Europe speech

On Tuesday April 14th, from 1pm to 2 pm, we went to a conference about the European Union.

We took some notes about the things we thought were more important.

The EU is formed by 27 countries from the European continent.

The countries are: Germany, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Low Countries, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

There are some conditions for a country to enter the EU:

-To be in the European continent.

-To be a democracy.

-Respect the equality (languages, religions, politics, genders…)

-Respect the human rights (right to life, to education, to health, to decent housing…)

And many others

Admission of countries in the EU.

It isn’t the same thing to enter the EU that asking for admission. When a country asks for admission in it, it has to fill in a test of about 15000 pages and that usually takes them about two years.

• 1957-6 states: Germany, Belgium, France, Italia, Luxembourg and the Low Countries, Treaty of Rome (to avoid entering in the III world war, maintain peace and to improve conditions of living and welfare).
• -1973- 1st enlargement: three more states: Denmark, Ireland and the UK.
• -1981=on more state: Greece.
• -1995=three more states: Austria, Finland and Sweden.
• -1986=Two more states: Spain and Portugal.
• -2004=ten more states: Cyprus, Slovaquia, Slovenia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland and the Czech Republic.
• -2007=the last enlargement: two more states: Bulgaria and Rumania.

At present there are three countries who want to enter the EU:

Turkey (also known as the eternal candidate, it never accomplishes all the requirements)

Macedonia

Croatia (it’s the one who has more chances)

You can only enter by absolute majority ( all of the countries of the EU must

agree in the county’s entry)

European Union’s symbols:

• Flag: blue with twelve Stars. The blue background is the symbol of the tranquillity and the golden Stars symbolize wealth. The number of Stars, twelve, was selected because it’s considered pure number (12 hours, 12 months, 12 apostles…)We have no shield.
• Hymn: Beethoven’s ode to joy, without words.(4th movement of the 9th symphony)
• Languages: we have 23 official languages, but the number is reduced to three working languages: English, German and French.
• Coin: EURO (three countries are exempt from this rule: UK, Denmark and Sweden

The three most populated world powers:

• China
• India
• EU

You can find more information in http://europa.eu/

Thanks to Catalina Morro for this conference.