by Oui
Sat Mar 16th, 2024 at 03:18:51 PM EST
Nobel Peace Prize 2012
The award comes as the EU faces the biggest financial crisis of its 54-year history, with many of its member states mired in recession. The last organisation to be given the award outright was Medecins Sans Frontieres, which won in 1999.
Announcing the award, Nobel committee president Thorbjoern Jagland acknowledged the EU's current financial problems and social unrest.
On 12 October 2012, Thorbjørn Jagland, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, announced the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union:
'The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2012 is to be awarded to the European Union (EU). The union and its forerunners have for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe`.
Thorbjørn Jagland, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee
From the diaries ...
Nobel Peace Prize for the EU | by Frank Schnittger - 10 Dec 2012
The Nobel Peace Prize committee has a curious sense of timing: awarding President Obama the Peace Prize before he had accomplished anything much in office, and now awarding the EU the Peace Prize at a time when it seems intent on unraveling much of what has been achieved in European Solidarity in the past 60 years. Perhaps both awards can be described as a form of preemptive peace making: Instead of the more usual approach of rewarding a peacemaker for a life-times achievement of making peace long after it can do any good to help their efforts, it chose instead to reward Obama early in order to make it more possible for him to unwind the warmongering of President Bush.
And now it is rewarding current EU leaders for NOT YET having unraveled most of what has been achieved in terms of EU solidarity in order to remind them of the rich peace making heritage bequeathed to them by the EU's founders, and thus make it more possible for them to reverse current negative trends.
[…]
Towards a More United and Effective Europe: A Framework for Analysis | IAI - 28 Oct 2013 |
By Nathalie Tocci and Giovanni Faleg
1. IntroductIon
The Eurozone crisis is dramatically shaping the construction of an EU polity as an integrated, legitimate and effective political space. The implications are twofold. The crisis has accelerated policy- and institu- tional integration in ways thought unthinkable only a few years ago. At the same time, the economic crisis and the ensuing societal and political malaise have generated centrifugal forces across the Union, threatening the very essence of the European project. These two, seemingly con- trasting, dynamics are taking place on different planes - top-down and bottom-up, respectively. Working in parallel, these two trends are giving rise to a dangerously vicious circle.
Euro scepticism in European public opinion is not new. Neither is it entirely caused by the EU's top-down integration. But the style and content of the EU's top-down decision making have certainly added fuel to the fire, and have led to divisions between member states that shake the very foundations of the integration endeavour. Europeans are increasingly disenchanted with Europe and with one another. Their resistance to Europe in turn narrows the feasibility and the legitimacy of EU-level decisions taken to exit the crisis through deeper integration. As centrifugal bottom-up dynamics deepen, the sustainability of top-level centrip- etal integration is being compromised.
The challenge for committed Europeans is that of reconnecting these two levels through a virtuous circle. Such a dynamic can only start if one imagines a new Europe, one that reconciles Europeans with the integration project by re-endowing the Union with its lost legitimacy, in terms through an inclusive and accountable democratic process. It is our aim in this project to begin this exercise of imagination by exploring what kind of future the EU could create for itself were it to stand with its citizens and from there punch its full weight as a 21st century global power. It is our belief that Europe today needs a new narrative. At its outset, the European project was about cementing peace in the continent after the devastation brought about by two world wars and a genocide. With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the challenge became reunifying Europe within a liberal world order.
In a 21st century that is witnessing a profound shift in global power, a new EU narrative can converge on how to ensure European resilience in a multipolar world and encourage a peaceful transition towards a new consensual global order. To do so, the EU must be legitimate and effective within its borders, and from this position it must be able to project its full economic, strategic and normative weight in its neighbourhood and beyond.
The European Union failed on almost all aspects of its founding ... heading for the exit were the British, Dutch NeXit, Hungarians and Poles.
Dutch reluctantly shift to EU-wide response on migrants | Clingendael - 17 Nov. 2015 |
Four years ago, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte referred to asylum-seekers arriving in southern EU member states as a problem of `geographic location', saying that countries like Italy simply had 'bad luck'.
Steeply-rising numbers of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean and rocketing asylum applications this year prompted Dutch politicians to acknowledge there is a common European dimension. Redistributing asylum-seekers to the Netherlands is now openly supported by the governing coalition of conservative-liberals (VVD) and social-democrats (PvdA).
Migration and asylum are highly-sensitive issues for the coalition. The government almost collapsed in April over the treatment of asylum-seekers awaiting deportation in the so-called "bed, bath and bread crisis". The VVD stood firm on the principle of not offering shelter to those who were rejected asylum, but the PvdA argued for a minimum level of care. As a result of this debacle, presumably, the Netherlands kept quiet when Germany's Angela Merkel and France's François Hollande led the way in finding a European answer to what from then onwards has been known as "the refugee crisis".
