European Student Think Tank

The euro crisis has taken the form of a suc­ces­sion of national crises threat­en­ing the integ­rity of the mon­et­ary union. The response, each time, involves heads of European states meet­ing in Brus­sels or Ber­lin to agree on a res­cue plan and hes­it­antly approv­ing the neces­sary improve­ments in European gov­ernance. After Ire­land, Por­tugal, Spain and Greece, does it even mat­ter who’s next on the cliff’s edge?

Today the new pres­id­ent of France was sworn in. Who is the new pres­id­ent of France, and what will his rule mean for Europe? [Con­tinu­ation] The Agenda – Inter­na­tional Polit­ics and the Franco-German Axis Less rosy seems the inter­na­tional field, where Hol­lande will soon have to demon­strate, if he can assert France’s interests among the [...]

Ever since the begin­ning of the fin­an­cial crisis France and Ger­many have taken on the role of lead­ers for the EU. They decide what hap­pens and how it is done; they decide who stays in power and who has to be taken out. How­ever is this really the only way the EU can be gov­erned, or are there ways to prefend the dom­in­a­tion of two nation states within the EU?

The EU stands at a his­tor­ical cross­roads today and it has to make a dif­fi­cult choice. Its decision could send it on the path of ever-closer cooper­a­tion and prosper­ity, or ini­ti­ate a very slow pro­cess of dis­sol­u­tion. The prob­lems Greece faces today are thus much more sig­ni­fic­ant than they seem ini­tially and require more than a tech­no­cratic approach to be solved. What Europe needs is some­body with a vis­ion, a truly European leader.

With Khadafi’s would-be mas­sacre loom­ing in Benghazi, Europe has proven that it is still will­ing to take on a mes­si­anic role to fight for free­dom. The enthu­si­asm that David Cameron and Nic­olas Sarkozy have shown to pro­tect human life with all means neces­sary deserves the deep­est respect and stands in stark con­trast to Germany’s inex­cus­able cow­ardice. Libya deserves European mil­it­ary sup­port in escap­ing from the yoke of a mad­man that has oppressed its people for generations.

Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism is dead. At least, accord­ing to many prom­in­ent EU-leaders. It’s a shame though, that they didn’t present a feas­ible altern­at­ive to the mul­ti­cul­tural soci­ety. Should we say our per­man­ent farewells to the mul­ti­cul­tural ideal, or should we instead try to reform it, giv­ing it a chance to sur­vive? I’ll try to answer that ques­tion below.

The sum­mit of the European Coun­cil in Brus­sels last week did not bring about any novel approaches relat­ing to the cre­ation of the internal energy mar­ket of the com­munity. How­ever, it saw Ger­many and France use the occa­sion to present their pro­posal for a “com­pet­it­ive­ness pact” for the EU. The pact sug­gests fuller har­mon­isa­tion of labour, tax and social policies and a con­sti­tu­tional curb on pub­lic bor­row­ing to enforce bal­anced budgets. Though rejec­ted by many mem­ber states, core ele­ments of the pro­posal are neces­sary and inev­it­able in the future. How­ever, it remains doubt­ful if they will help increase the Union’s competitiveness.