Europe

Our classmates explained us the economic, social and political aspects of the European Union. They talked about the cultural similarities and differences that each country has and how they feel identify as an entire community. Although, there are some cultural clashes; like the cases of gypsies and Turkish.

Turkey has been a candidate to enter to the European Union since many years ago, but there are some issues that prevent the others members to include Turkey. First of all, the country has a big population which is a problem to the others members because the European parliament is occupied depending of each country population, meaning by that, Turkey could be a threat to the power of the biggest countries in Europe. Another issue is the borders, as Turkey is located between Europe and Asia, some its neighbours are considered as Islamic terrorist which is a big worry to the security of the union. Internal conflict is also a negative point because they do not want the violence to spread among the other members. And the last issue is regarding the culture, the major religion in Turkey is Islam whereas in Europe is Christianity. These form an invisible barrier that forbids people from the union to accept the inclusion of this state.

In the other hand, the problem with the gypsies consists in that they are judge by their culture. Europeans think that they do not like to follow the rules, they seen gypsies like lazy and dirty people, opportunist and thieves. However, the European Unions is implementing some laws to protect those people from xenophobic attacks.

To finalize, they showed us the case of Wal-Mart in Germany and The United Kingdom. How it has succeeded in England and failed in Germany and explained the possible causes of the outcome in both countries.

References

• Photo taken from http://www.ucc.ie/en/eurostudies/undergrad/  May 12th 2010