FOLLOWING THE EUROPEAN UNION

Well, that really depends on the situation and subject.

In football, I'm German,
Regarding my Rhineland in-laws, I'm Westphalian (the state is Northrhine-Westphalia).
For my neighbours, I'm not from here, but from my old hometown (15 km's away).

I think, I'm a German European from Geseke in Westphalia living in on this 'blue planet' world.

Yes, I feel more European than German.

Than I welcome you to Generation E - Generation Europe. At this point, I still feel more Dutch than European, but that also depends indeed. Hmmm maybe I should not be so negative about Europe - lets just see

Years back, I had a weekend relation in Aachen/Aix-la-Chapelle/Aken.
Before going to her, I refueled my car with diesel at a local supermarket there (was the cheapest in the whole country), bought coffee in Vals (NL) and cigarettes in Kelmis (B). Very European, I payed everything in DeutschMarks.

It's nice that the Euro makes this all so much easier

Although I also accept Deutsche Marks

Hmmm maybe it's time to visit my neighbouring countries again - last time I was in Belgium or Germany seems like ages ago

Canada is, in some ways, closer to membership in Europe than to membership in North America (eg, social programs, drug and sexuality issues). There is a pretty constant pressure, economically and politically, to bond with our southern neighbor, but that is often resisted because of those other factors.

I think probably, we ought to attribute this to our historical connection to both Britain and to french culture, connections of the sort which the US purposefully broke in their push for independence.

I certainly consider myself a world citizen first.

see below

Trouble is its hard to identify with the world. Its a big place. It seems to me that we all have several allegiances which we have imprinted on us whether we like it or not, but then later we make the conscious choice of placing them in some sort of rank order. Normally that's not a problem.
But it can be when people who have to live and work together find their sense of priorities differ. Or when people place much more weight on one factor than on other. Classic I suppose is religion/country, or political persuasion/religion. This is why its much too simple to say "most of the world's problems are to do with .......... "(fill in blank as required). A lot of people (me included) might agree right now that the missing word is religion.

But if we did, in the words of John Lennon, "Imagine no Religion", we would soon find some other cultural difference or mode of thought that would assume equal significance. Sad really, it seems we are born to be prejudiced.

Steve, I think I understand what you're saying. What bothers me more is the division we find in our own country that have differences of political alliance/allegiance that has it's supporters and detractors on both sides of the pond. When those millions participated in a world demonstration to show many were against the US plans to attack Iraq, those voices were ignored. What we have now is a president that has very little credibility in this world - especially now with the revalation that Iraq had no WMD's. Yet, we find many Americans still in support of this president. It's impossible to find a middle road.

Same, I feel more European than French.

I've recently talked with my friends about this topic and a lot of people of my generation (I'm 18) think like me.

As we are in confessional mode

I feel more European than Scottish :wink:

ci glad you understood (with qualification "think!") my last post. On re reading it, I'm not sure I do...perhaps you can explain

Agree with you it is astonishing that a country (that being US+UK for this argument) can be told "we have to go to war because of wmd". Then no wmd are found, and the people's reaction is "wmd, who cares?"

In Britain its even more critical because wmd formed the legal basis for war. So now Blair says "lets not re write history, what's done is done, time to move on, build some schools and hospitals". The people are being treated as imbeciles. They are stupid imo if they can't see through this deception.

Ning, I'm so glad to hear you and your friends see a wider perspective than just your own country.

Many of us in the US feels the same way, but what do we do when many Americans still follow the rhetoric of this administration even when they change from one justification to another with abandon? I think I'm more in tune with the people of the UK then I am with Americans, but I've always been the "black sheep" in more ways than one.

Europe and North America are not the world. There are very wide variations in the age, life expectancy, population growth rates, health, wealth and political development of various areas of the world. It is a mistake to assume the concerns that take up so much space on these threads are truly shared by most of the world's population.

The median age in the U.S.is under 36, in Western Europe it is almost 40 - a very large difference. However it is dwarfed by other differences - in Africa the median age is 18, in the Moslem world 22, in Asia it is 29 and in Latin America 25.

GDP per capita (on a PPP basis) is $36,000 in the U.S.; $25,000 in western Europe; $9,000 in eastern Europe; $15,000 in Asia; $3,500 in Latin America and the Moslem world; and only $1,000 in Africa.

Life expectency at birth varies from 79 years in western Europe to 46 years in Africa.

With this much variation and disparity, I doubt that any citizen of either western Europe or North America can truthfully claim to identify more with the world than his own country or region.

George, that's what I said. The world's a big place to identify with. But that's no argument for not trying.

As I've said before, what's going on in greater Europe may not be perfect but it offers some hope. To the rest of the world, GW Bush offers a bleak alternative. "You are either with America, or you are with the terrorists". This is either a lie, or a threat. Its quite possible to be against the invasion of Iraq for the very reason that it will exacerbate the terrorist danger. Or it could be taken as meaning do what we want or you are our enemy. Whatever it is, for many in the rest of the world, it is not an attractive alternative to the European model.

