EU

Elections often tell you more about what people are against than what they are for. So it is with the European ones that took place last week in all 25 European Union member countries. These elections, widely trumpeted as the world’s biggest-ever multination- al democratic vote, were fought for the most part as 25 separate national contests, which makes it tricky to pick out many common themes. But the strongest are undoubtedly negative. Europe’s voters are angry and disillusioned—and they have demonstrated their anger and disillusion in three main ways.
The most obvious was by abstaining. The average overall turnout was just over 45% , by some margin the lowest ever recorded for elections to the European Parliament. And that average disguises some big variations: Italy, for example, notched up over 70%, but Sweden managed only 37%. Most depressing of all, at least to believers in the European project, was the extremely low vote in many of the new member countries from central Eu- rope, which accounted for the whole of the fall in turnout since 1999. In the biggest, Po- land, only just over a fifth of the electorate turned out to vote. Only a year ago, central Europeans voted in large numbers to join the EU, which they did on May 1st. That they abstained in such large numbers in the European elections points to early disillusion with the European Union—as well as to a widespread feeling, shared in the old member countries as well, that the European Parliament does not matter.
Disillusion with Europe was also a big factor in the second way in which voters pro- tested, which was by supporting a ragbag of populist, nationalist and explicitly anti-EU parties. These ranged from the 16% who backed the UK Independence Party, whose declared policy is to withdraw from the EU and whose leaders see their mission as "wrecking’’ the European Parliament, to the 14% who voted for Sweden’s Junelist, and the 27% of Poles who backed one of two anti-EU parties, the League of Catholic Families and Selfdefence. These results have returned many more Eurosceptics and trouble-makers to the parliament: on some measures, over a quarter of the new MEPS will belong to the "awkward squad". That is not a bad thing, however, for it will make the parliament more representative of European public opinion.
But it is the third target of European voters’ ire that is perhaps the most immediately significant: the fact that, in many EU countries, old and new, they chose to vote heavily against their own governments. This anti-incumbent vote was strong almost everywhere, but it was most pronounced in Britain, the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and Sweden. The leaders of all the four biggest European Union countries, Tony Blair in Britain, Jacques Chirac in France, Gerhard Schroder in Germany and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, were each given a bloody nose by their voters.
The big question now is how Europe’s leaders should respond to this. By a sublime (or terrible) coincidence, soon after the elections, and just as The Economist was going to press, they were gathering in Brussels for a crucial summit, at which they are due to agree a new constitutional treaty for the EU and to select a new president for the European Commission. Going into the meeting, most EU heads of government seemed determined to press ahead with this agenda regardless of the European elections —even though the atmosphere after the results may make it harder for them to strike deals.
Which of the following statements is not mentioned in the text

A:EU member countries hold that the European Parliament is of importance. B:The European Project is the worst vision of all. C:EU member countries maintain that central Europe are gaining more common themes. D:Anti-EU parties are never detrimental to the building-up of the European collaboration.

When European Union (EU) leaders took delivery of Europe’s first draft of a constitution at a summit in Greece last June, it was with almost universal praise.
There was wide agreement that the text could save the EU from paralysis once it expands from 15 to 25 members next year. It would give Europe a more stable leadership and greater clout on the world stage, said the chairman of the Convention which drafted the agreement, former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing.
Such praise was too good to last. As the product of a unique 16-month public debate, the draft has become a battleground. Less than four months after it was delivered, the same leaders who accepted it opened the second round of talks on its content this week by trading veiled threats to block agreement or cut off funds if they don’t get their way.
The tone was polite, but unyielding. In a bland joint statement issued when the talks opened on October 4, the leaders stressed the constitution, "represents a vital step in the process aimed at making Europe more cohesive, more democratic and closer to its citizens. "Sharp differences remain, though, between member countries of the EU over voting rights, the size and composition of the executive European Commission, defense co-operation and the role of religion in the new constitution.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s hopes of wrapping up a deal on the constitution by Christmas seem far from being realized. While the six founding members of the EU--Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg--plus Britain and Denmark, want as little change as possible to the draft, the 10 mainly central European countries due to join the 15-nation bloc next year want to alter the institution’s balance.
Such small states are afraid their views will be ignored under the constitution and are determined to defend the disproportionate voting rights they won at the 2000 Nice Summit. EU experts fear such sharp differences will create exactly the paralysis in the EU the Convention was established to avoid.
The first draft of the EU constitution was aimed at

A:turning EU into a super power in the world’s economy. B:serving the interest of the 10 nations planning to come aboard. C:building a better election system for excellent leadership. D:preventing EU from ineffectiveness due to its expansion.

Part A
Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. (40 points)
Text 1

The first draft of the EU constitution was aimed at

A:turning EU into a super power in the world’s economy. B:serving the interest of the 10 nations planning to come aboard. C:building a better election system for excellent leadership. D:preventing EU from ineffectiveness due to its expansion.

