Estados Unidos, la Unión Europea y el levantamiento del embargo de armas a China

Desde el pasado otoño existe un nuevo y preocupante frente en las todavía tensas relaciones entre Estados Unidos y Europa: se ha cuestionado públicamente la conveniencia de mantener el embargo de armas impuesto por la UE a China en 1989 La perspectiva de que los líderes de la UE puedan levantar en diciembre el embargo de armas que impusieron a China constituye una importante fuente de preocupación, no sólo para los responsables de políticas estadounidenses, sino también para muchos de sus homólogos europeos. Hacer frente al continuo ascenso de China como una de las principales potencias económicas, políticas y militares del mundo tal vez constituya el mayor reto de orden internacional de la primera mitad de este siglo. Si Estados Unidos y Europa adoptaran enfoques divergentes ante este desafío, se introduciría un peligroso elemento de incertidumbre en la estabilidad regional e internacional, además de plantear una difícil y problemática situación para las relaciones transatlánticas al inicio de una nueva Administración estadounidense

The Welfare State in Europe: Visions for Reform. Vision Europe Summit. Bertelsmann Studies

In all the countries of the European Union, the welfare state has come under intense scrutiny as a result of budgetary pressures and wider societal developments. The Vision Europe initiative has chosen to focus this year on the future of the welfare state, and aims to develop innovative policy recommendations on how to ensure the long-term sustainability of national welfare systems in Europe. This introductory paper is designed to set the scene for the challenges currently facing the welfare state in Europe. Specific facets of welfare state policy are being reviewed in more detail in three project working groups. All these issues will be examined in the first Vision Europe Summit, which is due to take place in Berlin on 17–18 November 2015

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

"EU-Central Europe Relations 1989-92: A Study of the Union as an International Actor"

[Introduction]. This paper concentrates on a crucial aspect of the Union's capacity for action on the international stage: its ability to place its economic power at the disposal of a common foreign policy. Specifically, the paper offers a short case study of the European Community's attempt to support the reform process in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia (henceforth the CE3) between 1989-92 in order to draw a series of insights into the constraints and opportunities that can influence the Union's behaviour as an international actor. The paper argues that the parameters of the Community's response in this case were influenced by factors that were systematic, institutional, and domestic in character. More important, the paper argues that the Community's inability to coordinate these competing pressures so as to ensure consistency between its stated foreign policy -- to underpin the reform process through association agreements --and the eventual foreign economic policy -- the Europe Agreements signed in December 1991 -- was fundamentally affected by the Community's unique decision making structure for external policy. By focusing on the Community's relations with the CE3 during this period, we can better understand the challenges that the Union still faces in trying to integrate the central and east European countries (CEECs) into West European institutions

"Preparing the Defense Sector for a Common European Security Policy"

The paper is divided into four sections. The first section highlights the strategic context facing the European defense sector after 1988 when visions of a common European security policy resurfaced as a desirable goal. The second section reviews the ways in which the European defense sector responded to the changed strategic environment. The third section analyses the structural obstacles that have hampered the ability and dampened the desire of European defense industry leaders to adapt the defense sector in ways that would match the stated aspirations of European government leaders. The conclusion points to the difficulties that Europe will face in consolidating and restructuring its defense sector even in the event that a common European security policy finally begins to take shape in the wake of the Kosovo crisis

America and a changed world : A question of leadership

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