The Forum on Contemporary Europe (FCE)
continues a multiyear study of the challenges facing
European Union integration and global crisis intervention.
The increasingly complex demands straining
Europe and its trans-Atlantic relations—labor migration,
spending on welfare economies, globalized cultures,
and threats of terrorism, coupled with Europe’s struggle
to ratify a single constitution—underline the need to
measure prospects for unification and the EU’s ability
to function as a coordinated international actor. This
year, FCE is broadening its work to assess the role an
integrated EU can play in addressing the world’s most
troubling crises.
EU INTEGRATION: THE CASE OF TURKEY
The forum has explored the question of Turkey’s EU
membership with Stanford scholars, European leaders,
and the public. In spring 2006, former German foreign
minister Joschka Fischer and author Christopher
Hitchens offered candid analyses of EU expansion.
Hitchens challenged commonplace descriptions of
“Christian Old Europe” antagonized by “Islamicized”
secular Turkey. Europe and Islam are not newly in
contention, he said, but are playing out a centuries-old
relationship grounded in the European and Ottoman
empires in the Eastern Mediterranean. For Hitchens,
the portrait of clashing civilizations obscures the crises
facing minority Kurdish and neighboring societies
whose survival is at stake in EU expansion.
Delivering the Payne lecture, Fischer noted the
dilemma of seeking to achieve popular ratification of a
European constitution at a time when public attention
is galvanized by the Turkish candidacy. Fischer rejected
common comparisons between European state rulings
on Islamic traditions and models of U.S. multiculturalism.
Fischer found admirable aspects of the U.S. inspiration
but questioned its relevance for mediating myriad EU
interests. For Fischer, the EU as a supra-state actor
holds the promise to democratize conflict resolution
in the deliberative model of the European Parliament
and legitimate its role as a peacekeeping actor.
EU INTERVENTION: CRISIS MANAGMENT AND COMBATING INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM
The forum’s new focus on EU crisis intervention began
with addresses by Sir Richard Dearlove, former head
of Britain’s Security Services (MI-6), and Alain Bauer,
former vice president of the University of Paris–Sorbonne and director of France’s National Institute
for Higher Studies in Security, who discussed EU counterintelligence
and international early-warning protocols.
Greek Ambassador Alexandros Mallias spoke on the
Eastern Mediterranean context that frames the Turkish
candidacy, the economics of EU integration, and
prospects for responding to the tensions in Cyprus.
Austrian Ambassador Eva Novotny spoke on Austria’s
immediate past EU presidency, evaluating the impact
of the EU Council’s intervention in the Israel-Lebanon
crisis. Professor Josef Joffe spoke on his new book,
Uberpower: The Imperial Temptation of America, and the
prospects for U.S.–EU interaction in global affairs.
The forum’s fall series brought public acclaim when
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, co-president of the European
Parliament Greens/New Alliance Parties, delivered FCE’s
2006–2007 “Europe Now” address, cosponsored by
Stanford’s Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and the
Woods Institute for the Environment. Speaking to an
overflow crowd, and meeting separately with faculty and
researchers, Cohn-Bendit focused his public remarks
on European Integration: Society, Politics, and Islam. A
European Parliament leader, Cohn-Bendit spoke on
his party’s proposal to deploy Joschka Fischer as the
EU representative to Middle East peace negotiations.
Expanding and integrating the EU, Cohn-Bendit argued, is
the most reasonable strategy for strengthening Europe’s
role in international relations and crisis intervention.
The Forum on Contemporary Europe continues to
deepen scholarly and public understanding of the EU
promise to achieve democratic governance, economic
growth, security, and social integration among its
member states and in its foreign engagements.
