Europe is benefiting from tough, painful economic reforms in the wake of the 2008 downturn, according to the leader of the European Union.

"Europe had to evolve dramatically because reality forced it to," said José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, in a May 1 talk on campus. "This change came about with the economic and financial crisis initiated with the collapse of the Lehman Brothers back in 2008, and that has caused me many sleepless nights."

The title of Barroso's presentation was "Global Europe, from the Atlantic to the Pacific." The event was co-sponsored by Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, The Europe Center and the Center for Russia, East European and Eurasian Studies. The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union.

Barroso acknowledged that the financial meltdown hit Europe especially hard, given the "serious flaws" in the way some countries were running their economies, living beyond their means and lacking the competitiveness required in a globalized world.

The crisis revealed, he added, the "economic interdependence inside Europe," and the fact that the 28-member union did not have the capability to handle large-scale financial emergencies or prevent unsound policies on the part of member nations like Greece.

"So we had to adapt and reform as we have done many times in the European Union," Barroso said.

Economic reforms, regulations

And so, the European Union adopted a more extensive system of economic and budgetary governance to ensure member states stick to their financial commitments and become more competitive. Today, each country sends their national budget to the EU headquarters in Brussels before approving it at the national level, he said.

Barroso added that the EU created a "European stability mechanism," or safety net, worth about $1 trillion to help member states adopt key reforms and assist them in times of crisis. There are also more detailed banking regulations that give the EU more authority over national banks.

"Now the control is exercised at European level through the European Central Bank and there are common rules for banks so that we avoid having to use taxpayers' money to rescue them," he said.

Barroso dismissed criticism that the EU moves too slowly, saying that is inevitable in a system that depends on the will of national governments and citizens to work together rather than coercion.

Still, high unemployment persists in Europe, especially among the young, he said. But he is hopeful about Europe's prospects in the long run.

He added, "We have now returned to growth after some painful but necessary reforms."

Upheaval in Ukraine

With the situation in Ukraine worsening by the day, Barroso said that Europe "stands ready" to support that country in becoming a democratic, prosperous and independent country. He described the Ukrainian crisis as the "biggest threat to Europe's stability and security since the fall of the Berlin Wall."

He said the people of Ukraine expressed a "clear wish to take their future into their own hands and come closer to the European Union" through an agreement that would have given them political association and economic integration.

"Instead of accepting the sovereign choices of Ukraine, Russia decided to interfere, to destabilize and to occupy part of the territory of a neighboring country in a gesture that we hoped was long buried in history books," said Barroso.

He noted, "Europe cannot accept nor condone this type of behavior." Russia's aggression will carry political, diplomatic and economic costs, he said, adding that the issue looms larger than Europe, the United States or even the G7.

"It should concern the rest of the world as well, as it is a direct threat to international law and to international peace," he said.

Barroso served as the prime minister of Portugal from 2002 to 2004. He has been the president of the European Commission for the past 10 years.

Clifton B. Parker is a writer for the Stanford News Service. 

By Clifton B. Parker

Europe is benefiting from tough, painful economic reforms in the wake of the 2008 downturn, according to the leader of the European Union.

"Europe had to evolve dramatically because reality forced it to," said José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, in a May 1 talk on campus. "This change came about with the economic and financial crisis initiated with the collapse of the Lehman Brothers back in 2008, and that has caused me many sleepless nights."

The title of Barroso's presentation was "Global Europe, from the Atlantic to the Pacific." The event was co-sponsored by Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Europe Center and the Center for Russia, East European and Eurasian Studies. The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union.

Barroso acknowledged that the financial meltdown hit Europe especially hard, given the "serious flaws" in the way some countries were running their economies, living beyond their means and lacking the competitiveness required in a globalized world.

The crisis revealed, he added, the "economic interdependence inside Europe," and the fact that the 28-member union did not have the capability to handle large-scale financial emergencies or prevent unsound policies on the part of member nations like Greece.

"So we had to adapt and reform as we have done many times in the European Union," Barroso said.

Economic reforms, regulations

And so, the European Union adopted a more extensive system of economic and budgetary governance to ensure member states stick to their financial commitments and become more competitive. Today, each country sends their national budget to the EU headquarters in Brussels before approving it at the national level, he said.

Barroso added that the EU created a "European stability mechanism," or safety net, worth about $1 trillion to help member states adopt key reforms and assist them in times of crisis. There are also more detailed banking regulations that give the EU more authority over national banks.