Only just found this thread...glad I did.

KP

Vinocur/IHT
Friday, February 13, 2004





Britain, France and Germany will want to show authority, but not too much of it
LONDON Tony Blair, Gerhard Schröder and Jacques Chirac meet next Wednesday in Berlin in a three-way summit that they think could be an important step toward closing Europe's divisions, but that many of their partners regard anxiously as a wind-tunnel test for a directorate that could run Europe..
British, French and German officials talk, without great precision, of discussions, open to others in the future, meant to bring Europe a new sense of leadership, direction and harmony..
Indeed, Britain sees the possibility of moving France and Germany toward a less statist, more liberal economic agenda. The French line, using the phrase "a little cultural revolution" to describe British engagement in the European project and Blair's willingness not to try to break the Paris-Berlin relationship, expressly acknowledges that the European Union's old French-German motor is no longer adequate alone to pull an EU of 25 members along with it. As for the German organizers, Schröder first called for a triumvirate in 1997 before he was an official candidate for chancellor..
Yet the meeting will take place in a mood of awkwardness and caution..
The three leaders, if not quite Europe's sick men, are each in serious political difficulty at home and, by EU standards of influence, individually short on proselytizing or unifying authority..
Blair is tortured by a dramatic loss of national confidence, Chirac by charges of corruption and splits within his political support at home, and Schröder by an unpopular reform program and the potentially fatal prospect of losing up to 14 regional elections during the year..
At the same time, the concern about a triangular power grab is such in places like Italy, Spain and Poland (and, to a lesser degree, the Netherlands), that reassuring other EU countries has become of importance equal to whatever the participants can demonstrate in terms of new solidarity. In an attempt to twist the neck of these fears, a British official said that the idea of a "permanent directorate" was "not realistic" and was, "in fact, offensive.".
But after what is widely agreed was a disastrous year for European unity in 2003, Britain, Germany and France are coming together precisely at a time when small- and middle-sized EU members are defending their prerogatives and visions with vigor previously unknown in the community..
Against this reality, the hard task for the three leaders, as described in part by officials here, is in finding an approach that expresses a greater willingness for joint leadership, accepts obviously profound differences on Europe's role in the world and in relation to the United States - the British, explicitly, will have nothing to do with talking up a European counterweight to America - and buries the idea of their self-appropriated primacy..
Yet the Big Three's short-term objectives for the meeting are really more national than strictly European, and the evaluations from all over Europe of the tripartite undertaking are probably more negative then they could have foreseen when the Germans began talking about such a get-together last December..
According to one British official, Schröder is really interested in getting an endorsement by Britain and France of his troubled reforms, and legitimization from the British that last year's German-French-engineered implosion of the EU's stability pact was the right thing to do..
A meeting document is expected to give Schröder's announced social and economic remake of Germany the status of a European norm that must be met to return the country to competitiveness..
Chirac, according to British thinking, wants to portray the great European split over Iraq as over, and be rid of the widespread European notion that he was the basic cause of the division by insisting (and failing) on getting Europe to fall in behind him..
Chirac is also portrayed as trying to persuade Britain to bring pressure on Spain and Poland to change their position on EU voting rights and open the way to adoption of the EU's blocked constitution..
Blair, in turn, in the French analysis, wants to compensate for his allegiance to the United States on Iraq, and his decline in support in the polls and in his party, through a more visible, more engaged partnership with France and Germany. The notion is that whatever Blair does in this direction would be free from U.S. administration criticism in the run-up to the American elections..
To those Europeans who see the outlines of a future European triangle of power in the meeting, these self-interested considerations do not mean much. The fear of a leadership takeover is the issue..
"Europe must have many voices, and a directorate would only lead to tensions," said Ana Palacio, the Spanish foreign minister. Franco Frattini, Italy's foreign minister, has spoken in the same register. "We're disturbed by the prospect of a European directorate," he says, because Europe has to be a mechanism for sharing rather than concentrating power..
Even the Dutch, who usually find comfort in deeper British involvement in Europe, have sounded a wary note. The new Dutch foreign minister, Bernard Bot, told a French interviewer, "We're against a leadership system that doesn't allow either cooperation or transparency." The institution of the EU, he said, "has functioned very well up to now and what we've had such difficulty in creating must not be destroyed.".
Neither a French nationalist nor a German Europeanist seemed entirely happy about the initiative..
Nicolas Baverez, the French historian and economist who was the spearhead of a national debate last autumn with his view of his country's decline as a force in Europe and the world, said the security relationship between the three represented progress, but added, "This triangle is under British domination.".
"It's the triumph," he said, "of a British conception of Europe: 15 countries out of 25 that from now on hew to Euro-Atlanticism and think that Europe should be organized in direct contact with the United States, and above all in a kind of free-trade zone where competition is the sole rule.".
Christoph Bertram, director of the German Institute for International Politics and Security and a supporter of European integration, suggested that nothing with the look of a directorate had much chance of success..
"That suspicion runs very deep," he said, "and the three will have to work very much harder to remove the suspicions.".
This appears to leave Blair, Chirac, and Schröder primarily obligated to say next Wednesday how they are not intending to become - at least in any terribly obvious way - Europe's new leadership unit. Considering the nervousness about their aims, and the differences in their convictions, delineating their precise intentions as a group was likely to be even harder..
In an effort to join these two ungainly realities, Britain's minister for Europe, Denis MacShane, was asked to supply a printable mission statement. Referring to the EU's crisis in 2003 and its failed attempts at more economic growth and political cooperation, he wrote:.
"London, Paris and Berlin are filling this vacuum, but every EU member state, new and old, has a role to play in moving the EU out of sterile disagreements with the United States and pushing for reforms.".
His statement added, "It makes sense for Blair, Chirac and Schröder to try and lead Europe forward, but 22 other member states also have a right to make their voice heard.".
International Herald Tribune

