Estudiante

Europe can be our future. Europe should be our future. I was born in Italy, but Italy is part of something bigger. I grew up with this consciousness: young people take European reality for granted, even if we now that our Europe is the result of a long and complicate process. I demand that it be enough to think that our grandparents, when they was younger cannot travel all around Europe as freelyas us: European citizenship has its own historical development. The right of free movement of person inside the Community was introduced in the Treaty of the EEC, signed in Rome in 1957, but it was more linked to the conduct of an economic activity than the concept of European citizenship. It was Tindemans, only in 1976, that propose for the first time a common market and the creation of acommunity of citizens. The editor of this report was the Belgian prime minister; he, in the chapter “Europe of the Citizens”, proposed to increase the European awareness with some news: unification of passports, the vanishing of border controls, the common use of the benefits of the social security system, the accreditation of academic courses and degrees… Another step took place in 1976, when wasintroduced the universal suffrage for the elections of the European Parliament and its competences were meager. After 1986 (the Single European Act), someone started to talk about Economic and Monetary Union. In 1991, the Treaty of the European Union came finally institutionalize European citizenship; the Treaty of Maastricht introduced the idea that the concept of citizenship should not be connectedto “identity” and “nationality”, trying to develop a really European citizenship, but this concept is still breaking new mental barriers.
We don’t realize the benefits we have earned with the entrance in the EU. Sometimes we say Europe is just a hassle for Italy and its members, but I don’t think so.
I think Europe has to refine itself of course, but the idea to develop a stronger EuropeanUnion should be a common will. What we can do in our daily life? I think everyone should increase its European identity. We have a lot of opportunities to live more the European context.
I demand that it be enough to think to the several challenges and opportunities for true and meaningful social and cultural activities within the European context: the telecommunications and informationtechnology revolution has enormously increased the possibilities to exchange ideas, thoughts, but also files with person so far from us: you can keep in touch with the other side of the world. This comported also a dramatically reduction of transport’s and communication’s costs. The cultural market, which involved books, magazines, music and cinema is another way to improve the model of a social Europe.Another important opportunity for young people are the educational programs that are proposed by the European Commission. The most well-know is “Erasmus”, which gives to students the possibility to study in a different European Nations. The Erasmus Programme, together with a number of other independent Programmes, was incorporated into the Socrates programme established by the European Commission in1994. The Socrates programme ended on 31 December 1999 and was replaced with the Socrates II Programme on 24th January 2000, which in turn was replaced by the Lifelong Learning Programme 2007–2013 on 1st January 2007.
We could ask: is there a “European social model”? We can refer to the article 2 of the Treaties states: “The Community shall have as its task (…)to promote throughout theCommunity a harmonious and balanced development of economic activities, sustainable and non-inflationary growth respecting the environment, a high degree of convergence of economic performance, a high level of employment and of social protection, the raising of the standard of living and quality of life, and economic and social cohesion and solidarity among Member States”.
“This multiplicity of...