[kieran]

I'm taking a European Union class for Political Science.

One of our assignments is to write a paper on the EU about anything.

I'm just having a tough time trying to narrow down to a specific question.

I really don't have any ideas, but I know there are a lot of people with a better understanding of the EU here than I have.

One person was doing the paper on what Ukraine has to do in order to gain membership to the EU. I need a topic along those lines, or something like "will the EU ever become as 'united" as the US is?

Anybody have any suggestions or ideas?

Thanks.

-kieran

[Fooboy]

Here are a few:

• The EU: Innocent alliance, or beginnings of a sinister plot for world domination?
• The EU: Jason Bourne's playground
• The EU: Mind the gap

[scratt]

Or my personal favorite...

The EU: A study and comparison on the amount of cocaine residue found in bathrooms in the EU buildings vs normal bars and nightclubs.

[Dorian Gray]

How about a paper on the so-called "democratic deficit" of the EU? It would be easy to find articles (and entire books) on that. Even Wikipedia has an article with references, though I haven't read it so don't assume I endorse it.

[julesstoop]

It might be interesting to do research on the (very) different national histories of the member states, the way history (education) was (and still is) used as a means of nationalistic propaganda, how this influences European integration and finally: how the EU tries to counteract it's potential negative effects.

Interesting starting point:
http://www.euroclio.eu/mambo/index.php

[Mugge]

Considering your interest in Ukraine I would suggest that you take a look at EU's integration vs. expansion.

Integrationwise it's an often stated goal for the EU to increase the cooperation between the memberstates and this means that more and more issues are resolved on an EU level. From my point of view, this has a lot to do with the EU's ambitions. However, it also presents a problem when you accept new memberstates because these states have an increasingly large entry barrier to overcome.

Bulgaria (2007) is a good example. The EU wanted to accept Bulgaria's bid for membership, in part because they wanted to bring it out of the Russian sphere of influence, but the country was poor and corrupt. Currently Bulgaria is risking to have it's development subsidies put on hold due to corruption. The economic and cultural divide was and is simply too wide to be bridged by the usual entry process.

To many Eastern European countries EU (and NATO) is the number one item on their wish-list, because it's the only alternative to Russia. But the old memberstates aren't too happy just accepting everybody because many of the old EU benefits gets diluted. Such as the agricultural subsidies. Plus that the free movement of labour means that French workers risk the competition of Bulgarian workers who demands less pay. And politically their influence in Brussels also gets diluted. One only needs to take a look at how many members Poland secured in the EU Parliament when it became a member in 2004.

And don't even get me started on Turkey...

Russia's efforts at playing divide and conquer with the EU also represents a good reason for a closely integrated EU. As it currently stands, the EU doesn't have a common foreign policy and Russia is never late to exploit this. Fooboy might ridicule the EU, but he would probably like a little more cooperation regarding Russia and the GWOT. But that's not happening before the EU gets itself sorted out. However, states don't have "feelings" for eachother, but only interests. Therefore the EU memberstates needs to find their common interests if they are to work closer together. And an important requirement for common interests is that their situation is also somewhat similar in respect of governance, wealth and values. Something that integration does, but it takes time. And meanwhile there are a lot of hopeful states asking to get in. Well, at least the politicians in Brussels have realised that they need to take it more slowly now.

Better stop before this turns into a rant.