European Student Think Tank

Cath­er­ine Ashton might be the most cri­ti­cised European of the last few weeks. While the peoples in North-Africa and the Middle-East were fight­ing for their free­dom, our High Rep­res­ent­at­ive for For­eign and Secur­ity Policy only man­aged to pro­duce some vague state­ments in response. She seemed power­less to do any­thing more sub­stan­tial. But is that entirely her own fault? The answer to that ques­tion will be given below.

Over the last dec­ades, many Mem­ber States of the EU have developed their own drug policy. Some for the good, some for the bad: in a recently pub­lished report of the European Com­mis­sion (EC) in the so called 2010 pro­gress review of the EU Drugs Action Plan (2009-2012), it becomes clear how many prob­lems have emerged over the years and are still emer­ging every day. What should be the EU’s approach to drugs? What would be a suit­able policy?

The dream of the Community’s found­ing fath­ers was, ulti­mately, to see the emer­gence of a European iden­tity. That does not mean that European iden­tity should replace national iden­tit­ies but that it should become strong enough, and be per­ceived as ‘inclus­ive’ enough by European cit­izens, for Europe to develop as a genu­ine polit­ical and eco­nomic entity. A recent pro­posal of the European Com­mis­sion about the ‘European Her­it­age Label’ revivens this debate.