PROBLEMS AND LIMITATION FACED BY FRANCO-GERMAN TANDEM AS TWIN ENGINE IN EUROPEAN UNION AS THE FUTURE LEADING PARTNER

2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-64
Author(s):  
Fareeha Majeed

Europe is a melting pot of diverse cultures, civilizations and amalgamation of various ethnicities. It is a land which faced many catastrophes, high intensity conflicts and wars. Two world wars have been fought on this land. Almost all the major nations participated directly or indirectly at massive scale. Franco-German axis is a term to explain the relations of both the countries in the context of their mutual cooperation and their significant role in contemporary political affairs of Europe. Post war era 1945, congenial atmosphere of synchronization between both the countries replaced three century old French- German hostility. This tandem performed active role not only in the politically integrated European nation but also they played a vital role in the formation of single currency euro as well. Comparatively their functioning is becoming slow but they are still necessary for future of Europe. It is a general impression that the FrancoGerman alliance is facing critical phase, or in other words they are no longer being capable to act as the twin motor of European integration but Euro pe do not have an appropriate replacement. As far as the future of Franco-German relationship or leadership is concerned it acted necessary of European Union’s twin motor in the past but in recent years national interest became more supreme than the interest of European Union as a whole.

Author(s):  
JAIME GIL-ALUJA ◽  
ANA MARIA GIL-LAFUENTE ◽  
ANNA KLIMOVA

Perhaps more than ever in the European Union many groups and associations of companies and institutions are trying, in different ways, to play an active role in the economic scene of the Union. We verified, on the basis of information obtained, that the studies which precede the decision of a Financial Corporation to initiate the launching of a public offering on a certain economic unit/company or to acquire the shares of a Public Limited Company to take over control, are based on numerical mathematics, adapted mainly to the study of the future hypothetical profitability of the group resulting from the merging process or fusion. We present a proposal based on combinatorial pretopology that leads to an algorithm capable of solving our objective adequately.


Author(s):  
DAMIR ČRNČEC ◽  
JANEZ URBANC

Just like every other organisation, NATO and the EU are more or less constantly changing and organisationally adapting to new challenges and related new priorities and tasks. The intelligence and security structures of both organisations are no exception and although radical or major organisational changes, mainly due to the consensus mode, are not very frequent and require more time, minor changes and adjustments occur constantly. In recent years, the field of intelligence and security in both organisations has not witnessed any major organisational changes. Nevertheless, especially within NATO, the intelligence structure has significantly increased in quality due to the extra effort to include, in addition to military and defence, civil intelligence and security structures of Member States to play a more active role in the exchange of intelligence with the Alliance. Similarly, although less obviously, a similar trend took place in the context of the intelligence and security structures within the EU. In parallel with the termination of operations in Afghanistan, with a slow stabilisation of the situation in the Western Balkans, and mainly as a result of the new/old challenges posed by the situation in relation to Ukraine, there is no doubt that the intelligence and security structures of both organisations, especially NATO, will be further modified and upgraded over the coming years. The aim of this paper is thus, in addition to outlining the current organisation of the intelligence and security structures in both organisations, to indicate the future trends in the field of intelligence and security. Kot vsaka organizacija se tudi zveza Nato in EU bolj ali manj stalno spreminjata ter organizacijsko prilagajata novim izzivom in posledično novim prednostim ter nalogam. Obveščevalno-varnostni deli obeh organizacij niso izjema in čeprav radikalne oziroma večje organizacijske spremembe, predvsem zaradi konsenzualnega načina delovanja, niso zelo pogoste ter zahtevajo več časa, se manjše spremembe nenehno dogajajo. V zadnjem času se sicer na obveščevalno-varnostnem področju v obeh organizacijah niso zgodile večje organizacijske spremembe, kljub temu pa se je predvsem znotraj Nata struktura na obveščevalnem področju pomembno kvalitativno dopolnila. Dopolnitev se je zgodila zato, da se k bolj aktivni vlogi pri izmenjavi obveščevalnih podatkov z zavezništvom (še močneje kot v preteklosti) vključijo poleg vojaških oziroma obrambnih tudi civilne obveščevalno-varnostne strukture držav članic. Podoben, čeprav manj očiten, trend je potekal tudi v okviru obveščevalno-varnostnih struktur EU. Vzporedno z zaključevanjem operacij v Afganistanu, s počasnim stabiliziranjem razmer na Zahodnem Balkanu, predvsem pa kot posledica novih/starih izzivov, ki jih povzročajo razmere v povezavi z Ukrajino, postane jasno, da se bo obveščevalno-varnostna struktura v obeh organizacijah, zlasti pa v Natu, v naslednjih letih dodatno spreminjala in izpopolnjevala. Cilj prispevka je poleg prikaza trenutne organiziranosti obveščevalno-varnostne strukture v obeh organizacijah napovedati prihodnje usmeritve na obveščevalno-varnostnem področju.


