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WORK TITLE: Europe’s Last Chance
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BIRTHDATE: 4/11/1953
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NATIONALITY: Belgian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Verhofstadt
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LC control no.: n 93062396
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rda
Personal name heading:
Verhofstadt, Guy, 1953-
Birth date: 1953
Found in: De weg naar politieke vernieuwing, c1992: t.p. (Guy
Verhofstadt) cover (b. 1953)
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PERSONAL
Born April 11, 1953, in Dendermonde, Belgium; married Dominique Verkinderen; children: two.
EDUCATION:Attended University of Ghent.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Politician. Flemish Liberal Party, began as secretary to the president, president, 1982-85; Flemish Liberals and Democrats (successor to Flemish Liberal Party), founder, 1991, president, beginning 1997. National Government of Belgium, Brussels, member of Chamber of Representatives, 1985-2009, minister of budget, 1985-92, deputy prime minister, 1985-92, prime minister, 1999-2008, then member of Senate. European Parliament, Brussels, member of parliament, beginning 2009; Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group, group leader, beginning 2009, and founder of Spinelli Group. European Institute of Public Administration, chair of board of governors; Sofina, board member; Exmar, director.
MEMBER:Friends of Europe (member of board of trustees), Club de Madrid.
AWARDS:Knight grand cross, Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, 1986; decorated knight grand cross, Spanish Order of Isabella the Catholic, 2000; decorated commander grand cross, Swedish Royal Order of the Polar Star, 2001; Vision for Europe Award, 2002; grand cross, Danish Order of the Dannebrog, 2002; grand cross, Royal Norwegian Order of Merit, 2003; grand cross, Order of the White Rose of Finland, 2004; grand cordon, Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, 2004; grand cross, Greek Order of Honor, 2005; grand cross, Belgian Order of the Crown, 2007; grand cordon, Belgian Order of Leopold, 2008.
POLITICS: Open Flemish Liberals and Democrats; Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including foreword to Inside the Arab Revolution: Three Years on the Front Line of the Arab Spring, by Koert Debeuf, Lannoo Campus (Leuven, Belgium), 2014.
Some of Verhofstadt’s books have been translated into French.
SIDELIGHTS
Guy Verhofstadt is a Belgian politician from the Dutch-speaking Flemish region in the north. He was a law student at the University of Ghent in 1972 when he was chosen to lead the Liberal Flemish Students’ Union. By 1982 he was the president of the Flemish Liberal Party. Verhofstadt entered national politics three years later, when he was elevated to minister of the budget and deputy prime minister of the country.
In 1992 Verhofstadt formed a new, more inclusive political party, the Flemish Liberals and Democrats. Under this new banner he was elected prime minister of Belgium in 1999. The country was suffering under severe economic stress, and more political crises lay ahead. Verhofstadt’s administration was able to reduce taxes and improve the stability of the pension system, but unemployment continued to rise and public approval sank to new depths. On the social front his liberal government still managed to win the legalization of same-sex marriage and euthanasia. Verhofstadt won reelection in 2003, but his party was declining in popularity, and he was forced to step down in 2008. The career politician did not step out of the picture, however; he changed direction.
Verhofstadt had become increasingly involved in the work of the European Economic Community, the predecessor of the current European Union. Located centrally between the Netherlands, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, Belgium was an ideal choice for the headquarters of the European Parliament, to which Verhofstadt was elected in 2009. He also became president of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe group. Verhofstadt had already supported the work of the Union in his native Belgium; after 2009 he became an activist for reform within the Union itself.
The liberal politician is an avid supporter of the free movement of goods, services, currency–and especially people–within the member countries of the European Union. Even in the midst of the migrant crisis that has escalated throughout the current century, one of his primary missions is to dissolve walls and barriers. He believes that unity is the only hope for the future of the member countries–as in a United States of Europe. He became a vocal opponent of Brexit, the 2016 decision by the British electorate to withdraw the United Kingdom from the European Union. Despite, or perhaps because of his strong opposition, he was appointed chief negotiator for the negotiation process.
Verhofstadt has published more than a dozen books in Dutch, German, and French. The first title to reach English-speaking readers is Europe’s Last Chance: Why The European States Must Forge a More Perfect Union. Verhofstadt believes that the survival of Europe is in mortal danger. Member states are inundated by asylum-seekers from non-member nations, predominantly the Middle East and Africa. The economic collapse that devastated Greece has triggered increasing economic issues across southern Europe. Baltic states such as Ukraine face aggressive action from Russia. Terrorist groups have taken advantage of open borders to penetrate major cities in France, Germany, and Belgium, and to threaten Italy and the Vatican. Verhofstadt fears that the United Kingdom and North America could be next.
Verhofstadt explains that the European Union in its present form is functionally impotent. For example, the 1993 Treaty of Maastricht and subsequent amendments granted the Union the authority to enact certain legislation, but each member state retains veto power. Member nations can negotiate individual agreements with one another. The adoption of the Euro currency is optional. Any member state can opt to close its borders, placing increased pressure on its more inclusive neighbors. Verhofstadt calls for the formation of a true union modeled after the federal government of the United States of America, to include, among other provisions, a single currency, a federal budget, and a federally controlled and funded security infrastructure.
