Taking into consideration many political (more or less) gossips, the European Union is neither a global power, nor a power in decline. The European Union is transforming and developing into a powerful influence. In my opinion, there are three global powers: The United States, China and Russia– maybe India’s on its way to being one.
Europe had to be its own general manager, and in 1957 the founding members of the community, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany, figured that out for the first time.
When the United States and Russia decided in 1945 at Yalta to divide our continent, I bet Europeans were starving for a bit of decisional power. As I was saying, since 1957, the European Union began to work out in order to develop agriculture, environment, energy, job placement, education and many others.
First of all, the only domain I could refer to is the educational one. Let’s not forget the PISA programme and its aim to raise the level of the European education – in comparison to the worldwide education – by evaluating mathematics and reading skills to those under 15 years old.
Second of all, the European Union carries on the Lifelong Learning programme that is Erasmus, Comenius, Grundtvig and Leonardo da Vinci as sub-programmes and Youth in Action programme. The EU’s investments are about €5 billion for 2007-2013, all spent on study visits, student exchanges, seminars, trainings, courses and all sorts of social activities.
Third of all, nowadays, we can afford to study abroad, free of charge or very cheap! Two of these European countries are Denmark (no fees at all for EU member states) and the Netherlands (€1600 per year for EU member states), or Belgium and France (€400-€1000) . The European Union also supportsBolognaprocess, which is useful for a “Europeanized” education.
I conclude by saying that in 2011, we can proudly say that things have changed: the European Union gives every member state the chance to travel without visas, to cooperate concerning social, political, economical, environmental issues, it allocates European funds to every educational programme or any type of business idea, think-tanks, lobby and the list can easily continue.
