Review: Networking Europe

Abstract

During the 1990s a series of annual seminars took place in Freudenstadt, subsidised by the German Social Democratic Party's generously endowed Friedrich-Ebert Foundation. The 26 papers collected here are a selection of the work presented to the seminar, ranging from general surveys of the future of the Union, through gender politics, to racism, cultural tourism and the new politics of devolution in the UK. This is an avowedly eclectic approach. It asks historians and political scientists to reflect on any or all aspects of regional structures which interest them. In the light of the debate which is now beginning to surface on the role of regions as a ~ if not the constitutional element of the EU, this could look like a missed opportunity. But the Freudenstadt academics are to be forgiven. For most of the 1990s, the idea of a Europe of the regions carried little weight. We know, in the wake of last December's Nice Summit, that times have changed. Regions are refusing to lie back and think of Europe, even if Member State governments, keen to keep them in the constitutional equivalent of the missionary position, would prefer it that way. Post-Nice regions are starting to sound more and more like Peter Finch in the film Network: 'We're mad as hell and we're not taking it anymore.'