According to a commentator in Kirkus Reviews, Verhofstadt blames the impotence of the current system on “predatory outsiders … ; troublemaking insiders … ; provocateurs,” whom he does not hesitate to identify by name, and diehard nationalist attitudes. The reviewer observed: “His barely concealed contempt for those who have frustrated his cherished project will likely win few concerts among a constituency essential for the EU’s success.” Other critics, however, focused on the positive elements of the author’s proposition. In Library Journal, Mattie Cook described Europe’s Last Chance as “a well-researched call to action … to form and fund a new Europe.” A Publishers Weekly contributor referenced the “well-argued policy primer” as “an appealing way forward from a troubled present.” Although he described the volume as “part Federalist Papers, part self-serving memoir,” Jan-Werner Müller told readers of the London Review of Books: “Verhofstadt’s book is in the end much more interesting than it first appears.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2016, review of Europe’s Last Chance: Why the European States Must Form a More Perfect Union.
Library Journal, February 1, 2017, Mattie Cook, review of Europe’s Last Chance, p. 92.
London Review of Books, June 1, 2017, Jan-Werner Miller, review of Europe’s Last Chance, pp. 9-12.
Publishers Weekly, November 28, 2016, review of Europe’s Last Chance, p. 62.
ONLINE
Guy Verhofstadt Website, http://www.guyverhofstadt.eu (September 17, 2017).
Independent Online, http://www.independent.co.uk/ (September 14, 2016), Maya Oppenheim, “Guy Verhofstadt: Who Is the Diehard Europhile Who Has Been Appointed as EU’s Chief Brexit Negotiator?”*
Guy Verhofstadt
MEP
Guy Verhofstadt EP press conference 3.jpg
Group Leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group
Incumbent
Assumed office
1 July 2009
Preceded by Graham Watson
Member of the European Parliament
Incumbent
Assumed office
14 July 2009
Constituency Belgium
47th Prime Minister of Belgium
In office
12 July 1999 – 20 March 2008
Monarch Albert II
Deputy
Laurette Onkelinx
Didier Reynders
Preceded by Jean-Luc Dehaene
Succeeded by Yves Leterme
Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium
In office
14 May 1985 – 7 March 1992
Prime Minister Wilfried Martens
Preceded by Alan Vanackere
Succeeded by Pedro Manns
Minister of Budget
In office
14 May 1985 – 7 March 1992
Prime Minister Wilfried Martens
Preceded by Leo Uberman
Succeeded by Pedro Manns
Member of the Chamber of Representatives
In office
13 October 1985 – 14 June 2009
Constituency Dendermonde
Personal details
Born Guy Maurice Marie Louise Verhofstadt
11 April 1953 (age 64)
Dendermonde, Belgium
Political party Belgian
Open Flemish Liberals and Democrats
EU
Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe
Other political
affiliations Party for Freedom and Progress (Before 1992)
Spouse(s) Dominique Verkinderen
Children 2
Alma mater Ghent University
Signature
Website www.guyverhofstadt.eu
Guy Maurice Marie Louise Verhofstadt (Dutch: [ˈɣiː vərˈɦɔfstɑt] (About this sound listen); born 11 April 1953) is a Belgian politician. He is the Leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group and Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Belgium since 2009. He served as the 47th Prime Minister of Belgium from 1999 to 2008, Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium from 1985 to 1992 and Minister of Budget from 1985 to 1992. He was a Member of the Chamber of Representatives from 1985 to 2009.
Since 2009 he has served as a Member of the European Parliament where he is the leader of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) and founded the inter-parliamentarian federalist Spinelli Group. He was the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party nominee for President of the European Commission in the 2014 European Parliament election.
Contents
1 Early career
2 Verhofstadt I
3 Verhofstadt II
4 Verhofstadt III
5 Post-premiership
6 Other activities
7 Honours and awards
7.1 Belgian honours
7.2 Foreign honours
8 See also
9 References
10 External links
Early career
Born in 1953 in Dendermonde, he became president of the Liberal Flemish Student's union (1972–1974) while studying law at the University of Ghent. He quickly became the secretary of Willy De Clercq, who was at that time the president of the Flemish liberal party (PVV). In 1982, at age 29, he became president of the party. In 1985 he was elected into the Chamber of Deputies, and became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Budget under Prime Minister Wilfried Martens. Because of his economic views and his young age, he became known as "Baby Thatcher".[1][2]
After being ousted from government he became leader of the opposition. After a failed attempt to form a government in November 1991, he changed the PVV into the Flemish Liberals and Democrats (VLD). This new party attracted many politicians from other parties, notably from the Volksunie (VU) and the Christian People's Party (CVP).[3]
However, despite the fact that many had high expectations, the party did not manage to outstrip the CVP. Verhofstadt resigned and disappeared from the political scene, only to return to the party's presidency in 1997 with a less radical image. He gradually moved away from neoliberalism (partly under the influence of his brother Dirk, a social liberal political philosopher), and became more of a centrist figure, a change which especially became clear during his first term as Prime Minister.[2]
Verhofstadt I
Main article: Verhofstadt I Government
Partly because of a food scandal that broke out just before the 1999 elections,[4] the VLD became the largest party in the country, obtaining over 22% of the vote in Flanders. He quickly formed a coalition with the Flemish socialists and greens and the French-speaking counterparts of these parties (a symmetric coalition) in Brussels and Wallonia. He was appointed Prime Minister on 12 July 1999, the first liberal to hold that office since 1938. It was the first Belgian government without a Christian Democratic party since 1958, and the first one to include green parties.
