"Eastern Partnership: Towards Civil Society Forum" The EU’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) initiative is off to a bad start. Presented by Sweden and Poland with much fanfare in 2008 as a new forum for the EU to engage the eastern neighbourhood, its recent launch in Prague proved, on the contrary, to be a major disappointment. The list of EU leaders that decided the summit wasn’t worth their time was embarrassingly long interest and political will are clearly lacking in this new initiative. As such, the chances that the European Union will sooner or later consign the EaP to the same historical dustbin as its predecessors are high. But so are the EU’s stakes in the region.
Five years of an enlarged EU: Where is Eastern Europe? Five years after the enlargement of the EU in 2004 and 20 years after the political revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe, we should have plenty of reasons to celebrate. Instead, the threat of a new division of Europe is now being discussed. When, after the extraordinary EU summit at the start of March, headlines ran such as “Rejection of solidarity assistance for Eastern Europe”, many Czechs were outraged. After all, the Czech Republic is not part of Eastern Europe.
Bridging the Gap to the European Identity Robert Schuman has argued that a „true community requires at least some specific affinities. Countries do not combine when they do not feel among themselves something common.“ Using Schuman´s terminology, we may ask if the EU has at least ´some specific affinities´, if the citizens of the states in Europe believe that they have all something in common. In a speech to the European Parliament in 1999, the President of the European Commission Romano Prodi insisted that the further development of the EU institutions must „gradually build up a shared feeling of belonging to Europe.“ Indeed, it seems that a stronger sense of the European identity is needed in order to advance the process of the European integration.
The Czech Republic, France, and the Passing of the Presidency Baton Ever since the most recent wave of enlargement (at least), the European Union cannot exactly be described as an homogenous entente. The coexistence of 27 countries of such varied geopolitical and economic weight and with such different traditions of political culture can only occur on the basis of coalitions created to balance out their various interests and aims. The current EU Presidency trio of France, the Czech Republic and Sweden is more than instructive as concerns this problematic situation.
The Czech Presidency of the Council of the EU: Europe in Harmony? Rarely has the European public ever been quite this uncertain as to whether a Member State can handle the challenges connected with the presidency of the Council of the European Union. Most of the concern is over whether controversial Czech President Václav Klaus may attempt some sort of provocation.
Foreign relations priorities of the Czech Presidency The preparation of the priorities for the EU Presidency is a very long-term process. It involves not just representatives of the government and ministries, but also experts through their participation in professional groups. If these priorities are to be the right ones, they must not only be well-designed, they must also respond to current events in the world and in the EU itself.
Make a Virtue of Necessity Whereas globalisation during the past 20 years has been a powerful engine of growth, we now experience the downside of the worldwide interlacing of the markets: a global recession. In Europe, North America and Japan - still the centres of world economy - economic output shrinks and in the new booming economies of Asia and Latin America at least the growth rates are shrinking. Europe's economy is by no means separated from the US-economy. This became clear already during the financial crisis that spread quickly from Wall Street to the European banking system. Also China needs the support of the world economy since its growth has been mainly driven by exports to the USA and its gigantic trade surplus has been invested in US government bonds. The same applies for the Indian software industry and the countries depending upon the export of resources - their incomes dropped to rock bottom quickly.