Notre Europe's viewpoint
| 25/04/2009
While the financial crisis now has clear impacts in economic and social areas, it seems essential to deal with the most urgent issues first and to find quick solutions for some categories of the population or for the weakened economic areas. This feeling of urgency is justified. The future gets prepared today and people as well as markets need to be able to imagine a better future. But there is no future without memory. This expression favoured by Jacques Delors should incite us to find time to draw lessons from past experiences.
Thus, Riccardo Perissich, formerly Director General for Industry at the European Commission, looks at the steel crisis in the 1970s and draws some useful lessons to face the difficulties met by the car industry today. In an article published by the Smith Institute, Eulalia Rubio evaluates, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the European Social Charter, whether the renewed EU social agenda is relevant in the context of a crisis, A note by Aziliz Gouez also stresses the importance of collective memory and shows, through an analysis of trade between Northern Italy and the Romanian region of Banat, the political and identity phenomena, which have developed outside EU institutional frameworks for the past twenty years with the fall of Communism in the East and increased globalization in the backdrop.
Finally, Renaud Dehousse looks at EU citizens' expectations according to Eurobarometer surveys, which, year after year, have become part of our collective memory. Explaining why there is still a gap between those expectations and EU activity, the Brief entitled "Does the Union's Action Meet the Citizen's Preferences?" concludes that citizens' preferences should be taken more into account. An important deadline in this respect is looming closer and closer. Between 4 and 7 June citizens will be able to choose their representatives within the European Parliament for the next EU legislature (five years). For this reason Notre Europe will soon publish a special newsletter on the EU elections.