Verhofstadt was awarded the Vision for Europe Award in 2002 for his work toward a more unified Europe. The economic situation gave him leeway to raise the lowest social alimonies and lowering taxation. After 2001, the economic situation worsened. The 'Aging Fund' or 'Silver Fund' was set up, in order to ensure the maintenance of pensions until 2030. But despite his efforts to boost the economy while attempting to maintain the social benefits system, unemployment rose, after previously falling during the second Dehaene cabinet.
Much to the disapproval of his coalition partners, Verhofstadt and his VLD opposed granting the right to vote to non-EU residents. Instead, they proposed and were able to liberalize the procedure for obtaining Belgian citizenship. During the prelude to the Iraq crisis of 2003, Belgium joined France, Germany and Russia in opposition to the invasion.
Verhofstadt II
Main article: Verhofstadt II Government
Following the 2003 general elections,[5] Verhofstadt formed his second cabinet without the green parties, who were virtually annihilated in the election. For various reasons, the formation of the second government was delayed well beyond normal: the economic situation worsened to 1999 levels, both politically similar parties (liberals and socialists) gained approximately the same seats.
Various[which?] governments were pressing for the abolition of the law of universal competence (also known as the "genocide law"), which gave Belgian judges the authority to accuse and sentence non-Belgians with crimes against humanity. Accusations that were made had rarely been followed up, and were often dismissed as being little more than politically motivated international insults. Verhofstadt's second government was sworn in on 12 July 2003, with both coalition partners having agreed to abolish the so-called "genocide law" and replace it with a much weaker one.[citation needed]
Guy Verhofstadt second Government consisted of his liberal Open VLD their sister liberal MR, the Flemish social democratic SP.a and their sister social democratic party PS to form another Purple coalition.[citation needed]
In the Flemish regional elections of 13 June 2004, his party lost votes, slipping into third place in Flanders. Though this has had no direct impact upon his position as Prime Minister, there were rumours that the Christian Democratic and Flemish (CD&V) party that won the elections, would participate in federal government. Verhofstadt was suggested as a candidate to replace Romano Prodi as the next President of the European Commission, but his candidacy was opposed and rejected by a coalition led by Tony Blair and other leaders who had disagreed with Verhofstadt's uncompromising criticisms of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq the previous year.[6]
After this Verhofstadt was faced with a succession of internal crises. The first, coming to a head in the autumn of 2004, was the question whether DHL would invest in Brussels Airport, located in the Flemish municipality of Zaventem. The question which nearly caused the collapse of the cabinet was whether to grant DHL extra landing rights during the night, this being a hot topic of public debate and various court cases.[7] In the end the split between employment and night rest was for nought as DHL had only used the Zaventem option in order to get better conditions from Leipzig.[8]
Following the DHL crisis, Verhofstadt faced a crisis over the allocation of constitutional and administrative powers and responsibilities for the Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde district (commonly abbreviated as BHV). Division of the powers had been written into the government coalition agreement by the parties controlling the Flemish regional government. This triggered a veto from the Walloon parties.[9][10] The crisis dragged on until spring 2005 when the matter was shelved till after the federal elections of 2007.[11] By 2005 the Flemish parties participating in the government did not want the government to collapse, given their poor ratings in the opinion polls.
The constitutional court of Belgium ruled that all elections held after 10 June 2007 would be constitutionally invalid because of the non-separation of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde. In the autumn of 2005, Verhofstadt managed to score a success when he was able to negotiate a "Generation Pact" with regard to employment and social reforms, regardless of the opposition and actions of the unions.[citation needed]
Verhofstadt was sworn in as municipal councilor in Ghent in January 2007, as a result of the 2006 municipal elections. In the council, he is seated next to another cabinet minister, Freya Van den Bossche, who was elected a municipal councillor as well. He even postponed a visit to the Russian President Vladimir Putin to be able to go to the first session of the newly elected council.[citation needed]
Verhofstadt III
Main article: Verhofstadt III Government
Verhofstadt led the VLD into the 2007 general election. Already with the 2006 municipal elections, the VLD showed signs of fatigue with the Flemish voter, who seem to have had enough of eight years of Verhofstadt, and the purple coalition governments. In an evening speech on election day, Verhofstadt conceded defeat and asked for a new generation to lead the VLD; he was to step down as prime minister after formation of a new government. However, the formation of a new government was complicated, and in the end, CD&V politician Yves Leterme failed to bring about a new government.[12]
Yet certain policy matters became politically urgent. The King therefore asked Verhofstadt to mediate an "interim government" that would be in office for three months and could propose a 2008 budget. A deal was struck in December, and the "interim government" was set for inauguration on 21 December 2007. Two days later, this interim government won a vote of confidence in parliament, with 97 votes in favor, 46 opposed, and one abstention, assuring its legitimacy for three months.[12]
A "permanent government" under leadership of Yves Leterme assumed office on 20 March 2008.[13]
One of the first decisions of the new government, on 21 December 2007, was to raise the security level after foiling an attempted jail break of an Al Qaeda operative.[14][15]
Post-premiership
After his premiership he took up the seat of Senator to which he had been elected in 2007. In the 2009 European Parliament election, Verhofstadt was elected a member of the European Parliament for the term 2009–2014. He also has been put forward as the possible candidate for replacing José Manuel Barroso as the president of the European Commission by a coalition of greens, socialists and liberals.[16]
On 1 July 2009 he was elected President of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe group in the European Parliament.[17]
On 14 July 2009 he took up his seat in the newly sworn-in European Parliament to which he had been elected in June 2009. On 15 September 2010, Verhofstadt supported the new initiative Spinelli Group, which was founded to reinvigorate the drive for federalisation of the European Union (EU). He is also a member of the Club de Madrid, an independent organization of more than 80 former democratic statesmen. The group works to promote democratic governance and leadership worldwide.[18]
Since 2012, Verhofstadt has been an independent Board Member of the Brussels-based, Brussels-quoted Sofina holding.[19] and an independent director of Exmar, a global transporter of gas and oil.
