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News Update: EU approves 2000-strong Kosovo police force

Be prepared to address the issues discussed in the below articles in March:

Article: EU Ministers urge Caution on cost of Climate Plan

Article: EU Ministers Wary of Carbon Tariffs

-Danielle

Delegates,

Remember to be checking the blog regularly, and don’t forget that comments will be taken into account in your overall score for the conference weekend!

Onto the important news:

1) As you can see, we are developing individual country pages for each of you.  The pages include important information and great links, so check them regularly.

2) Other links to the side include research tips, EU political cartoons, and the discussion forum, so make sure to check those out, too.

3) Check out this article: The EU’s Prospects for 2008.  Some VERY pertinent reading in there.

4) More updates about how our committee will be ran to come…

Hey Everyone,

I’m Torey and I will be your vice chair for the European Union Committee. I am a second-year from Manhattan Beach, CA and am double majoring in German and Political Economy of Industrialized Societies (PEIS).   Feel free to ask me any questions about the EU or my two majors.  I look forward to the conference, see you all in March!

Hey guys, my name is Lorenz Noe and I’m a first-year Political Science major from San Diego. I’m very excited to be one of your vice-chairs for the EU committee and look forward to your enthusiasm for and detailed knowledge of the European Union.

See you at the conference!

Bid to Streamline EU Faces Critical Irish Vote  

Peter O’Neil, Canwest News Europe Correspondent

Published: Sunday, February 03, 2008

Source: http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=7f282be2-0b8b-4cce-8311-2763ebe9a270&k=63963 

BRUSSELS - The European Union, despite its sparkling successes in bringing peace and prosperity to Europe over 50 years, could slip on the remnants of a “bendy banana” this year as it seeks to exert its global influence.

The poorly understood economic and political union of 27 countries, with a population of a half-billion people on a land mass 2 1/2 times smaller than Canada’s, wants to answer critics who call the EU an economic powerhouse but a political weakling.

It is attempting to ratify a new treaty that will answer former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger’s famous question: “Who do I call if I want to call Europe?”

The Lisbon Treaty would create one president and one foreign policy czar. Former British prime minister Tony Blair is being touted by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to take the president’s role.

The Lisbon Treaty, created after a more ambitious constitution was voted down in 2005 by French and Dutch citizens, would streamline the EU’s cumbersome decision-making process.

More important, it would create one president and one foreign policy czar, replacing more than a half-dozen top officials who currently speak for the EU overseas. Former British prime minister Tony Blair is being touted by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to take the president’s role.

But Ireland, as required in its constitution, can’t avoid a referendum on the issue that is being shunned by the EU’s 26 other members after the 2005 referendum fiascos in France and The Netherlands.

Despite becoming fabulously rich due to its embrace of Europe, many EU insiders fear the Irish could deny the treaty its required unanimous support. For one thing, referenda have typically been used to punish governments in power, and Prime Minister Bertie Ahern is unpopular and mired in scandal.

Ireland is also expected to become the target of so-called euroskeptics, mostly in the British media, who delight in alleging that the EU is a regulation-crazed bureaucratic monster lusting to rip countries of their cherished national identities.

The EU in indeed an easy target. It is a labyrinthine, often soulless bureaucratic entity incapable of stirring patriotic passions or convincing Europeans that the EU isn’t horrendously wasteful.

The EU has reams of regulations, including one governing the curve on bananas, and its agricultural subsidy program is so generous it provides cash for landowners from Queen Elizabeth to a countryside squire or peasant who keep a single goat in his back yard.

The EU’s $190 billion annual budget is as secure from leaks as a tea-strainer. In November the European Court of Auditors, citing widespread abuse within the EU and its member countries, refused for the 13th straight year to put its signature of approval on the EU’s finances.

Yet the ever-expanding EU, Canada’s second-largest trading partner after the U.S., has registered some remarkable achievements.

The most obvious was its success in ending centuries of fratricidal conflict that culminated in a war that left more than 50 million dead and many cities in rubble by the time it ended in 1945.

Even today the EU’s huge tariff-free internal market, and its enticing subsidies offered to new members, is used as a carrot to coax neighbours to embrace democratic and economic reforms.

Possible membership is seen as a critical incentive to convince Serbia, which not long ago was engaged in ethnic cleansing under the late Slobodan Milosevic’s leadership, to avoid violent retaliation if the breakaway province of Kosovo goes ahead in coming weeks with its plan to unilaterally declare its independence.

“Once sucked into its sphere of influence, countries are changed forever,” wrote Mark Leonard in his 2005 book Why Europe Will Run The 21st Century.

The EU has peacekeepers all over the world, and Europe is the world’s largest development aid donors. Brussels, the EU’s headquarters, is by far the driving force in the international fight against climate change.

Yet the collapse of the treaty would be seen as a crushing setback, limiting Europe’s hope of competing with the U.S. on the world stage.

“Defeat would put the EU in a shambles,” Andrea Bonanni, Europe correspondent for the Italian newspaper la Repubblica, told visiting Canadian journalists here last week.