Урок 14

(Расширение Европейского союза –

Expanding the European Union )

Домашнее задание к уроку 14

Выполните упражнение I.

Упражнения

Упражнение I. Переведите текст 1 письменно:

Текст 1

The European Union had a big day in Copenhagen last Saturday when leaders of the 15 member states agreed to admit 10 new aspirants to membership. As with most EU events, there was a great deal of last-minute haggling before the deal was struck. Turkey, which has been stiff-armed for 40 years, was finally promised a chance to begin negotiations in 2004 it all goes well.

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Amid all the self-congratulation, a niggling little question keeps popping up: Why does anyone want to join the EU? Its largest member, Germany, seems mainly interested in pulling other members down to its level by forcing them to jack up taxes to the German level. The other prime mover in 1950 of what later became the EU, France, still has dreams of turning it into a new Napoleonic empire. Britain, frozen out by charles de Gaulle for 10 years before joining in 1973, still isn't sure about whether it wants to trust the folks who run the euro.

And yet 10 European states were hammering on the door to get into this club, and there are more waiting in line. They all have their separate reasons. Poland's former communist leaders, who are rapidly running the economy into the ground, wanted to get their hands on some of those EU farm subsidies. Greek Cypriots want to erase the wall that separates them from Turkish Cypriots, using the leverage that EU membership can provide. The three Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, want some help in fending off the Russians, who held them 50 years.

Malta, a tiny island country in the Mediterranean is happy to be a EU member-state, which will help it besides everything else to punish hunters who kill birds flying to warm countries in autumn and back home in spring.

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And so it goes with the other candidates, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria hope to be in the next class to matriculate. And maybe after them would come the Balkan states.

In principle, most of these aspirants have sound reasons. The one thing: Europe’s small countries have always worried about their security.

Winston Churchill was prophetic when just after World War II he proposed that Europe knit itself together into friendly alliance^*.

Moscow Times,

December 20, 2002

^*Note: I propose that you do it = Я предлагаю, чтобы вы сделали это.

Упражнение II. Переведите текст 2 с листа со зрительной опорой, а выделенные словосочетания – письменно:

Текст 2

Peace, security and free trade are a winning combination

What later became the EU, helped build a European economy. It started with six countries, France, West Germany, Italy and the Benelux nations, and has added members periodically ever since.

The secret of this success was free trade. Trade barriers came down and the EU opened up to a free flow of goods, investment, services and people. Two of the most dramatic events were the Schengen plan, which demolished border checkpoints between signatories, and the single currency, which now makes trade easier for EU nations.

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Peace, security and free trade are a winning combination. And despite the various relapses into bureaucratic interventionism, that combination is the reason states want to join. After the new entrants become members of the EU on May 1,2004, it will constitute a common market of 450 million people with a $9 trillion economy, approaching the size of the U.S. economy, which exceeds $10 trillion.

So the EU has not lost sight of its reason for being, despite the temptation to merge all those diverse cultures into a "United States of Europe". but of course it is still capable of fundamental errors. Its next big project is the creation of a European constitution, presumably for the purpose of harmonizing EU law. That may well be a bridge too far.

Valerie Giscard d’Estaing, a former French president has been put in charge of this project.

George Melloan is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal.

This comment appeared in Tuesday 's edition of The Wall Street Journal.

Note: Border controls to remain for new EU countries.

Countries joining the European Union will still miss out on a privilege enjoyed by most of Western Europe – life without borders.

Border controls between the existing 15 EU states and the 10 states joining May 1 will remain in place, at least until 2007, officials in Brussels said. (AFP)