In April 2015, Verhofstadt criticized Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras over his meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis and difficult negotiations between the EU/ECB/IMF and Tsipras's recently elected Syriza-led government. Via Twitter according to the New York Times, Verhofstadt said Tsipras "should stop trying to play #Putin against the EU" and that Tsipras "should play according to the common rules and conduct serious reforms".[20]
In August 2015, he called for a reform of the EU's asylum and migration system, in reaction to the European migrant crisis. He also criticized UK Prime Minister David Cameron and French president François Hollande for opposing the European Commission's proposal to distribute asylum requests for migrants over all countries of the European Union. He also called on governments of France, the UK, and Hungary to stop building up walls and border security measures, and to shift their effort on humanitarian assistance.[21] This humanitarian assistance including that the EU "ask" the dysfunctional countries that source migrants to address their own dysfunction.[22]
In May 2015, news media reported that Verhofstadt was included in a Russian blacklist of prominent people from the European Union who are not allowed to enter the country.[23][24]
In November 2016, echoing George Bush's Axis of evil mantra, Verhofstadt warned the European Parliament of a coming "ring of autocrats", citing the increasing assertiveness of Russia and Turkey, and contemplating the (at that time widely discounted) possibility of a Trump presidency.[25][26]
Other activities
European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA), Chairman of the Board of Governors
Friends of Europe, Member of the Board of Trustees
Honours and awards
Belgian honours
Belgium: Minister of State, by Royal decree.
Belgium: Grand Cordon in the Order of Leopold (21 April 2008)
Belgium: Grand Cross in the Order of the Crown (5 June 2007)
Foreign honours
Denmark: Grand Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog (2002)
Finland: Grand Cross of the Order of the White Rose of Finland (30 March 2004)
Greece: Grand Cross of the Order of Honour (2005)
Italy: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (20 February 1986)[27]
Norway: Grand Cross of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit (2003)
Poland: Grand Cordon of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (14 October 2004)
Spain: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic (2000)
Sweden: Commander Grand Cross of the Royal Order of the Polar Star (2001)
Guy Verhofstadt is President of the Alliance of Liberals&Democrats for Europe (ALDE) in the Europ...
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About
Guy Verhofstadt is President of the Alliance of Liberals&Democrats for Europe (ALDE) in the European Parliament. Prime Minister of Belgium from 1999-2008
Biography
Guy was born in 1953, and attended school and university in Ghent, where he studied the law.
In 1972, he became President of the Liberal Flemish Students' Uni... See More
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Liberal
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Personal Information
I was Prime Minister of Belgium for almost ten years: from 1999 to 2008. My governments meant a breath of fresh air in Belgian politics. I made Belgium the second country in the world to introduce gay marriage and to legalize euthanasia. Also in the economic field I reversed the trend. I drastically cut income taxes and taxes for entrepreneurs. Economic growth in Belgium rose beyond what was expected.
After I left office, I was elected in the European Parliament where I became group leader of the Liberals and Democrats. For the past five years I have been an impatient champion of reform within the EU. I have fought for faster decision making and more focus on the essential tasks of the Union.
Since the elections in May 2014, my group is part of the pro- European coalition. We intend to fight for more jobs and your civil rights.
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Politician
Guy Verhofstadt: Who is the diehard Europhile who has been appointed as EU's chief Brexit negotiator?
From describing David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage as 'rats fleeing a sinking ship' to reportedly being banned from entering Russia, he has often found himself in the spotlight
Maya Oppenheim
@mayaoppenheim
Wednesday 14 September 2016 15:00 BST
Click to follow
The Independent Online
9-Guy-Verhofstadt-get.jpg
Farage is less than happy about Mr Verhofstadt appointment as Brexit negotiator Getty
It would be fair to say Guy Verhofstadt is the last person the Leave camp could have hoped to be appointed as lead Brexit negotiator of the European Parliament. The former Prime Minister of Belgium is a staunch advocate of the EU and has frequently made his anti-Brexit views known.
Most recently, the straight-talking Flemish Belgian politician found himself in the limelight for his much-publicised description of David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage as “rats fleeing a sinking ship” following their resignations after Britain voted to leave the EU.
Throughout his time in the European Parliament, the 63-year-old EU veteran has found himself in dispute with Nigel Farage. The former UKIP leader recently dubbed Mr Verhofstadt a “fanatic” and said the EU had “declared war” on Britain by his appointing him as chief Brexit negotiator.
