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Latest posts in the forums
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| Not Just a Danish Phenomenon - the Convention Unknown |
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 When it comes to focusing the attention of the European peoples, the institutions of the Union seem to fail miserably. As do the national media. Even with an event of such magnitude as the European Reform Convention, the European Commission has recently had to acknowledge that 55 percent of people in the 15 current and 10 future EU states had not heard of the Convention that ended its sixteen months of work in July.
Nevertheless, more than four out of five respondents said a referendum would be either essential or useful before any constitution was adopted in a poll carried out on behalf of the Commission. Some smaller states, including Portugal, Ireland and Denmark, plan referendums. The British government has rejected calls for a referendum, saying most of the constitution is just a "tidying up" of existing treaties. Greeks, whose country finished a six-month tenure as EU president at the end of June, were best informed about the Convention, as about 80 percent had heard of it. Britons were at the other end of the scale, with three-quarters ignorant of it. In Sweden, which will hold a referendum on euro entry in September, nearly seven out 10 said they did not know of the Convention.
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Posted by oliver on Friday, August 15 @ 20:31:05 CEST (367 reads)(Read More... | 1277 bytes more | Score: 0) |
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 aydemirz writes "Commitment or Confusion?
With no doubt, Turkey’s EU accession has been a matter of confusion for 40 years, whose reasons of being left out so far are known best by EU officials and sometimes ungroundedly well by many of EU citizens. While acknowledging the still-existing shortcomings of the Turkish democracy, it is worrying to see that many authors, academics and politicians do not perceive the importance of the decision of the Helsinki Summit, where it is stated 'Turkey is a candidate State destined to join the Union on the basis of the same criteria as applied to the other candidate States'. Together with this conclusion, the Ankara Association Agreement of 1963, which foresees a custom union and eventual membership, should be revisited thoroughly. Moreover the recent reforms of the Turkish Assembly should be considered as positive steps, though currently there are shortcomings with the implementation of these reforms. Excluding a country which will have completed the reforms and will have implemented them in the coming decade would result in credibility loss of the European Union in the eyes of 70 million people and would mean destabilising of the region.
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Note: In this statement, the EU 'warmly welcomes the latest package of reforms approved by the Turkish National Assembly'.
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Posted by Monnet on Friday, August 01 @ 13:54:20 CEST (591 reads)(Read More... | 1955 bytes more | Score: 4) |
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The survey on this site about the 'Convention on the Future of Europe' may well be highly misleading. According to a new poll in Danish daily 'Politiken', six out of ten Danes have never heard about the convention or of any upcoming EU constitution in spite of one and a half year of heated debate in the Convention. The self-confident Danes, who normally top the Eurobarometer lists of self-perceived knowledge of the EU, generally seem to be ignorant about Giscard's constitution. However, 77 per cent of people with a university-level degree have heard about the constitution, whereas only 14 per cent of people with a lower secondary school education know about it. Therefore, the paper claims boldly, the constitution is still a 'project of the elite', while a political science professor (with no expertise on the EU) vaguely blames the 'democratic deficit'.
Symptomatic for much coverage of the EU in general and the convention/constitution in particular, the article is based on a poll of 1000 people and five addtional interviews with politicians and 'experts' - all Danes. As long as journalism sticks to the doctrine that all news is local, it is going to be very hard to bring the Union to the masses.
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Posted by Monnet on Wednesday, July 23 @ 02:12:58 CEST (380 reads)(Read More... | 1351 bytes more | Score: 0) |
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| European Defence - Is more spending necessary? |
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In many commentaries about European Defence in general and the European Security and Defence policy in particular, a recurrent theme is the need for Europe to spend more on defence. 'If Europeans are not prepared to spend more on defence,' so the argument goes, 'Europe will never be able to close the capabilities gap/be an equal partner/be a credible world (super)power'.
What this argument presupposes in its various forms is that a European defence has to be like the US defence - or at least be as expensive as the US military - in order to be taken seriously. What it does not take into consideration is that Europeans may well want something completely different from their defence than their American partners.
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Posted by Monnet on Tuesday, July 22 @ 01:10:03 CEST (722 reads)(Read More... | 2370 bytes more | Score: 3) |
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In a much debated article ealier this year, the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas and his French colleague Jacques Derrida claimed that a European public has been created by two events this year. First, the letter signed by eight European leaders and published in the Washington Post supporting Bush on Iraq, and second the Europe-wide demonstrations on March 15 against it.
According to Habermas, the demonstrations against the war, which took place simultaniously all over the world but with particularly high turnouts in Europe, would be recognised in history as a "signal for the birth of a European public." Against this backdrop of massive Europe-wide opposition to the war, he thinks it is imperative to move ahead with a European foreign policy based on a number of shared "European values". According to Habermas, these are
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Posted by monnet on Wednesday, June 04 @ 03:06:33 CEST (668 reads)(Read More... | 2307 bytes more | Score: 4.33) |
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Europhilia.org is a non-profit, ads-free site dedicated to debate about the European Union. It is an online community based on contributions of articles from the members. The aim of the site is to bring together people from all over Europe to discuss their common political institutions, but needless to say, people from other continents are welcome too.
If you have any questions, please post them in the forums.
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From the euro-sceptic EUobserver.com
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