The Legal Foundations of a European Army

A European Army featured at the very beginning of the European integration process. In the early 1950s the ‘Plan Pléven’ proposed to establish a European Defence Community comprising inter alia of an integrated European Defence Force. However, the plan failed and the notion of a European army disappeared from the European agenda for a long time. While the creation of a European army is controversial and not very likely in the short term, the (Common) European Security and Defence Policy developed since the late 1990s might well lead to a permanent European military force in the medium or long term. However, so far EU military missions (in Bosnia, the DRC, Mali, or the Horn of Africa), while based on a permanent intergovernmental framework and EU military bodies, have been conducted by forces made up of national Member State forces formed on an ad hoc basis. The paper will examine the legal and policy arguments for a European army and discuss how the existing legal framework under the Treaty of Lisbon would need to be reformed to permit the establishment of such an entity

Virtually impossible: limiting Australian children and adolescents daily screen based media use

Background: Paediatric recommendations to limit children’s and adolescents’ screen based media use (SBMU) to less than two hours per day appear to have gone unheeded. Given the associated adverse physical and mental health outcomes of SBMU it is understandable that concern is growing worldwide. However, because the majority of studies measuring SBMU have focused on TV viewing, computer use, video game playing, or a combination of these the true extent of total SBMU (including non-sedentary hand held devices) and time spent on specific screen activities remains relatively unknown. This study assesses the amount of time Australian children and adolescents spend on all types of screens and specific screen activities. Methods: We administered an online instrument specifically developed to gather data on all types of SBMU and SBMU activities to 2,620 (1373 males and 1247 females) 8 to 16 year olds from 25 Australian government and non-government primary and secondary schools. Results: We found that 45% of 8 year olds to 80% of 16 year olds exceeded the recommended < 2 hours per day for screen use. A series of hierarchical linear models demonstrated different relationships between the degree to which total SBMU and SBMU on specific activities (TV viewing, Gaming, Social Networking, and Web Use) exceeded the < 2 hours recommendation in relation to sex and age. Conclusions: Current paediatric recommendations pertaining to screen use exposure may no longer be tenable because screen based media are central in the everyday lives of children and adolescents. In any reappraisal of SBMU exposure times, researchers, educators and health professionals need to take cognizance of the extent to which screen use differs across specific screen activity, sex, and age

"The Europeans, the EC and the Gulf: The Nature of the Response"

[From the introduction]. The Treaty of Rome laid as an objective the laying of "the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe." Whilst the treaty identified certain policies, mechanisms, and principles for achieving that union, it did not encompass defence, security, or foreign policy. Nonetheless, the Community cannot be understood by a formal, legalistic study of the treaties. It must be located within a wider political environment, especially the aspiration to achieve political integration, integration in fact, with the creation of a West European political federation with common foreign and defence policies. Inherent in the original ideal was the notion that Europe would act as a single unit in world affairs, would be an actor in its own right. That aspiration surfaced on several subsequent occasions, for example, in the ill-fated attempt in 1972-3 to define 'the European identity' and prior to that in the proposals emanating from The Hague summit in 1969 and the subsequent creation of the Davignon system. Initialy, of course, this new system was separate from the EC system per se, a problem brought home in November 1973 when Foreign Ministers met in Copenhagen as the 'Conference of Foreign Ministers' only to have to travel to Brussels in the afternoon for an EC Council meeting. Thereafter the Ministers were somewhat more flexible in their approach