European Student Think Tank

A topic that is quite often dis­cussed on this web­site con­cerns the incon­sist­ent Human Rights agenda of the EU. Recently, I’ve taken a closer look on the concept of the ‘White man’s bur­den’, that was pop­u­lar in the neo-imperialistic times. The sim­il­ar­it­ies between this concept and our mod­ern day Human Rights agenda is quite shock­ing. Below you’ll find an explanation.

Last week another series of accus­a­tion of paid sexual acts with minors was launched against Italy’s Ber­lusconi. An orgy with 33 women was the main accus­a­tion. Ber­lusconi him­self stated: `As a 75 year old man I won´t be able to sat­isfy 33 women at the same time´. One of the girls is the 18 year old Moroc­can Ruby Rubacuori. Hav­ing paid sex with a minor can res­ult in a sen­tence of 3 years in Italy and could bring Ber­lusconi, accord­ing to some observ­ers, for the first time in real prob­lems. It seems that his gov­ern­ment is shak­ing as a res­ult of these incid­ents. But does the essence of Berlusconi´s lead­er­ship lie in sex­ism and macho-leadership? No, there is much more.

The par­lia­ment in Lithuania is treat­ing an anti-gay law, which has drawn the EP’s atten­tion. They claim that if the law is enforced, Lithuania will fail to pro­tect human rights. This threats the pro­tec­tion of minor­it­ies and is restrict­ing diversity in Europe. It is a viol­a­tion of the Fun­da­mental Rights. It is quite sur­pris­ing that this story has not received more atten­tion. The lack of media interest and atten­tion from the EU is very disappointing.

Hungary’s new Media Law in puts the new EU-president in an undesir­able situ­ation. The con­tro­ver­sial law was enforced 1st Janu­ary 2011 – the same day Hun­gary star­ted its pres­id­en­tial period in the EU. The incon­veni­ent media storm against the media law is cer­tainly the worst start the Hun­gari­ans could dream of. The ques­tion is whether the media law is a poten­tial threat to democracy.