Elections often tell you more about what people are against than what they are for. So it is with the European ones that took place last week in all 25 European Union member countries. These elections, widely trumpeted as the world’s biggest-ever multinational democratic vote, were fought for the most part as 25 separate national contests, which makes it tricky to pick out many common themes. But the strongest are undoubtedly negative. Europe’s voters are angry and disillusioned-and they have demonstrated their anger and disillusion in three main ways.
The most obvious was by abstaining. The average overall turnout was just over 45%, by some margin the lowest ever recorded for elections to the European Parliament. And that average disguises some big variations: Italy, for example, notched up over 70%, but Sweden managed only 37%. Most depressing of all, at least to believers in the European project, was the extremely low vote in many of the new member countries from central Europe, which accounted for the whole of the fall in turnout since 1999. In the biggest, Poland, only just over a fifth of the electorate turned out to vote. Only a year ago, central Europeans voted in large numbers to join the EU, which they did on May 1st. That they abstained in such large numbers in the European elections points to early disillusion with the European Union-as well as to a widespread feeling, shared in the old member countries as well, that the European Parliament does not matter.
Disillusion with Europe was also a big factor in the second way in which voters protested, which was by supporting a ragbag of populist, nationalist and explicitly anti-EU parties. These ranged from the 16% who backed the UK Independence Party, whose declared policy is to withdraw from the EU and whose leaders see their mission as "wrecking" the European Parliament, to the 14% who voted for Sweden’s Junelist, and the 27% of Poles who backed one of two anti-EU parties, the League of Catholic Families and Selfdefence. These results have returned many more Eurosceptics and trouble-makers to the parliament: on some measures, over a quarter of the new MEPS will belong to the "awkward squad". That is not a bad thing, however, for it will make the ’parliament more representative of European public opinion.
But it is the third target of European voters’ ire that is perhaps the most immediately significant, the fact that, in many EU countries, old and new, they chose to vote heavily against their own governments. This anti-incumbent vote was strong almost everywhere, but it was most pronounced in Britain, the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and Sweden. The leaders of all the four biggest European Union countries, Tony Blair in Britain, Jacques Chirac in France, Gerhard Schroder in Germany and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, were each given a bloody nose by their voters.
The big question now is how Europe’s leaders should respond to this. By a sublime (or terrible) coincidence, soon after the elections, and just as The Economist was going to press, they were gathering in Brussels for a crucial summit, at which they are due to agree a new constitutional treaty for the EU and to select a new president for the European Commissi6n. Going into the meeting, most EU heads of government seemed determined to press ahead with this agenda regardless of the European elections--even though the atmosphere after the results may make it harder for them to strike deals.

Which of the following statements is not mentioned in the text （）

A:EU member countries hold that the European Parliament is of importance B:The European Project is the worst vision of all C:EU member countries maintain that central Europe are gaining more common themes D:Anti-EU parties are never detrimental to the building-up of the European collaboration

Elections often tell you more about what people are against than what they are for. So it is with the European ones that took place last week in all 25 European Union member countries. These elections, widely trumpeted as the world’s biggest-ever multinational democratic vote, were fought for the most part as 25 separate national contests, which makes it tricky to pick out many common themes. But the strongest are undoubtedly negative. Europe’s voters are angry and disillusioned—and they have demonstrated their anger and disillusion in three main ways.
The most obvious was by abstaining. The average overall turnout was just over 45%, by some margin the lowest ever recorded for elections to the European Parliament. And that average disguises some big variations: Italy, for example, notched up over 70o//00, but Sweden managed only 37%. Most depressing of all, at least to believers in the European project, was the extremely low vote in many of the new member countries from central Europe, which accounted for the whole of the fall in turnout since 1999. In the biggest, Poland, only just over a fifth of the electorate turned out to vote. Only a year ago, central Europeans voted in large numbers to join the EU, which they did on May 1st. That they abstained in such large numbers in the European elections points to early disillusion with the European Union—as well as to a widespread feeling, shared in the old member countries as well, that the European Parliament does not matter.
Disillusion with Europe was also a big factor in the second way in which voters protested, which was by supporting a ragbag of populist, nationalist and explicitly anti-EU parties. These ranged from the 16% who backed the UK Independence Party, whose declared policy is to withdraw from the EU and whose leaders see their mission as "wrecking" the European Parliament, to the 14% who voted for Sweden’s Junelist, and the 27% of Poles who backed one of two anti-EU parties, the League of Catholic Families and Self-defense. These results have returned many more Eurosceptics and trouble-makers to the parliament, on some measures, over a quarter of the new MEPS will belong to the "awkward squad". That is not a bad thing, however, for it will make the parliament more representative of European public opinion.
But it is the third target of European voters’ ire that is perhaps the most immediately significant: the fact that, in many EU countries, old and new, they chose to vote heavily against their own governments. This anti-incumbent vote was strong almost everywhere, but it was most pronounced in Britain, the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and Sweden. The leaders of all the four biggest European Union countries, Tony Blair in Britain, Jacques Chirac in France, Gerhard Schroder in Germany and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, were each given a bloody nose by their voters.
The big question now is how Europe’s leaders should respond to this. By a sublime (or terrible) coincidence, soon after the elections, and just as The Economist was going to press, they were gathering in Brussels for a crucial summit, at which they are due to agree a new constitutional treaty for the EU and to select a new president for the European Commission. Going into the meeting, most EU heads of government seemed determined to press ahead with this agenda regardless of the European elections—even though the atmosphere after the results may make it harder for them to strike deals.