In September, the coalition presented a plan to drastically change Europe's asylum policy. Both parties interpreted the compromise in their own way, provoking criticism from the opposition parties. Where PvdA leader Diederik Samsom stated that the Netherlands and Europe should take in "as many refugees as possible", VVD leader Halbe Zijlstra emphasised the need for reception centres in the region - he even suggested sending asylum-seekers back to `safe havens' outside EU territory.
The tough VVD stance may have everything to do with the popularity in recent polls of Geert Wilders.
Dutch Prime Minister Warns That Migrant Crisis Threatens Fall of E.U. | TIME - 17 Nov. 2015 |
Brexit
Poland and Hungary
"it is arguable that the Polish and Hungarian governments' continued and deliberate defiance of the core principles of membership is expressing their respective intention no longer to apply EU Treaties"
Stimulating post. @ChHillion is onto something here
#Polexit #Hungrexit
Poland and Hungary are withdrawing from the EU | 27 Apr 2020 |
Poland stayed inside the EU or just inside NATO?
War is imminent ... all signs are on RED alert. War rhetoric got a boost over the weekend and the Sunday Talk Shows. Hear all arguments from historic non-value which have been debunked. Getting the people ready for extended hostilities in New Europe ... the Bucharest Nine in the lead with anti-Russia propaganda. Most Western EU nations will swallow the war bullshit.
Blinken Sounding Out EU Appetite for War | 24 Jan 2022 |
With an awful lot of noise BREXIT succeeded which left an amputated EU behind and a major shift towards the former Soviet Bloc of states and uncertainty. From the eight years of Bush-Cheney, the United States was set to tear the European Union apart. As the U.S. were fighting wars "to protect Western democracy," the EU countries were leaning back unwilling to escalate the crisis of civilization. The former Soviet satellite states were quite willing to fill the gap and participate in illegal acts of expediting torture and rendition and fighting in the Iraq war and beyond. The design of Reagan's Star Wars and effected by the missile defense bases in Poland and Romania left the EU outside decision-making. The attempt to unseat a dictator in Syria broke the border defenses and Europe became a serf or satellite entity of the U.S. Empire. Following the Brzezinski doctrine to provoke the Russian Bear, the Ukraine stalemate turned into a hot war.
The four Trump years with the SARS Covid-19 pandemic turned the American empire into a conceited and self-serving aggressive state ... by definition a violent and fascist enterprise as we can witness daily by the ultimate effect on the Palestinian people and genocide by IDF military might of Israel ... called a democratic state ruled by Kahane supremacists. Funded by and munitions, aircraft supplied by Big Brother the United States of Biden-Blinken policy. Where is Kamala Harris?
Joe Biden managed to shove the Berlin Wall some distance eastward, but it is the Wall Joe build. The front of the American empire on the European continent. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, et al. must be thrilled ... the Bolton doctrine destroyed the United Nations of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
On January 1, 1942, representatives of 26 nations at war with the Axis powers met in Washington to sign the Declaration of the United Nations endorsing the Atlantic Charter, pledging to use their full resources against the Axis and agreeing not to make a separate peace.
... and no, Roosevelt and "war hero" Churchill were far from being on the same page on colonies, independence and ending wars.
BTW the European Union was founded on Roosevelt's Four Freedoms.
No, the united support for the proxy war in Ukraine will not restore faith in Brussels as coming European elections will show. The European Union died in the expeditionary wars by Bush-Obama-Trump-Biden ... not the NATO HQ is brain dead, but the EU HQ in Brussels is. Populism, xenophobia and fascist rhetoric will triumph at the polls in Europe.
ECB, Banking Crisis Ended a Social Europe
Social Europe: A Dead End
What the eurozone crisis is doing to Europe's social dimension | HAL |
In the context of the eurocrisis and its current management, the long `road to Social Europe' appears to have become a dead end. The present volume explores in a comprehensive and interdisciplinary way the processes and driving forces at the root of the current social downward spiral. It examines also the main social consequences of the eurozone crisis. It first provides an assessment of the state of Social Europe beginning with a look back at the framing and development of Social Europe from the founding of the European Community onward. This includes social policy issues linked to the kind of federalism promoted within the Economic and Monetary Union. Second, the texts presented here provide a good basis for understanding the factors that led to rule-based management of the eurozone crisis, offering an analysis of the role of the main European institutions in shaping crisis responses. Third, the book sheds light on various social consequences of the New Economic Governance Framework and of reform policies in the fields of social protection and labour law. Finally, it demonstrates that the crisis and its management have contributed to increased economic, political and cultural heterogeneity and inequality between and within EU member states, which is undermining the legitimacy of the European project as a whole. This has come at an unfortunate time, as the EU is now facing new major challenges to its social cohesion.
