as a model to be followed globally, presenting the book both as a call for reform to make EU integration stronger and more effective, as well as for this enhanced Union to take a step up in global governance. These objectives are intertwined with what appear to be the two overarching questions the book poses and seeks an answer to: (a) can the EU effectively, and in reality, serve as an example for other parts of the world (or are the regions too diverse) and (b) does the EU—to put it bluntly—have its own act together?
In addition to the introduction, the book consists of 19 chapters, divided in three parts. Part I (European Legal Integration: Process, Difficulties and Achievements) focuses on the EU’s historical process of integration and its functioning today. It comprises chapters on the (then) European Court of Justice’s work in establishing its legal regime and rule of law (Forrester QC); the oxymoronic nature of the Union with its many legal dichotomies (Neuwirth); the EU’s (need for) increasing powers in respect of social rights (Weiss); the diverging public procurement systems the EU is involved in (Holland); the tensions between EU freedoms and maintaining welfare institutions that exist in cross-border healthcare (Sobrino Guijarro); the trust- and transparency-based integration spurred by the Services Directive (Delimatsis); and the converging perspectives towards culture as a vector for identity and/or economic resource (De le Sierra). Part II (The European Union as a Global Actor: Issues and Partners) considers the Union’s role and actions at the global level with chapters that evaluate the EU’s lack of clear strategy towards its multilateral goals (Wouters and Raina); the lessons Asia can learn from European multilevel constitutionalism in the protection of public goods (Petersmann); the European civil justice policy as a model for transnational civil justice orders (Hartnell); the tension between multilateralism and the EU’s bilateral protection of its interests (Meissner); the conflicting priorities held by the EU and China in trade and investment negotiations (Wu); and the misconceptions about legalisation in Asia when compared to Europe (Hamanaka). Part III (European Union’s Trade Policy: Global and Regional Trade Challenges), as the final part points the focus more explicitly towards trade, which ‘probably is the most important external policy of the EU and, as such, the main channel of EU influence at regional and global levels’ (p. 21). It consists of chapters concerned with the balance the EU should seek between transparency and not undermining its negotiation position in respect of trade and investment agreements (Dias Simões); the wildly different alternatives to the current investor-state dispute settlement system as proposed by the EU or practiced in Latin America (Bianchi and Inglis); the likelihood of an enhanced role for States’ regulatory powers vis-à-vis investor protection in a potential EUChina Bilateral Investment Treaty (Boltenko); the effective use of the research exemption to patent protection to enhance biotechnology sectors in Europe, Singapore and Malaysia (Jusoh); the EU and Australia’s competition for the Chinese wine market using wine geographical indications as a tool for monopolisation (Friedmann); and the (for India) counter-intuitive use of stronger intellectual property rights protection and regulation of the pharmaceutical sector to increase competitiveness (Chakraborty and Banik).
A recurrent theme in the book is the synergy between effectiveness and legitimacy. The various chapters demonstrate that, often, the EU’s technocratic actions, or actions aimed at economic effectiveness, are not merely taken in view of stated EU goals per se, but also seek to enhance the Union’s legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens and the global community. A good example of this is the EU’s civil justice policy that aims to remove bureaucratic obstacles via, inter alia, mutual recognition, whilst simultaneously enhancing legitimacy as a result of its rights-based strategy (p. 248). The power of human rights and principles of global governance such as transparency is, in fact, a further emerging theme. It links with Chaisse’s remark (p. 10) that the EU seeks to exert power, not as a classic hegemon relying on coercive power, but as a norms-based power capable of persuasion. Human rights and governance principles have become an important unifying factor within the Union, yet they also increasingly drive advancement. The book’s different chapters, for example, suggest that the EU has over time become skilled at employing the governance and human rights narrative to increase its competences (for example in the social field), enhance integration internally (in the justice field) and justify global initiatives such as its Multilateral Investment Court.
Two aspects of the book deserve specific mention. First, the book does an excellent job at laying the foundations for, and engaging in, comparative research. Today, what is presented as ‘comparative research’ is often a simple call for transplantation without true consideration of national or regional context. By contrast, various chapters of the book consider in depth the underlying principles, values and perspectives that speak to differences in approaches or legal organisation with respect to, for example, intellectual property, negotiation priorities, cultural policy, dispute settlement or legalisation. These examinations provide crucial information for genuine comparative research. The second aspect is the (coincidental) timeliness of the book’s health focus in view of the COVID-19 pandemic. Clearly, health was always important, but the current situation gives added significance to the chapters concerned with (cross-border) health services, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. These make Sixty Years of European Integration and Global Power Shifts especially valuable reading whilst a pandemic is raging through the world, stopping nearly all, but geopolitics.