Year 2003, with recent tragedy of US space shuttle Columbia and with very likely launch of a manned spacecraft by China, is definitely closing an era of space conquest and opening a completely new one. The finishing era is the era of USA/Russia complete domination of space conquest ; the coming one is an era of multiple space powers without clear leadership anymore in terms of space conquest. In order to play an active role in that ‘New Space Order’, Europe has to rapidly define its strategy ...

This first paper has been written in order to lay the basis of the section “Europe with Regions”. It represents a functional description of the evolution, main actors, mechanisms, objectives, principles, instruments of the EU Regional Policy preceded by general concepts and definitions inserted in the paper in order to facilitate an as deep as possible comprehension of the material. Even if I used several scientific sources for this paper, and to a smaller extent mass media information, it ...

Do we need a space policy ? The headlines are dramatic : The US is spending €35 billion on military and civil space research, which represents six times more than Europe in all its configurations and geography according to the European Commission (DN : IP/03/82, Date : 21/01/2003) “Now the US Wants Control of Space” according to Julian Coman of the London “Telegraph”, “The key theme of the ambitious plans is described as ‘negation’ the denial of the use of space for military intelligence, ...

" It was veritable fireworks of corruption that accompanied the demise of the Polish government" Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* Greasy Palms One of the most pressing problems in the countries of Central Europe today remains the question of corruption, which despite more than a decade of reform bedevils and distorts both economic transformation and the consolidation of democracy. Yet it is far from a new phenomenon. The roots of corruption across the region can be traced back to the era of ...

Introduction Europe needs buzzwords to function. After terms like ’Maastricht’ and the ’Single Market’, two issues have come to dominate the European political debate over the last few years : the Euro and Enlargement. Both are equally important projects on the way to closer European integration, both are key events in their own right, but each for different reasons. While the Euro stands for closer and deeper cooperation between the current EU member states, enlargement stands for a ...

History in the making The date of 16 April 2003 will perhaps one day be remembered as ’historic’, along with dozens of others. On this day, an EU summit of a very particular kind was held in the Greek capital Athens. Twenty-five heads of State and Government gathered in the very birthplace of European democracy, at the Stoa of Attalos, the ancient Agora of Athens, to sign the Accession Treaty for ten new EU members from Central and Southern Europe. The 4,900 page Treaty, the result of five ...

According to research done by EOS/Gallup for the European Commission, European companies say that they are excessively shackled by the poor quality of regulation. They put the cost of regulation at 4% of Community GDP. 15% of this cost, or 0.6% of Community GDP, could be avoided by better regulation, bringing a saving of some EUR 50 billion. Even if the concern for better regulation is rooted back to 1992 at the Edimburgh European Council, it has been seriously considered and politically ...

On en parlait toujours et souvent : cette coopération entre deux pays qui avaient su surmonter leurs antagonismes, dits héréditaires, après trois guerres en moins d’un siècle, une coopération qui avait permis d’entamer le chemin vers une Europe paisible, prospère et unie. La France et l’Allemagne étaient moteur de l’intégration européenne. Pendant 25 ans, on en parlait avec admiration, peut-être quelque fois mêlée d’un brin de jalousie de la part d’autres pays auxquels ne restent qu’à accepter les ...

A new entity requires new tools to be run properly and languages are a key-aspect in 21st-Europe success or failure. Indeed languages (at the crossroads of cultures and politics) are at the heart of the basic requirement of the European construction : creating unity while maintaining diversity (“in unam pluribus”). Common languages and democracy The challenge is quite easy to formulate : to build a Euro-Democracy, you need Euro-citizens ; and “a Euro-Citizen is a/ anybody (we no longer talk ...

Ces dernières semaines, la Commission européenne célèbre le millionième étudiant ERASMUS. Romano Prodi s’est en fait lui-même l’écho dans un récent article soulignant le succès du programme et lançant quelques pistes pour l’avenir. Etant l’une des personnes qui a permis l’adoption politique d’ERASMUS au printemps 1987, je me félicite du succès de ce programme qui est par ailleurs le seul programme communautaire a être connu par un nombre important de citoyens européens, comme l’a montré le succès du film " ...