Author(s):  
Norazean Sulaiman ◽  
Nurul Nadiah Dewi Faizul Ganapathy ◽  
Wan Faizatul Azirah Ismayatim

Listening skills should be given more attention as listening takes precedence over anything else when it comes to acquiring a language (Putriani, Sukirlan & Supriyadi, 2013). Even with the booming of various technology to facilitate teaching and learning of listening skills in class, the assessment conducted to identify students’ level of understanding of certain topic is still not up-to-date and not parallel with the advancement of technology. The current studies show that the use of mobile apps for listening purpose is proven to be effective in reducing students’ anxiety (Rahimi & Soleymani, 2015), sustaining students’ motivation (Read & Kukulska-Hulme, 2015), and improving students’ linguistic competencies (Ramos & Valderruten, 2017). This study is aimed to test the effectiveness of mobile application in assessing students’ listening skills. Diploma students from various faculties in UiTM Shah Alam were randomly chosen to answer listening comprehension questions via the prototype developed, named Pocket E-Li. The results demonstrate that the majority of the students provided positive response towards the implementation of mobile application for listening assessment. Almost all respondents agreed that listening assessment should be conducted via mobile application in the future. It can be concluded that listening assessment via mobile application is beneficial to students since it meets the students’ demands and needs which is equivalent with the use of current technology.


Author(s):  
Tracey Raney

This paper is about the ways that citizens perceive their place in the political world around them, through their political identities. Using a combination of comparative and quantitative methodologies, the study traces the pattern of citizens’ political identifications in the European Union and Canada between 1981 and 2003 and explains the mechanisms that shape these political identifications. The results of the paper show that in the EU and Canada identity formation is a process that involves the participation of both individuals and political institutions yet between the two, individuals play a greater role in identity construction than do political institutions. The paper argues that the main agents of political identification in the EU and Canada are citizens themselves: individuals choose their own political identifications, rather than acquiring identities that are pre-determined by historical or cultural precedence. The paper makes the case that this phenomenon is characteristic of a rise of ‘civic’ identities in the EU and Canada. In the European Union, this overarching ‘civic’ identity is in its infancy compared to Canada, yet, both reveal a new form of political identification when compared to the historical and enduring forms of cultural identities firmly entrenched in Europe. The rise of civic identities in both the EU and Canada is attributed to the active role that citizens play in their own identity constructions as they base their identifications on rational assessments of how well political institutions function, and whether their memberships in the community will benefit them, rather than on emotional factors rooted in religion or race. In the absence of strongly held emotional identifications, in the EU and Canada political institutions play a passive role in identity construction by making the community appear more entitative to its citizens. These findings offer new theoretical scope to the concept of civic communities and the political identities that underpin them. The most important finding presented in the paper is that although civic communities and identities are manufactured by institutions and political elites (politicians and bureaucrats), they require thinking citizens, not feeling ones, to be sustained.   Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v2i4.179


Author(s):  
Willeke Sandler

This short epilogue takes the story of the leading colonialists into the post-1945 period and assesses the historiographical narrative of post-war colonial amnesia. This amnesia did not begin in 1945, however, but in the 1930s and 1940s through the work of colonialists. In their efforts to situate overseas colonialism within the needs of the present and of value for the future, colonialists had created an overly positive narrative that emphasized an inherent German aptitude for administering Africa. After the war, these ideals could find expression through development or nature preservation, even though (or perhaps because) they no longer bore a specific association with Germany’s past of formal colonialism.