Brexit reactions – in pictures
10 show all
But who is the man who became an MEP after heading three governments over almost a decade selected to help lead Britain out of the EU?
He rapidly shot through the party ranks
Born in 1953 in the Belgian city of Dendermonde, he became involved in student politics while studying law at the University of Ghent, becoming the president of the Liberal Flemish Student's union.
He quickly rose through the political ranks to become the President of his party in 1982 at the age of just 29.
He was known as ‘baby Thatcher’
In 1985 he became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Budget under Prime Minister Wilfried Martens and was christened “Baby Thatcher” because of his laissez-faire, free market views.
Nevertheless, his political views quickly changed as he moved away from the neoliberal politics he previously held dearly, and towards the centre-ground. This became particularly clear during his first term as Prime Minister.
Serving as the Belgian Prime Minster between 1999 and 2008, he was the first liberal Prime Minister in Belgium since 1884, defeating the Socialists and Christian Democrats.
Since 2009 he has served as a Member of the European Parliament where he is the leader of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.
He is expected to make it difficult for Britain to leave the EU
An avid tweeter, Mr Verhofstadt has posted frankly and forthrightly about the fact he is not keen to allow Britain access to the single market without accepting the free movement of EU citizens.
“If UK wants access to #SingleMarket, it must also accept the free movement of citizens. Our four freedoms are inseparable,” he wrote on Tuesday morning.
#Brexit should be delivered before 2019, when EU politics enters into new cycle & the @Europarl_EN starts new mandate.
— Guy Verhofstadt (@GuyVerhofstadt) 13 September 2016
He does not appear to get along with Mr Farage
Mr Farage is less than happy about Mr Verhofstadt's appointment as Brexit negotiator.
"On behalf of the European Parliament, we've got Guy Verhofstadt. He's the man who is going to be negotiating Brexit," he said in Strasbourg in France on Wednesday.
Read more
Cameron, Johnson and Farage described as ‘rats fleeing a sinking ship'
“If you were to think of this building [the EU Parliament] as a temple, well, Mr Verhofstadt is the high priest. A fanatic. In fact, there is only really one nationalist in this room and it's you [Verhofstadt] because you want flags, anthems, armies... you are an EU nationalist.
In a similar vein, Mr Verhofstadt has been less than effusive about Mr Farage on past occasions. In June, he accused him of lying about migration, Turkey and the NHS in a heated European Parliament debate. He said: “Finally we will be getting rid of the biggest waste in the EU budget – that we have paid for 17 years of your salary.”
He is reported to be blacklisted from entering Russia
In May 2015, media reported Mr Verhofstadt had been included in a Russian blacklist of European Union politicians barred from entering Russia. His spokesman Jeroen Reijnen told AFP he was on the list.
“Mr Verhofstadt is banned from entry to Russia. He is on a blacklist with around 80 people,” Reijnen claimed, saying the ban came after Verhofstadt called for an independent international probe into the murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.
Verhofstadt, Guy. Europe's Last Chance: Why the European States Must Form a More Perfect Union
Mattie Cook
142.2 (Feb. 1, 2017): p92.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Verhofstadt, Guy. Europe's Last Chance: Why the European States Must Form a More Perfect Union. Basic. Jan. 2017. 304p. notes, index. ISBN 9780465096855. $27.99; ebk. ISBN 9780465096862. POL SCI
Former Belgian prime minister and current president of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Verhofstadt (The United States of Europe) delivers <> in his latest work: <
Cook, Mattie
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Cook, Mattie. "Verhofstadt, Guy. Europe's Last Chance: Why the European States Must Form a More Perfect Union." Library Journal, 1 Feb. 2017, p. 92. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479301293&it=r&asid=2fac046563d9ec341c617d1fc45fa46c. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479301293
Europe's Last Chance: Why the European States Must Form a More Perfect Union
263.48 (Nov. 28, 2016): p62.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Europe's Last Chance: Why the European States Must Form a More Perfect Union
Guy Verhofstadt. Basic, $27.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-4650-9685-5
Verhofstadt, former prime minister of Belgium, issues a call to action in this thoughtful and <
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Europe's Last Chance: Why the European States Must Form a More Perfect Union." Publishers Weekly, 28 Nov. 2016, p. 62. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA473149957&it=r&asid=b388af37ba46d842dd662ead91df4524. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A473149957
Verhofstadt, Guy: EUROPE'S LAST CHANCE
(Nov. 15, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Verhofstadt, Guy EUROPE'S LAST CHANCE Basic (Adult Nonfiction) $27.99 1, 3 ISBN: 978-0-465-09685-5
With the entire European project severely threatened, Belgium's former prime minister offers a prescription to save the European Union.Following the bailout of Greece and Britain's vote to leave the union, amid a boiling refugee crisis and an unprecedented threat of terrorism, the EU's continued survival no longer seems assured. How, then, to save it? A member of the European Parliament since 2009, Verhofstadt (The Financial Crisis--How Europe Can Save the World, 2009, etc.) argues, unsurprisingly, for complete integration along the lines of the American federal model. Few will dispute his analysis of the union's current infirmities: a sluggish economy, a 25 percent youth unemployment rate, low levels of labor mobility, no common budget, a pitifully weak defense community, lax security arrangements, and a common currency unsupported by a true political union. As he addresses these and other issues, the author hits all the predictable notes about transparency and democracy while calling for more streamlined institutions and even a two-tier reorganization (full or associated membership). For the current mess, he faults EU elites for their "quick fix politics" and for attempting a "step-by-step Europe" instead of committing wholeheartedly to union. Mostly, though, he blames those under "the nationalist delusion that still haunts Europe": <
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Verhofstadt, Guy: EUROPE'S LAST CHANCE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA469865858&it=r&asid=28b0a1e5c3018b586f8e23aeb6a934a1. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A469865858
Vol. 39 No. 11 · 1 June 2017
pages 9-12 | 3662 words
Constitutional Fantasy
Jan-Werner Müller
BuyEurope’s Last Chance: Why the European States Must Form a More Perfect Union by Guy Verhofstadt
Basic, 304 pp, £20.00, January, ISBN 978 0 465 09685 5
If Guy Verhofstadt did not exist, Eurosceptics would have had to invent him. He is the cliché of a Brussels insider, whose motto would be: ‘Whatever the problem, the answer is more Europe.’ Verhofstadt is, among other things, a former Belgian prime minister and one-time candidate for president of the European Commission (supported by France and Germany, but vetoed by Tony Blair). Today, he leads the liberal party group in the European Parliament. Known for his brash rhetoric, he lays into right-wing leaders, justly accusing Viktor Orbán, for instance, of accepting the EU’s money but not its values. He has it in for leftists too, lecturing (also justly) Alexis Tsipras on how to end clientelism in Greece, shouting: ‘Do it!’ One of his previous books was subtitled ‘How Europe Can Save the World’.
