Faith Akin’s newest film, ‘The Edge of Heaven’, has just won the European Parliament’s first Lux Prize (the trophy was inspired by Tower of Babel).
In the film, talking about her troubles in Turkey, Susanne, a film character played by Hanna Schygulla, keeps repeating the same phrase: “Maybe things will be better when Turkey joins the European Union …”, but when the frustration is reaching its pick, everything is reduced to: ‘F*** the European Union!‘
Sounds familiar?
Here is an interview that director Faith Akin gave for Cineuropa.

Since more and more Romanians are fighting for their rights in European Courts, after losing any hope in the black hole called ‘Romanian Justice’, I think these links might be useful:

European Court of Human Rights - ECHU (CEDO - for Romanians).

Good luck!

Note: at this hour, Gabriel Stefanescu, who recently won a trial at ECHR, is invited at Victor Ciutacu’s talk show. (Who knows, maybe this is the way to recover the money for the “lost” Romanian fleet :D)

(N.B. ECHR is not an EU institution, it belongs to the Council of Europe - international organization, independent of EU)

The references to the Moldovan language on the website of the EU Commission were changed, EU Commissioner for Multilingualism Leonard Orban told in a conference, on Friday:

On the European Commission’s web page the syntagm ‘Moldovan language’ is written, while in fact the text is in the Romanian language. It is a problem, when the site reads the Moldovan language and in fact this is the Romanian language. It cannot be accepted that a document said to be written in another language be written in the Romanian language.

The European Commissioner said that from now on the European Commission would monitor very strictly everything posted on its web page.

Orban said that this is a problem of ‘defending the Romanian language.’

On Thursday, after two years, the European leaders finally reached a deal on the new ‘Reform Treaty’.
Now all we need is the ratification, pretty difficult, since the governments in several member countries are pressured to organize a referendum on the revised text.

Some key provisions of the new treaty are:

* A full-time Council president, for a two and a half year, renewable term.
* A clearer, fairer and more transparent voting system based on the “double majority” system.
* A smaller Commission capped at two-thirds the number of member states from 2014.
* A stronger foreign policy representative, creating the post of High Representative for Foreign Policy by merging the roles of the Council High Representative and the commissioner for external action.
* An extension of majority voting to 50 new areas, most of them minor, and most notably concerning cooperation on fighting terrorism, crime and immigration.
* The Charter of Fundamental Rights will become legally binding, though only on European legislation.
* A stronger role for national parliaments, who now have the right to challenge European legislation that they consider unnecessary.

Is seems that President Nicolas Sarkozy - France and Prime Minister Gordon Brown - Great Britain are backing Tony Blair to be the first to fill European Union presidency.

(Should I comment the picture? Or not? …not this time :D)

N.B. I was asked why I want a referendum in Romania - everybody knows that the result will be certainly a very clear “yes”. Because the Romanians will finally have the chance to talk and debate on European issues. I don’t think they will be wasted money.

..speaking of Mr. Adrian Severin…

Dear fellow Romanians, you can find out here who are the MEPs that represent you, monitor how many times do they open their mouth and what did they say (or if they ever spoke a word) and other interesting staff. So, at the near to come European election you will think twice whether or not you’ll send them back.

At their first meeting after the summer recess, European lawmakers have kicked off a highly political debate about how seats for MEPs should be distributed between 27 EU states.
On 3rd of September, French conservative Alain Lamassoure and Romanian socialist Adrian Severin presented to the European parliament’s constitutional affairs committee their report on the future composition of the 785-strong legislative house.

The two parliamentarians suggested three main rules:

a) The total number of deputies should be limited to 750 (there are currently 785),
b) the ceiling for a national delegation would be decreased from 99 to 96 seats
c) the minimum threshold would rise from five to six seats.

These rules would slightly reduce the weight of some countries, while other will gain one or few extra seats.
The Lamassoure-Severin report argues against reserving at this point any seats for EU-hopeful countries (Croatia).
Within the three main limits, the seats would be shared on the basis of “degressive proportionality” principle, which the two MEPs’ report describes as an “ideal solution”.
The principle suggests that “the bigger the population of a member state, the higher must be the number of citizens each MEP represents” (and vice versa), but this advantage will be reduced with the number of the citizens.
A new system of the seats redistribution should enter into force with the next parliamentary elections in 2009, but Mr Lamassoure has predicted the talks will generate “a lot of passion and emotion”.

In case of failure of this project, the present rules would be automatically modified in 2009 in such a way that the total number of deputies would fall to 736. Only Germany, Slovenia, Estonia, Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta would maintain their current numbers. The rest of the member states would lose several seats.

(Good to know that a Romanian MEP is so actively involved in EU lawmaking)

The Council of The European Union
The Council of The European Union (informally, the Council of Ministers or just the Council) is the main decision-making body of the European Union. the Council is the Community’s legislative body; for a wide range of Community issues, it exercises that legislative power in co-decision with the European Parliament;
The ministers of the Member States meet within the Council of the European Union. Depending on the issue on the agenda, each country will be represented by the minister responsible for that subject (foreign affairs, finance, social affairs, transport, agriculture, etc.). Usually the foreign affairs ministers coordinate these meetings.
The Council is presided over for a period of six months by each Member State in turn, in accordance with a pre-established rota. Presently Portugal is responsible, for the third time, to carry out this task, after the Presidencies of 1992 and 2000, taking over from Germany on 1 July 2007 and handing it over to Slovenia on 01 January 2008.

The European Council
The European Council (referred to as a European Summit) is the highest political body of the European Union, which meets at least twice a year (and in extraordinary occasions, whenever it is necessary. The European Council brings together the heads of state or government of the European Union and the president of the Commission. Its meeting is chaired by the member currently holding Presidency of the Council of the European Union. While the Council has no formal executive or legislative powers (it is a body, not an institution, of the Union), it deals with major issues and decisions taken are “a major impetus in defining the general political guidelines of the European Union” .
Although, unlike the European Parliament, the Council, the Commission, the Court of Justice and the Court of Auditors, the European Council is not legally an institution of the European Community it nevertheless plays a vital role in all European Union fields of activity whether it be by giving impetus to the Union or defining general political guidelines, or by coordinating, arbitrating or disentangling difficult questions.

The Council of Europe
The Council of Europe is the oldest organization working for European integration since 1949. It is an international political organization, independent of European Union, but did influence the EU history and does cooperate with EU in many areas. The seat of the Council of Europe is in Strasbourg. The Council of Europe seeks to develop throughout Europe common and democratic principles based on the European Convention on Human Rights and other reference texts on the protection of individuals.
The Council of Europe has a genuine pan-European dimension:
- 47 member countries
- 1 applicant country: Belarus; Belarus ‘ special guest status has been suspended due to its lack of respect for human rights and democratic principles.

In conclusion:
- The Council of The European Union - an EU insititution
- The European Council - a regular reunion of heads of state or government of the EU Members
- The Council of Europe - an international organization, independent of EU

In ciuda eforturilor domnului Vadim Tudor, nationalistii europeni nu sunt interesati de ’strangerea randurilor’, majoritatea neconfimandu-si participarea la congresul ITS propus de liderul PRM pentru toamna acestui an. Poate si pentru ca in Europa ‘nationalist’ nu e obligatoriu sinonim cu ‘extremist’.