Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Europe Day

This Friday 9 May is Europe day. What does Europe mean to you? For me, Europe is a great acheivement after so many years of war. Europe is about different, but similar, countries working together. Europe is about freedom and social justice - sorry to sound a bit like a politician ;) And what a fantastic acheivement the Euro is - unfortunately Britain isn't a part.

Anyway, your views please...

8 comments:

JR said...

UPSS!!!...Humm...a "cat":-))
I thought I was on the wrong blog...

Paul, you doesn't sound a bit like a politician but like a dreamer! Only dreamers can change the world!

I accept the Europe as the whole and the parts, a community with similar rules and social justice grouped by different countries in their different cultures.
Talking about the Euro and Foreign Trade, we really need the Europe as a whole, to be strong to oppose the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement-Canada,USA,Mexico) or the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation), etc.
But "the idea of Europe" is quite well written by George Steiner: "Europe is made up of coffee houses, or cafés. These extend from Pessoa's favourite coffee house in Lisbon to the Odessa cafés haunted by Isaac Babel's gangsters. They strecht from the Copenhagen cafés which Kierkegaard passed on his concentrated walks to the counters of Palermo. No early or defining cafés in Moscow which is already a suburb of Asia. Very few in England after a brief fashion in the eighteenth century. None in North America outside the gallican outpost of New Orleans. Draw the coffee-house map and you have one of the essential markers of the 'idea of Europe'".

Judite

JR said...

obviously "you don't" not "doesn't", sorry...

The best class blog said...

I don't know where that cat came from, Judite. I thought I was on the wrong site too.

pmmrb said...

For me the mains aims of Europe union is to create an unique economical and political partnership between all European countries where all citizens can live together in peace, prosperity and freedom, it has been a hard work to obtain the agreement among all the countries to make these things happen but it worth.
The beauty of this union is the variety of cultures, languages, habits, ideas, monuments, etc, and these differences are accepted and enjoyed by all European citizens, in that space we have a lot of advantages, opportunities to study and work abroad without discrimination, an unique currency “euro” in almost all country , Frontier-free travel , joint action on crime and terror, etc.
The Europe Union isn’t perfect but it is always working to improve the quality of life of their citizens, and the future will be decided through dialogue and democracy.

Paulo Barbosa

Mália said...

For me Europe is a mix of cultures, sometimes working together…
I think in Europe we have a big countries, well organized and poor countries, but maybe Europe can be the most similar continent.
We have lots of nice different places to visit, some with beautiful beaches, others with wonderful museums, nice castles, enchanted forests, because of that we received lots of tourists.
If I need to choose a continent to live I will choose live here.
About politics I think it’s more or less as in the other continents.

Beyba said...

I am a politician and I am a dreamer too!
I think Europe is a very good issue to countries that work together... and now even better by using the same currency!
But I also think that we should have the same salary, the same prices for petrol, house, food and the same life quality (health care).
Another thing that should be banned is mobile phone roaming.
The only thing that I wouldn't change was the language and cultural background.
Aldora

Unknown said...

Europe is a beautiful continent with many people, languages, culture and architecture.
I agree with my classmates about freedom, Euro and so many things we can talk about.
For trade, we have the opportunity to choose products from U.E. in supermarket. But our economy decreased with this impact.


The European founds help professional formation and I worked with European Social Found.

I watched on television some weeks ago that secondary schools in all Europe change projects and Portuguese students travel around the Europe to announce their projects. The subjects are sciences, environment and foreign languages and so on. I felt jealous. This is U.E. progress.

On the other hand we have the community rules to respect. This weekend I heard from a labour inspector that one Portuguese law was translated from an European Directive. He didn´t agree with that Portuguese law because it was a translation from Directive. He said that the law would be good if it was thought for our reality!!! The court exists to explain and apply all errors.

As a tourist, I like to see some countries that have entered to U.E so recently and their economy is so fulfilled.I hadn´t visited all european countries but I see statisitcs.....

bye, see you later,

Sílvia

Joana said...

As everyone knows, I was born in Mogadouro and I lived there for 18 years. This is a village near Spain, more or less 30 km. That time that region wasn’t developed, without a lot of things, without variety and with bad access.
However, in the other side of the frontier, there was everything with the best price! It’s obvious that a big amount of people have gone to Spain doing the most of shopping!
But that has had a “small big problem”: the frontier control where the car and all things that we have had to buy, were controlled! Products like meat, fish, … (fresh products) we couldn’t take.
This is one of the advantages of the Europe!