Verhofstadt seemed to be one of the very few politicians ready with a strategy after the Brexit result. He conceded that the British had been right to find fault with the EU. Hence the next step, after pushing Britain to leave as quickly as possible, would be to transform what is currently a confederation of nation-states into a proper federation. Presumably his fellow parliamentarians appointed him chief Brexit negotiator because of his toughness; it isn’t obvious that so many of them are keen on what, in Europe’s Last Chance, he calls his ‘grand federal project’: a United States of Europe.
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Verhofstadt is equally blunt about the Union’s more directly political deficits. Three-quarters of a century after the first postwar attempts to combine some of its defence forces, Europe remains a political (and military) dwarf. Verhofstadt considers the US assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland’s exclamation in 2014, ‘Fuck the EU’, to be an accurate assessment of the Union’s resolve and resources in Syria and Ukraine. In both cases its much touted foreign policy capacities – the EU, after all, now has a common external representative and a common diplomatic service – proved ineffective; the little that was achieved can be credited to national leaders, namely, Merkel and Hollande. Verhofstadt thinks such Franco-German leadership only reinforces the blindness that Paul-Henri Spaak (another Belgian), one of the founders of European integration, long ago observed. There are only two kinds of state in Europe, Spaak said: small states and small states that have not yet realised they are small. As a result, Verhofstadt laments, France, Italy and Britain have persisted with post-imperial ‘pompous behaviour’, but have de facto become the playthings of the great powers – including Putin’s Russia.
So what is to be done? Verhofstadt is an unabashed centraliser. He thinks that having a large number of spread-out institutions (with, he might have added, incomprehensible acronyms) is typical of developing countries, not of what should be the most powerful economic bloc in the world. All the bureaucracy must be based in Brussels, and an end put to the unseemly game of Europe’s leaders grabbing as many EU agencies (and as much EU cash) as they can for their home countries. The European Parliament should sit in one place, not two; the only purpose of having the circus travel back and forth between Brussels and Strasbourg is to satisfy French pride. There also has to be a proper European army now that ‘playtime is over,’ as Verhofstadt puts it, and European nation-states can no longer plausibly outsource their security to the US (quite apart from anything else, one of the few constant themes of Trump’s interviews over the years has been that Germany, having lost the Second World War, somehow got the better of the victors thanks to unfair trade agreements – though that belief is also widespread in parts of Europe). Above all, the administration of the Eurozone must be centralised. As long as finance ministers are left to continue doing short-sighted deals behind closed doors, the euro will carry on lurching from crisis to crisis. Like many economists, Verhofstadt believes that a proper currency union will only work if the real economies inside the union grow together. Hence his proposal of an official ‘convergence code’ which would reward those countries that adhere to it with access to common European debt financing.
The wish list is long. To fulfil it, the EU will need a quite different political and, ultimately, constitutional architecture (as Verhofstadt candidly admits, it would end up resembling the Belgian federal system). In full Madison mode, Verhofstadt suggests that the EU needs a proper government with an elected president, rather than the current absurd situation in which the Union has five presidents (one for the Commission, one for the Council, that is, the group of member-state governments, one for the Parliament, one for the Eurozone group of finance ministers, and one for the European Central Bank), three of whom showed up to accept the Nobel Peace Prize for the EU in 2012. The Union also needs a parliament with real power to shape the political and economic life of the Continent, which means, above all, the capacity to tax EU citizens directly (which the European Parliament at present conspicuously lacks). Verhofstadt turns the American maxim on its head: there should be no representation without taxation. On top of a grown-up parliament, Verhofstadt would like a senate whose members would be elected by national assemblies. Like the European Council today, the new chamber would be oriented towards the individual member states. In the current situation, national governments call the shots and veto sensible policies left, right and centre. The role of Verhofstadt’s senate would be to check that EU legislation was in accordance with the Union’s underlying constitutional principles (though Verhofstadt doesn’t really tell us what they are supposed to be).