Author(s):  
Jenny Andersson

The book proposes that the Cold War period saw a key debate about the future as singular or plural. Forms of Cold War science depicted the future as a closed sphere defined by delimited probabilities, but were challenged by alternative notions of the future as a potentially open realm with limits set only by human creativity. The Cold War was a struggle for temporality between the two different future visions of the two blocs, each armed with its set of predictive technologies, but these were rivaled, from the 1960s on, by future visions emerging from decolonization and the emergence of a set of alternative world futures. Futures research has reflected and enacted this debate. In so doing, it offers a window to the post-war history of the social sciences and of contemporary political ideologies of liberalism and neoliberalism, Marxism and revisionist Marxism, critical-systems thinking, ecologism, and postcolonialism.


2021 ◽  
pp. 155335062110080
Author(s):  
Lara Blanco Terés ◽  
Carlos Cerdán Santacruz ◽  
Javier García Septiem ◽  
Rocío Maqueda González ◽  
José María Lopesino González ◽  
...  

Introduction: The pandemic produced by SARS-CoV-2 has obliged us to set up the tele-assistance to offer a continuity of care. This implies an innovation, being the degree of satisfaction of patients unknown. Methods: A telephonic survey was conducted with the validated in the Spanish tool Telehealth Usability Questionnaire (Telehealth Usability Questionnaire; rating from 1-7) of all candidate patients assisted consecutively in the Coloproctology Unit. We included demographic variables, education level, job status, diagnosis and consultation type. A descriptive study was done. The relationship between the willingness of consultation model in the future (telemedicine vs traditional) and the categorical variables was analysed through the chi-squared test. Results: A total of 115 patients were included. The average age was 59.9 years, being 60% women. The average score in each of the survey items was higher than 6 in all the questions but 1. 26.1% of the surveyed patients confessed being advocated to tele-assistance in the future. The only factors related to greater willingness to tele-assistance were male gender (37% vs 18.8%; P = .03) and a higher academic preparation level in favour of higher technical studies (35.9%) and university studies (32.4%) opposite to the rest ( P = .043). The rest of variables studied, job status, labour regimen, diagnostic group and consultation type did not show any relationship. Conclusions: A vast majority of patients answered favourably to almost all the items of the survey. However, only 26.1% of them would choose a model of tele-assistance without restrictions.


Politics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 026339572199148
Author(s):  
Anthony Costello

On the 25 March 2017, leaders of the EU27 and European Union (EU) institutions ratified the Rome Declaration. They committed to invite citizens to discuss Europe’s future and to provide recommendations that would facilitate their decision-makers in shaping their national positions on Europe. In response, citizens’ dialogues on the future of Europe were instituted across the Union to facilitate public participation in shaping Europe. This paper explores Ireland’s set of dialogues which took place during 2018. Although event organisers in Ireland applied a relatively atypical and more systematic and participatory approach to their dialogues, evidence suggests that Irelands’ dialogues were reminiscent of a public relations exercise which showcased the country’s commitment to incorporating citizens into the debate on Europe while avoiding a deliberative design which could have strengthened the quality of public discourse and the quality of public recommendations. Due to an absence of elite political will for a deliberative process, as well as structural weaknesses in design, participants’ recommendations lacked any clear and prescriptive direction which could shape Ireland’s national position on the future of Europe in any constructive or meaningful way.


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