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Maurice, Antoine
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3 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.
Antoine Maurice on how the EU is 'going Swiss'
Columnist Antoine Maurice wonders just how much clout the EU weilds on the international stage. "The other day two French politicians, Edouard Balladur and Hubert Védrine, engaged in a radio debate on the EU's foreign policy, using the danger of 'going Swiss' as their foil ... This meant, in their eyes, that united Europe at best behaves with the modesty of a small country on the international stage, something they both deplore ... On major issues - terrorism, trade, environment - the Union boasts about its soft power (the ways and means of exerting diplomatic influence). Yet it knows very well that today, like yesterday, real power rests utimately on conventional power, i.e. economic and military strength, which the EU lacks. That is different from the Swiss syndrome."
» full article (external link, French)
More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » EU Policy, » Europe, » Global
Separatist movements in Europe
The chronicler Antoine Maurice notes that Spain is beset by the autonomist whims of several regions. "Thirty years after the Constitution, the federal or unitary constitution of Spain has once again become an essential poiltical issue, even a question concerning the survival of the nation. Historians consider that the Spanish nation is not so old ... . It is the Franco dictatorship that promoted the nation by crushing anything ressembling identity-based culture and individual histories on its way, something which, in a current context of hyper sensitive attitudes to History and memory, does not encourage love for the Spanish nation. The current debate, fuelled by bitterness, is double edged: firstly, it is a political debate, in the best sense of the term, on the institutional future of the nation. Secondly, it is an ideological debate that stirs emotional impetus rooted in a past that will not settle and a future that has yet to be written. In these times of terrorism and globalisation, old European nations are very far from securing a hegemony in international relations or in their own interior cohesion."
» full article (external link, French)
More from the press review on the subject » Security Policy / Crises / War, » Minorities, » Social movements, » Spain, » Europe
The Roms, an authentic globalised population
The journalist Antoine Maurice ponders the history of Romany people and their way of life. "Their way of life reposes on a highly structured clannish organisation that crosses borders and justice systems. Some characteristics are as limiting as their precarious, nomadic rag'n'bone status. In what is a transitional phase for Europe, plunged at once in historical grouping and 'deterretorialising' globalisation, traveller communities express both archaic and the most modern of European culture. Archaic, because of their minority enclosure. At the same time the Tzigans inhabit the music, languages, cultures and religions of Europe. Lacking a national aspiration of their own, they are able to slip, like genuine globalized people, into a number of them without ever losing their Tzigan identity."
» full article (external link, French)
More from the press review on the subject » Minorities, » Europe
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