This sort of constitutional fantasy must be diverting during boring parliamentary debates. And, as with most exercises in imaginary institution-building, the blueprint that Verhofstadt wants to sell us as ‘logical’ and ‘inevitable’ has a whiff of the arbitrary about it. Why not have an upper house made up of delegates sent by member-state governments? Why not have the European Parliament choose the leader of the Eurozone government and make him or her more like a prime minister?
British Eurosceptics, if they cared at all, would have a field day with Verhofstadt’s ‘more perfect union’. But gloating aside – ‘We told you they wanted a superstate; thank God we’re out’ – they would have to explain why Verhofstadt’s basic argument is wrong. The EU doesn’t work well, and that may be reason enough for some to want to leave, but whoever stays has to face the reality that making the Eurozone and the Union’s common external border – to take just the most glaring failings – function properly will require more integration. Further integration isn’t inevitable, but it is logical. With respect to money and free movement, as the American political scientists Kathleen McNamara and Dan Kelemen have pointed out, the EU is an incomplete state-building project: there are states without their own currency, but there are no currencies without a state; there are many states without functioning borders, but once an area of free movement has been established inside a territory, there can be no such thing as an external border controlled by different states applying different rules. Most states became states because of external threats, or, in the words of the sociologist Charles Tilly: ‘War made the state, and the state made war.’ By contrast, the EU as we know it has grown out of a market project; states may be able to make a market, but a market won’t make a state.
The European elites simply do not agree on what it would take to make the Union function as it should. Germans think that in the Eurozone, it is vital to apply the rules in a completely inflexible manner. The French favour greater discretion, and are of course pleased when Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, explains a relaxing of Eurozone rules for France with the simple statement, ‘Because it’s France.’ Germans are worried that with Britain gone, the Club Med countries, which want more flexibility (auf Deutsch: more money to be coughed up by German taxpayers), will win out. At the same time, they hope that Emmanuel Macron will at last implement ‘structural reforms’ in France – and for that, they appear to be willing to make concessions, even if the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has explicitly counselled ‘respect and restraint’ vis-à-vis the new French president.
On paper, German and French governments have long shared the goal of ‘political union’, which would involve at least some co-ordination of fiscal policies in Eurozone countries. Just after the presidential election in France, Macron and Merkel seemed to agree that a European finance minister and maybe even a common Eurozone budget might be a good idea (they have both ruled out common European debt, or Eurobonds, which the German Social Democrats also daren’t advocate in an election year). According to a recent survey, the German public too is in favour of such a plan, though it opposes relaxing any budgetary rules to make Macron’s life easier.
In theory, a redesigned Franco-German engine could run better, but look more closely at what the engineers have in mind, and the motor is more likely to stutter. Macron wants a European finance minister, accountable to some kind of Eurozone parliament, to invest money; Wolfgang Schäuble, on the other hand, has made it clear that the job would consist in making sure the rules were followed. In any case, what exactly would a common budget be for? To help countries that are making painful ‘structural adjustments’? That, as it happens, was the justification offered when Germany broke the rules and took on more debt under the Schröder government in the early 2000s (an episode many in Berlin have conveniently forgotten). Or something much more ambitious, like a European employment insurance scheme? Macron supports such a scheme, as part of his programme for a Europe that ‘protects’. Such an insurance scheme would help to address economic imbalances by shifting funds to countries in trouble. It could be covered by taxes related to cross-border or financial transactions, thus reinforcing a sense among citizens that the Eurozone can confer concrete benefits as well as issue austerity diktats.
One could be forgiven for thinking that in the end all this will be another example of Verhofstadt’s politics of announcements (and that the outcome would be the same even if the Social Democrats were to win the German election in September; their leader, Martin Schulz, is a committed pro-European). But then again, 2017 might be different. Macron watched up close as Hollande failed in his inept attempt to mobilise Club Med against Merkel. France’s youngest ever president has no choice but to go for a fuite en avant. And for once, that sort of risk-taking could align with the wishes of Merkel, Europe’s most risk-averse politician. Whatever the outcome of September’s election, Merkel is nearing the end of her political career – and she won’t want to be remembered as the German chancellor who ended up dividing Europe. Like Macron, she doesn’t have much time to address the EU’s unfinished business. The president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, by propping up the Eurozone through quantitative easing, has been buying time for Merkel (as well as for Italy, which, from a financial point of view, is Europe’s ticking time-bomb). At the same time, Erdoğan is being bought off while Europeans work on devising a common border regime (and, ultimately, a common refugee and asylum policy). Merkel must use the time she has to construct a lasting European architecture in matters of money and migration.
There are two dilemmas here that Verhofstadt doesn’t address, but which will have to be faced by anyone thinking about a post-Brexit European Union. First, can a highly fragmented Europe, whose different states participate in different forms of integration (Euro and Schengen among others), work properly? Of late, both Brussels politicians and national leaders have talked about a ‘multi-speed’ Europe, where some states will advance and some choose to stay behind (or will simply be left behind).