Role of "managers" in public and private life: social Impact, human rights and labor rights in crisis
Focusing on Human Rights at a Local and Regional Level | ETZ-Graz - June 2017 |
No human rights can be achieved without democracy and no genuine democracy can be achieved without the respect for human rights - to be implemented, first and foremost, in everyday life, in Europe's cities and regions. This interdependence was the point of departure for the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe to engage as a partner to the Forum "Focusing on Human Rights" held on 28 and 29 May 2015 in Graz. This conference brought up current threats to fundamental rights and freedoms in our societies. It came to the conclusion that co-operation and exchange of good practices between authorities at all levels of government are the foundations of any comprehensive strategy for the protection of human rights.
The implementation of human rights' policies at grass-roots level, in regions and local communities, has become a thematic focus of the Congress over the past decade, in line with the priorities of the Council of Europe and the European Union. The underlying assumption to this approach is that human rights protection is no longer the sole prerogative of national governments. Instead, all levels of governance are responsible for the implementation of human rights. At the Congress, we are convinced that local and regional governments and elected representatives are fully-fledged actors in creating conditions for the exercise of human rights in their communities and in ensuring their full implementation.
Shared human rights duties between the authorities at national, regional and local level necessitate close co-operation and co-ordination. However, this view is not immediately shared by everyone, both national governments and grassroots authorities alike. Even for local and regional practitioners their roles, responsibilities and competences in human rights implementation are not always clear. This highlights the need to foster human rights awareness-raising at the grassroots' level including human rights education and training for elected representatives, their staff and information for the local population at large.
In the Netherlands under 13 years free-market rule by VVD leader Mark Rutte, fundamental rights have gone to waste. In education, schools, health sector andante local level smart ass "managers" were hired at fancy high salaries for "austerity" policy and "profit" replacing highly professional persons. A loss of knowledge was the result, stupid decisions and a deterioration of quality at all levels. In my working career, the business community had callable leaders with a healthy governance of business and employee rights. Most of it has evaporated filling the newspapers with one scandal after another.
University level learning, leaders of tomorrow
There has been a commotion in the Utrecht student community about gross sexual misconduct by young male students
The next leader of Europe's line of defense
Weimar Triangle Security Council for a Whole Europe
President stated at the opening of the National Security Council that Poland has always been a loyal member of NATO
Polish soldiers had fought alongside forces from the US Army and alliance armies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other locations "wherever it was necessary to defend the free world." [Quite a broad view of defending the "free world" at any cost of civilian lives ... elsewhere]
"Today, we stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies in support of Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression. But we also act responsibly on our own."
Andrzej Duda went on to say that Poland was currently spending more than 4 percent of its GDP on defence, modernising and developing its army, and acquiring cutting-edge equipment in order to have the best possible potential to protect itself.
Back in Februari 2022 ...
Keeping peace in Europe
As the Weimar Triangle, Germany, France and Poland were making every effort to ensure a de-escalation of an "extremely tense situation", said Scholz. "We are all share the same goal: to keep the peace in Europe by means of diplomacy, clear messages and a common will to act in unity."
Preparing for a post-Biden era ... EU leaders acting on fear
Future of financial stability:
Conversation with Jean-Claude Trichet | The War and the World |
Jean-Claude Trichet: The Weimar Triangle and the Future of Europe
Poland, France and Germany bear a special responsibility for meeting the current challenges of the European Union. The trilateral cooperation in the Weimar Triangle plays an outstanding role in the future-oriented development of Europe. As a laboratory of ideas and a forum for dialogue, it can make a significant contribution to strengthening Europe from within. How the European Union can be further developed, what role the Weimar Triangle can and should play in this and how the EU can also be made crisis-proof for future generations will be discussed by the 2011 Charlemagne Prize winner, Dr. Jean-Claude Trichet, the former EU Commissioner Dr. Danuta Hübner and State Secretary Dr. Mark Speich together with Youth Charlemagne Prize winners from France, Poland and Germany.
Trump on NATO members and US won't sponsor war in Ukraine
Hungary's Orbán Says Trump's Plan To End Ukraine War Is To Cut Funding | RFERL |
😂 🤣 😂 USA 🇺🇸 USA 🇺🇸 USA 🇺🇸 🇪🇺 SUCKERS
John 'regime change' Bolton is not happy ...
