EU Enlargement and the Perception of the Young - Classtests [5A]
Martina Jelicic -4th Classtest
In the present essay I will speak about Eu Enlargement process,that is still going on and will take a long time to come true. I will discuss the problem starting from a definition of Eu,to proceed discussing the extract proposed and last,referring to my experience in interviewing young people,to conclude the essay with my personal opinion and some practical proposal that may promote integration among European young people. EU is a grouping of sovereign States committed to pursue common policies in certain areas.It is not a state but a unique creation in which the independent member states pool their sovereignty,surrending in the right to make independent decisions in certain areas such as fiscal,environmental or employmental. EU Enlargement is a process that has shown different steps and stages.The EU project is one of deepening and widening. Deepening refers to the apport of Member States to increment a quality of the integration (the capacity of member states to create relationships between themselves with regard to politic,social,cultural and military integration).Widening refers to the further possibility of the integration in the enlargement process. The extract discusses the enlargement problem in terms of when it will go on,rather than if other countries will enter to join the Union. The Copenhagen criteria require that the candidate country must follow,or better have,some rules and in lack of it they cannot enter. The enlargement process started in 1951 with the Treaty of Paris when the first six countries (Italy,France,Germany,England,Belgium and Netherland) join together and is still going on,it has reached 25 states in 2004 and a population that overtakes 470 million people. Nowadays young people don’t know so much about the European Union and its enlargement.In interviewing young people I realised that people up to twenty years of age are not able to give a definition of EU,they only know that it is a grouping of 25 states that are join economically and politically and take decisions together.Probably they never had a possibility,for example at school,to improve they knowledge about EU or they aren’t interested in it very much.They don’t agree with the enter of countries which are different culturally and which have a different religion.I think that they don’t know the advantages:this can bring to a possible cultural integration or don’t know what joining can offer.They are afraid that this countries can compromise the European integration and the European programs. I think that young people should feel themselves part of a union together with the other European citizens and learn to improve the integration having or creating relationships with all the people that are part of the Union and also with others that hope to join and with the people that come from other parts of the world that have different religion,culture or style of living which have the European citizenship.