An à la carte Europe might sound attractive in theory, but in practice, as the problems thrown up by the Brexit shock have made clear, the club cannot ultimately work on the basis of pick-and-choose. Without Britain, for one thing, there is no major state in the self-chosen slow lane, which makes it more likely that smaller countries will be drawn into the core or else feel peripheral and not merely slow, but second-rate. This fear is already pronounced among Central Europeans; Donald Tusk, the former Polish prime minister and successor to Herman Van Rompuy as president of the European Council, is subtly trying to block a multi-speed Europe – even if it means preventing the EU from addressing substantive problems. Another problem, less often remarked on, is that a highly fragmented Europe, with some institutions inside the EU framework and many ad hoc treaties between states (like the ones concluded during the Eurozone crisis), makes the EU ever more incomprehensible to its citizens. Increasing capacity to address problems comes at the expense of basic transparency and a sense of who exactly is to be held accountable when things go wrong.
Verhofstadt thinks the solution is a clear-cut distinction between full EU membership and some kind of associate status. Again, one’s imagination can roam freely: how about a three-tier or four-tier Europe – why not? But the crucial question, which Verhofstadt does not tackle, is whether the core ultimately has to become something like a federal state, or whether it is possible to have elements of statehood – a common currency and a common border, for example – without full federacy. He deflects the issue by asserting, in response to an imaginary critic of his scheme, that ‘anyone who claims to see in this the creation of a superstate is either acting in bad faith or wilfully blind.’ Indeed, the size of the institutions and the competences they start out with could be quite modest – but the essential attribute of the state as such is of course not size, but sovereignty.
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Like many participants in discussions about the future of the EU, Verhofstadt fails to make some basic distinctions between power, competences and sovereignty. The UK ceded many competences to Brussels, but it never gave up sovereignty; otherwise the Brexit referendum and the bitter outcome of leaving the club wouldn’t have been legally possible (compare Brexit with the secessions preceding the American Civil War). Brexit will indeed return some legal competences to London, but it will mean less power for the UK in the world, as the clout of Theresa May’s ‘global Britain’ (an extreme example of fantasy politics) will be much less than what the UK in conjunction with 27 other countries could have achieved in trade, security and many other areas. Competences can go back and forth, sovereignty cannot.
So the question Verhofstadt would have to answer is whether in his scheme the member states ultimately remain, as the EU jargon has it, ‘masters of the treaties’, or whether the European treaties could in future be changed without unanimity. He writes that his more perfect union ‘would acquire new competences only where they would generate effective added value’. But that’s not the issue. The question is who decides whether a more perfect Union will create effective added value (whatever that means in practice) and hence whether more competences for the Union are justified.
The second dilemma facing Verhofstadt and others like him is: how to get there? Here he deploys sleight of hand, asserting simply that ‘European leaders underestimate the pro-European feelings among their citizens.’ He keeps repeating that all negative feelings about the EU are a result of its not being powerful enough to produce concrete results. There is indeed evidence that Europeans want more joint action – or even state-like features – precisely in areas where their national leaders are most resistant to agree on real co-operation: defence and counter-terrorism measures, for instance. In no country has a majority formed for exiting the Union; nor are there any majorities for leaving the Eurozone, even in the societies hit hardest by austerity. But the question is how pro-EU sentiments could be channelled into an actual political strategy, especially when it comes to highly sensitive issues such as refugee policy. Macron has proposed ‘democratic conventions’ inside the member states as well as a common European list from which to fill the 73 seats to be vacated by British MEPs in 2019 – not much perhaps, but at least these are institutional mechanisms, as opposed to some magical trust in the goodness of the everyday European.
Verhofstadt himself is adamant that national leaders themselves cannot possibly be expected to do the right thing, because they are descendants of Thatcher and De Gaulle, which is to say: politicians who think of the EU as an institution through which to maximise what they believe to be their national interests (or, for that matter, their personal political interests). Who, then, are the people and organisations that can build support for a different kind of Europe? As the German political scientist Claus Offe has pointed out, one of the tragedies of the Eurocrisis has been that the very forces that could have done most to end it – parties and unions disposed to some form of cross-border solidarity – have been progressively weakened the longer the crisis has continued. More mutual trust among Europeans – and, ultimately, a willingness to be governed in certain policy areas by a majority of non-nationals – would be required. Yet the national antagonisms the crisis has exacerbated – or, sometimes, even created from scratch – have made it all the more difficult to give the EU more competences, let alone move in the direction of Verhofstadt’s dream Union.
Still, the Belgian might take heart from the recent surprising show of unity among European governments. It took them little time to agree on a Brexit strategy (as Theresa May put it in a campaign speech, ‘27 countries are lining up to oppose us’ – apparently an unexpected and scandalous thing in an entity calling itself a Union). Support for EU membership is at a ten-year high. This prompts a not very nice thought: the worse Brexit turns out to be, the better for the likes of Verhofstadt and their belief that Europe can get its act together if only people think hard enough about what coming together could achieve – and what a disaster dissolution would be. Trying to drive home the reality of a hard Brexit, Verhofstadt wrote recently that ‘come the summer of 2019, unless the government requests transitional arrangements to the contrary and these requests are agreed by all EU countries, UK citizens will have no more of a right to holiday, travel and study in EU countries than tourists from Moscow or students from Mumbai.’ This suggests a very hard line indeed vis-à-vis Britain, perhaps partly pour encourager les autres, to indicate to the rest of Europe just how valuable their Union is, and why it has to be made, if not perfect, at least better than it is today.