With this site I aim to share my experiences and reflections on some major challenges that need to be met so that our planet — its oceans, its continents — remains habitable and becomes friendly to the many: the climate, the diversity of life, human rights, the distribution of the wealth produced – as opposed to the considerable social inequalities between and within countries - democracy and freedom.

A world of regions

The past decades have as never before globalised trade, the flow of money and electronic data and, tragically, the displacement of people fleeing dictatorship, war and misery. The wealth produced has increased sharply, but under conditions of great inequality, ecological plunder and often corruption of governments. A lenient discourse has prevailed, that of an inescapable globalisation that eliminates particularities in favour of private powers which possess strike forces unmatched by most member states of the United Nations. The imbalances are increasingly evident between the vastness of the challenges to be addressed and the capacity for public action in existing policy frameworks.
For three to four centuries, the public organisations we have equipped ourselves have found their legitimacy and their instruments of action within national spaces. But this state of affairs is no longer sufficient in view of the shrinking of the planet evidenced by the instant transmission of information like money, the exposure to the same climatic, sanitary, nuclear dangers, the enclosing of the globe in an interlacing of underwater cables and satellites. I venture here that a capacity for action can be regained on borders. National powers, drawn in upon their capital and on the fantasy that their power to act is unchanged, will each day ever more lose touch with economic, ecological and social realities. Much to the despair of their population whom they cut off from the rest, because they can no longer serve them.

For the world that comes, that of rivers, storms, pandemics across countries, that of water running short, fading forests and deserts gaining ground, yet again the world of sailors, traders, students, travelers who cross borders, the key word seems to be that of cooperation - not punctual, not remote, but continuous - and first, here and now, with the other powers, the other actors, on the same river, on the flank of this same mountain, on this same sea. What is needed is international cooperation, between states of course, transnational cooperation between NGOs, associations, trade unions but, first and foremost, neighbourhood cooperation in order to ensure that the demands of geography, those which determine people’s living conditions, prevail over age-old hatreds nourished by centuries or decades of conflicting histories.

University of Tezpur, Assam, India, 2014

For the past twenty years, with many partners, I have explored the spaces for cooperation that are opening up between neighbouring countries and make it possible to act together. As financial magistrate, lecturer at the University of Rennes, activist in non-profit organisations, I have travelled to North and South America, the Caribbean, West and Southern Africa, South and East Asia, meeting professors and students, community leaders and more broadly citizens. In two countries in particular, Burkina Faso and Haiti, I take part in long-term solidarity actions. Having learned from these encounters, I try every time to build bridges between experiences from one region to another, refraining from the stance of European precedence: to each region of the world, its path of cooperation respecting international law.

The following pages present four books, various articles, the text of conferences that are the result of these work and exchanges: for instance, in a 2006 UNESCO forum in Montevideo (Uruguay), in 2009 for the thirtieth anniversary of the South African Community in Gaborone (Botswana) and in the universities of Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) in 2010, Tezpur in Assam (India) in 2014, Guangxi in Nanning (China) in 2016, Liège (Belgium) on several occasions and also with associations like the Mediterranean College of Liberties in Toulon and the Hub of the Humanities in Lorient.

Teachings

Founding member of the UNESCO Chair on Regional Integrations, Rennes I University (2010). Associate Professor at the Institute of Political Studies (IEP) in Rennes (1996-2005). Lecturer at Rennes II University (2004-2022) and Rennes IEP (2005-2023).
Visiting professor at the University of Guangxi (China-ASEAN Research Institute), Nanning, China (January 2016) and the University of Liège (Centre for Studies and Training in International Relations), Belgium (October 2017). Former student of the National School of Administration. Bachelor of Economics, University Paris II. Graduate from the Paris Institut d’Etudes Politiques. Languages spoken: English. German. Spanish. Italian. Breton.

University of Liège

Articles

Regional Integration Organisations, in Finances publiques, Dictionnaire encyclopédique, Aix-Marseille University Press and Economica Publishers, 2017, pp. 650-659.

Africa’s Legal Relations with the European Union, in Abécédaire de l’Union européenne, Rennes University Press, 2017.

Integration, Disintegration: Looking For The Meaning Of Regional Rapprochement, in ‘CEFIR’, University of Liège, 2016.

South Asia Between Disintegration And Regional Integration, in Relations internationales et régionalisme: Between Internal Dynamics And Global Projections", Liège University Press, 2012.
The article presents a region of the world and states that are torn between powerful centrifugal forces and regional cooperation actions to address growing common ecological, social and economic adversities. Through transnational cooperation, civil societies seek to strengthen democracy and promote human rights against the actions of warmongering nomenklaturas.

Comparative Overview Of Integration Dynamics, in ‘Regards croisés sur les intégrations régionales : Europe, Amériques; Afrique’, Bruylant publishers, Brussels, 2010
The article compares the dynamics of regional integration in action on the planet by distinguishing between contextual dynamics (geography, history, economics and politics) and those generated by the integration process itself through its institutional means and the cooperation undertaken by its actors.

The Association for Regional Cooperation in South Asia: An Improbable Regional Integration, in Etudes internationales, Laval University, Québec, Canada, December 2006
The article reports on the violent disintegration of the British Indies. It presents the current political and economic division of the subcontinent. In contrast to this story, it recounts the birth and action of the Association for Regional Cooperation in South Asia (SAARC), showing its achievements and highlighting its great difficulties.

Supranationality, Encyclopedia Universalis, 2006
The article reveals the theological and monarchical legacy of a thought of the nation as the holder of absolute sovereignty. It conveys the jarring overtones of the thoughts of cooperation and the peaceful settlement of disputes in European history. It establishes a link between the Enlightenment and the construction of a political Europe in the twentieth century.

Conferences

Policies for a small planet, Collège méditerranéen des libertés, Toulon, 2023

The European Union In The 2020s: Some Major Issues And Relations With Africa, Carrefour des humanités Paul Ricoeur, Lorient, 2020

Regional Cohesion, A Challenge To Globalisation, in Beyond The Crisis. Thinking About Integrations In The Americas, Institut des Hautes Etudes de l’Amérique latine, 2019

One In Five People, For 5 % Of Land Mass: The Challenges Of South Asia, Carrefour des humanités, 2018

East Asia And Europe Meeting, China-ASEAN Research Institute, Guangxi University, China, 2015

Universally And Regionally: The Way Towards A Partnership In South Asia, 7th biennial conference, Tezpur University, Assam, India, 2014

China And India Meeting In South East Asia, 6th biennial conference, IAAPS, Kolkata University, India, 2012

The European Union And Regional Integration In Africa: Models And Partnerships, Louvain University, Belgium, 14th Glaverbel Chair, 2007

Building The Regions Of The World As Political And Social Ensembles, UNESCO conference on the social dimension of regional integration processes, Montevideo, Uruguay, 2006
This lecture shows how free trade and free investment agreements have, from the 1980s, overwhelmed all interstate groupings at the risk of depriving them of any other ambition. The communication before the UNESCO Forum exposes the dangers of this strictly commercial conception and, based on European experience, it points out the conditions for enriching regional projects by taking into account political and social dimensions.

Radio broadcasts

France Culture, Programme International Issues, podcasts

Links

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