"Now the control is exercised at European level through the European Central Bank and there are common rules for banks so that we avoid having to use taxpayers' money to rescue them," he said.

Barroso dismissed criticism that the EU moves too slowly, saying that is inevitable in a system that depends on the will of national governments and citizens to work together rather than coercion.

Still, high unemployment persists in Europe, especially among the young, he said. But he is hopeful about Europe's prospects in the long run.

He added, "We have now returned to growth after some painful but necessary reforms."

Upheaval in Ukraine

With the situation in Ukraine worsening by the day, Barroso said that Europe "stands ready" to support that country in becoming a democratic, prosperous and independent country. He described the Ukrainian crisis as the "biggest threat to Europe's stability and security since the fall of the Berlin Wall."

He said the people of Ukraine expressed a "clear wish to take their future into their own hands and come closer to the European Union" through an agreement that would have given them political association and economic integration.

"Instead of accepting the sovereign choices of Ukraine, Russia decided to interfere, to destabilize and to occupy part of the territory of a neighboring country in a gesture that we hoped was long buried in history books," said Barroso.

He noted, "Europe cannot accept nor condone this type of behavior." Russia's aggression will carry political, diplomatic and economic costs, he said, adding that the issue looms larger than Europe, the United States or even the G7.

"It should concern the rest of the world as well, as it is a direct threat to international law and to international peace," he said.

Barroso served as the prime minister of Portugal from 2002 to 2004. He has been the president of the European Commission for the past 10 years.

The Europe Center recently initiated a distinguished annual lectureship named, The Europe Center Lectureship on Europe and the World.  The lectures are intended to promote awareness of Europe's lessons and experiences with a goal of enhancing our collective knowledge of both contemporary global affairs and Europe itself.  Each year, faculty affiliates at the Center select a renowned intellectual to deliver the lectureship on a topic of significant scholarly interest.  The Europe Center invites you to the inaugural annual lectures of this series by Adam Tooze, Barton M. Briggs Professor of History, Yale University.

“Making Peace in Europe 1917-1919: Brest-Litovsk and Versailles”

Date: Wednesday, Apr 30, 2014

Time: 4:00 - 5:30 pm

Location: Koret Taube Room, Gunn-SIEPR

“Hegemony: Europe, America and the Problem of Financial Reconstruction, 1916-1933”

Date: Thursday, May 1, 2014

Time: 4:00 - 5:30 pm

Location: Koret Taube Room, Gunn-SIEPR

“Unsettled Lands: The Interwar Crisis of Agrarian Europe”

Date: May 2, 2014

Time: 4:00 - 5:30 pm

Location: Bechtel Conference Center

Reception: 5:30 - 6:15 pm

RSVP by Apr 23, 2014

On the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, Adam Tooze will deliver three lectures about the history of the transformation of the global power structure that followed from Imperial Germany’s decision to provoke America’s declaration of war in 1917.  Tooze advances a powerful explanation of why the First World War rearranged political and economic structures across Eurasia and the British Empire, sowed the seeds of revolution in Russia and China, and laid the foundations of a new global order that began to revolve around the United States and the Pacific.  These lectures will present an argument for why the fate of effectively the whole of civilization changed in 1917, and why the First World War’s legacy continues to shape our world today.

Tooze is the author of The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (2006) and Statistics and the German State 1900-1945: The Making of Modern Economic Knowledge (2001), among numerous other scholarly articles on modern European history.

Asked to summarize his biography and career, Donald K. Emmerson notes the legacy of an itinerant childhood: his curiosity about the world and his relish of difference, variety and surprise. A well-respected Southeast Asia scholar at Stanford since 1999, he admits to a contrarian streak and corresponding regard for Socratic discourse. His publications in 2014 include essays on epistemology, one forthcoming in Pacific Affairs, the other in Producing Indonesia: The State of the Field of Indonesian Studies.

Emmerson is a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), an affiliated faculty member of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, an affiliated scholar in the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, and director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Recently he spoke with Shorenstein APARC about his life and career within and beyond academe.

Your father was a U.S. Foreign Service Officer. Did that background affect your professional life?

Indeed it did. Thanks to my dad’s career, I grew up all over the world. We changed countries every two years. I was born in Japan, spent most of my childhood in Peru, the USSR, Pakistan, India and Lebanon, lived for various lengths of time in France, Nigeria, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and the Netherlands, and traveled extensively in other countries. Constantly changing places fostered an appetite for novelty and surprise. Rotating through different cultures, languages, and schools bred empathy and curiosity. The vulnerability and ignorance of a newly arrived stranger gave rise to the pleasure of asking questions and, later, questioning the answers. Now I encourage my students to enjoy and learn from their own encounters with what is unfamiliar, in homework and fieldwork alike. 