How the EU citizen see the EU ?

"Support for the European Union, its institutions and its policies appears to be directly linked to the level of citizens' knowledge about the European Union."

Enjoy : http://europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb58/eb58_en.htm

Mayday
BRUSSELS Every year some of the old hands in the Brussels press corps put on a comedy revue. This year, the punchline of one of the skits brought the house down. Miss Poland, whose lovelorn pinings for "union" with Europe are at last to be satisfied, is warned that it won't be a bed of roses. "Remember," she is told, "the countries in the European Union may not like each other, but they're going to really hate you!".
Perhaps the audience of 1,000 journalists, diplomats and European officials found it especially funny because it touched such a raw nerve. The truth is that a very mixed reception awaits the 10 newcomers who on May 1 will swell the EU's membership to 25 countries..
The coming "big bang" enlargement has been hailed as one of the great achievements of the EU, but now that it is less than 50 working days away it is also beginning to look a bit sour..
The EU had an unsettling glimpse of what may lie ahead when the unyielding stance of Poland's prime minister, Leszek Miller, helped torpedo its most recent summit meeting. His refusal of a plan that would have whittled down Poland's promised voting power in the EU led to the collapse of talks in December on a new European constitution..
Suddenly, West European public opinion is waking up to the downside of the EU's ambitious strategy for repairing the rifts created by 40 years of cold war. Attention is being focused on sensitive issues like immigration and employment. Poland, with a population of almost 40 million, is the chief bogeyman in Germany, for instance, where there are fears that low-cost Polish job seekers, fleeing 20 percent unemployment at home, will present formidable competition for work..
Until now, the negotiations that paved the way for enlargement have been a wholly painless process for the EU's West European nations. In marked contrast to the Central and East European candidates, whose post-Communist economic sufferings have been compounded by the need to meet EU rules and standards, the 15 current members of the EU have basked in the warmth of the aspirants' longing and enthusiasm..
In theory, the EU's rich countries have always known that enlargement would impose a huge new financial burden on them. In practice, most of them have resisted the European Commission's proposals for massive increases in the next EU budget package, which are needed to give a real lift to the newcomers' economies..
A no-holds-barred political battle is now beginning over the Union's 2007-2013 budget structure, with the commission urging extra spending that would see annual costs rise from around $100 billion to more than $140 billion. The joys of expanding the EU and initiating an economic catch-up like that enjoyed by Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece are now looking decidedly less attractive..
The eventual outcome of these tough budgetary negotiations looks clear enough. Recession-hit governments whose borrowings are already breaking the EU's own deficit rules are not about to plunge deeper into debt in order to build infrastructure and raise living standards in the Baltic States, Central Europe, Malta and Cyprus. Instead of the Rolls-Royce model of EU "structural funding" enjoyed by poorer accession countries in years past, the newcomers will have to make do with a Lada..
Whether this will be a recipe for successful enlargement of the Union is less certain. The newcomers increasingly sense that they are regarded as poor relations who are being allowed to join under sufferance. There is also a dawning awareness among officials in Brussels that the Union's rulebook places powerful weapons in the hands of all of its members. If the newcomers feel hard done by they will have the means to disrupt EU business..
It is far too early to imagine scenarios where the EU's rich and poor are pitted against one another. The triumph of almost 50 years of European political and economic integration has been that EU member states have learned that trench warfare in defense of national interests never pays off..
Whether this will continue to hold true with the newcomers remains to be seen. There are several reasons why this enlargement is profoundly different from previous ones. They range from mutual ignorance of one another's political systems to the fact that the 10 new member states are no more than the forerunners of an even bigger enlargement will eventually bring in Romania and Bulgaria, and probably Turkey, Croatia and a patchwork of other Balkan states..
Some leaders in Europe now warn that the EU enlargement process is beginning to leave public opinion far behind. Their predictions of political friction and social unrest can only be confounded by a determined effort to make a real success of the EU of 25..
The writer is director of Forum Europe and secretary general of Friends of Europe.