SEEU Review vol. 6 Nr. 2 (pdf) - South East European University

It seems as though the author does notleave any blank space, has penetratedalmost every alcove of issues thatrequires treatment and has evolved themwith outstanding professionalcompetence. He has done this not only ona bibliographic and archival basis, butalso a practical one which is very diverse,with a versatile and pleasant style, andwith a very rich and refined languagewhich is almost artistic. He has given us awork, I repeat, a genuine scientific work.One that is very useful, and that I wouldsay is needed by academia, for students,diplomats and ordinary readers.As I said this work addresses a broadspectrum of issues, all of them of acurrent, scientific, and practical interest.But as scholars in the field, our attentionremains particularly on some of the mostcontroversial issues and the sharpest: thesubject of current debate in many areas ofscience.It's very difficult to stop and analyze or toemphasize one by one all the matters thathe has taken as subjects of his book,because they are numerous.It is sufficient to mention only some ofthem in order to judge where and how hisattention is focused and distributed.Forexample, in the second part of the bookEU Enlargement as Geopolitics, he stopsat both transformation directions of EUenlargement and communitarism ofsovereignty and vice versa, the selectivefall of the Berlin Wall.The third part, EU Enlargement Policydeals with elegant issues such as thetransformation of a sovereign state into amember state, post-sovereign dilemmas,the illusion of the European super-state,the delayed Westphalia and Versailles inthe Balkans and the humanizing ofinternational law. It also deals with whyenlarge EU and not reunify Europe, theEU enlargement policy in the WesternBalkans: promise or reality, the delayedage-long reform of the Balkans, the clashof history with geography in the Balkans,and others.In the fourth part, MembershipTechniques he handles sensitive issuessuch as pre-candidating the EU, Europeanpartnerships, visa regimes, running formembership, pre-membership, thedynamics of membership negotiations,etc.For your pleasure I will ask for yourunderstanding and patience to read foryou a page, simply a page which,although the author may not haveintended, in my view, gives the wholeconcept and major theme of his book.On page 149 he says:“Europe is our fate, not just ourchoice.The membership of a country inthe European Union, it is not an act butrather a process.It is the process oftransformation of the sovereign state intomember states. This transformation it isnot a technical process, but first of all ageopolitical one, which means thatbesides standards it is also led by policiesand that, besides the communityprinciples, it is influenced by nationalinterests and geostrategicconsiderations.If the sovereign state wascreated in the XVII century, the nationalone in XVIII-XIX centuries, the secondhalf of the twentieth century created themember state, as equal to the sovereignstate. Whereas in the first decade of XXIcentury, the dilemma: a sovereign ormember state actualized more and more.In the 60 th anniversary of implementingShuman’s European supranational vision,the member state is progressively pushinginto history the sovereign state. But themodel of the Westphalian sovereigntyWestphalian hasn’t declined yet. Threecenturies after the inauguration of themodern state concept, post-modernmodel-which was emerging, was stillunder the shadow of the nation state.Postmodernexperiment with the EuropeanUnion as a post-historical approach wasongoing, but it was illusory to think thatthe national will be replaced by thesupranational.190