Were you always focused on Southeast Asia? 

No. I had visited Southeast Asia earlier, but a fortuitous failure in grad school play a key role in my decision to concentrate on Southeast Asia. At Yale I planned a dissertation on African nationalism. I applied for fieldwork support to every funding source I could think of, but all of the envelopes I received in reply were thin. Fortunately, I had already developed an interest in Indonesia, and was offered last-minute funding from Yale to begin learning Indonesian. Two years of fieldwork in Jakarta yielded a dissertation that became my first book, Indonesia’s Elite: Political Culture and Cultural Politics. I sometimes think I should reimburse the African Studies Council for covering my tuition at Yale – doubtless among the worst investments they ever made. 

Indonesia stimulated my curiosity in several directions. Living in an archipelago led me to maritime studies and to writing on the rivalries in the South China Sea. Fieldwork among Madurese fishermen inspired Rethinking Artisanal Fisheries Development: Western Concepts, Asian Experiences. Experiences with Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia channeled my earlier impressions of Muslim societies into scholarship and motivated a debate with an anthropologist in the book Islamism: Contested Perspectives on Political Islam. 

What led you to Stanford?

In the early 1980s, I took two years of leave from the University of Wisconsin-Madison to become a visiting scholar at Stanford, and later I returned to The Farm for shorter periods. At Stanford I enjoyed gaining fresh perspectives from colleagues in the wider contexts of East Asia and the Asia-Pacific region. In 1999, I accepted an appointment as a senior fellow in FSI to start and run a program on Southeast Asia at Stanford with initial support from the Luce Foundation.

As a fellow, most of your time is focused on research, but you also proctor a fellowship program and have led student trips overseas. How have you found the experience advising younger scholars?

In 2006, I took a talented and motivated group of Stanford undergrads to Singapore for a Bing Overseas Seminar. I turned them loose to conduct original field research in the city-state, including focusing on sensitive topics such as Singapore’s use of laws and courts to punish political opposition. Despite the critical nature of some of their findings, a selection was published in a student journal at the National University of Singapore (NUS). NUS then sent a contingent of its own students to Stanford for a research seminar that I was pleased to host. I encouraged the NUS students to break out of the Stanford “bubble” and include in their projects not only the accomplishments of Silicon Valley but its problems as well, including those evident in East Palo Alto.

That exchange also helped lay the groundwork for an endowment whereby NUS and Stanford annually and jointly select a deserving applicant to receive the Lee Kong China NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellowship on Contemporary Southeast Asia. The 2014 recipient is Lee Jones, a scholar from the University of London who will write on regional efforts to combat non-traditional security threats such as air pollution, money laundering and pandemic disease.

Where does the American “pivot to Asia” now stand, and how does it inform your work? 

Events in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and now in Crimea as well, have pulled American attention away from Southeast Asia. Yet the reasons for priority interest in the region have not gone away. East Asia remains the planet’s most consequential zone of economic growth. No other region is more directly exposed to the potentially clashing interests and actions of the world’s major states – China, Japan, India and the United States. The eleven countries of Southeast Asia – 630 million people – could become a concourse for peaceful trans-Pacific cooperation, or the locus of a new Sino-American cold war. It is in that hopeful yet risky context that I am presently researching China’s relations with Southeast Asia, especially regarding the South China Sea, and taking part in exchanges between Stanford scholars and our counterparts in Southeast Asia and China. 

Tell us something we don’t know about you.

Okay. Here are three instructive failures I experienced in 1999, the year I joined the Stanford faculty. I was evacuated from East Timor, along with other international observers, to escape massive violence by pro-Indonesian vigilantes bent on punishing the population for voting for independence. The press pass around my neck failed to protect me from the tear gas used to disperse demonstrators at that year’s meeting of the World Trade Organization – the “Battle of Seattle.” And in North Carolina in semifinal competition at the 1999 National Poetry Slam, performing as Mel Koronelos, I went down to well-deserved defeat at the hands of a terrific black rapper named DC Renegade, whose skit included the imaginary machine-gunning of Mel himself, who enjoyed toppling backward to complete the scene. 

The Faculty Spotlight Q&A series highlights a different faculty member at Shorenstein APARC each month giving a personal look at his or her teaching approaches and outlook on related topics and upcoming activities.