Which of the following statements is not mentioned in the text（）

A:EU member countries hold that the European Parliament is of importance B:The European Project is the worst vision of all C:EU member countries maintain that central Europe are gaining more common themes D:Anti-EU parties are never detrimental to the building-up of the European collaboration

When European Union (EU) leaders took delivery of Europe’s first draft of a constitution at a summit in Greece last June, it was with almost universal praise.
There was wide agreement that the text could save the EU from paralysis once it expands from 15 to 25 members next year. It would give Europe a more stable leadership and greater clout on the world stage, said the chairman of the Convention which drafted the agreement, former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing.
Such praise was too good to last. As the product of a unique 16-month public debate, the draft has become a battleground. Less than four months after it was delivered, the same leaders who accepted it opened the second round of talks on its content this week by trading veiled threats to block agreement or cut off funds if they don’t get their way.
The tone was polite, but unyielding. In a bland joint statement issued when the talks opened on October 4, the leaders stressed the constitution, "represents a vital step in the process aimed at making Europe more cohesive, more democratic and closer to its citizens. "Sharp differences remain, though, between member countries of the EU over voting rights, the size and composition of the executive European Commission, defense co-operation and the role of religion in the new constitution.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s hopes of wrapping up a deal on the constitution by Christmas seem far from being realized. While the six founding members of the EU--Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg--plus Britain and Denmark, want as little change as possible to the draft, the 10 mainly central European countries due to join the 15-nation bloc next year want to alter the institution’s balance.
Such small states are afraid their views will be ignored under the constitution and are determined to defend the disproportionate voting rights they won at the 2000 Nice Summit. EU experts fear such sharp differences will create exactly the paralysis in the EU the Convention was established to avoid.

The first draft of the EU constitution was aimed at（）

A:turning EU into a super power in the world’s economy B:serving the interest of the 10 nations planning to come aboard C:building a better election system for excellent leadership D:preventing EU from ineffectiveness due to its expansion

Text 4 Will the European Union make it The question would have sounded strange not long ago. Now even the project’s greatest cheerleaders talk of a continent facing a “Bermuda triangle” of debt, population decline and lower growth. As well as those chronic problems, the EU face an acute crisis in its economic core, the 16 countries that use the single currency. Markets have lost faith that the euro zone’s economies, weaker or stronger, will one day converge thanks to the discipline of sharing a single currency, which denies uncompetitive members the quick fix of devaluation. Yet the debate about how to save Europe’s single currency from disintegration is stuck. It is stuck because the euro zone’s dominant powers, France and Germany, agree on the need for greater harmonization within the euro zone, but disagree about what to harmonies. Germany thinks the euro must be saved by stricter rules on borrow spending and competitiveness, barked by quasi-automatic sanctions for governments that do not obey. These might include threats to freeze EU funds for poorer regions and EU mega-projects and even the suspension of a country’s voting rights in EU ministerial councils. It insists that economic co-ordination should involve all 27 members of the EU club, among whom there is a small majority for free-market liberalism and economic rigour; in the inner core alone, Germany fears, a small majority favour French interference. A “southern” camp headed by French wants something different: ”European economic government” within an inner core of euro-zone members. Translated, that means politicians intervening in monetary policy and a system of redistribution from richer to poorer members, via cheaper borrowing for governments through common Eurobonds or complete fiscal transfers. Finally, figures close to the France government have murmured, curo-zone members should agree to some fiscal and social harmonization: e.g., curbing competition in corporate-tax rates or labour costs. It is too soon to write off the EU. It remains the world’s largest trading block. At its best, the European project is remarkably liberal: built around a single market of 27 rich and poor countries, its internal borders are far more open to goods, capital and labour than any comparable trading area. It is an ambitious attempt to blunt the sharpest edges of globalization, and make capitalism benign. To solve the euro problem ,Germany proposed that ______ .

A:EU funds for poor regions be increased B:stricter regulations be imposed C:only core members be involved in economic co-ordination D:voting rights of the EU members be guaranteed