European Union Policies

From September till December I followed the minor European Union Policies at ASIS International School. I will tell you something about the content of this minor and I will give you my opinion about it. But first I will start with telling something about myself because that is important for the fact that I think that everybody can do this minor and it is very fun to do so! My background lays in Integrated Safety and Security Management. I follow this study at the Avans School in 's-Hertogenbosch. In my fourth year I was asked to choose a minor.

My choice was European Union Policies in Breda because I thought it was important to have more knowledge about European legislation. My own study did not give a lot of information about the subject while it is important legislation because the supremacy that European legislation has over National legislation. Furthermore, I needed a little bit of a challenge so I chose this minor because of the English skills that I would develop.

European Union Policies works with problem solved education. Every week you read a text about the material that you need to learn for that week. From the text we composed learning goals that should be answered and discussed the week after. This way of education helps the student with understanding the material. It is a nice way to keep on track. You can't get behind and therefore it is easier to learn for the exams.

During the minor you will go on a great excursion to Brussels, Luxembourg and Strassburg. During the excursion you will visit the European Commission, the European Parliament, The Committee of the Regions, the European Court of Human Rights, and even more! It is a four day excursion with also a lot of free time to enjoy the visited cities! The only people that don't like this excursion are the other guests in the hotels where we stay, but what the hell.

The skill trainings negotiations and debating are fun but can be better performed. At first I will inform you that our class existed of 34 students, that's a lot! During negotiations we only learned a little about how to negotiate, but that is not enough to understand how to negotiate. It is the same as learning how to drive: you should practise, practise, practise. In my study Integrated Safety and Security Management I learned how to negotiate by practising. That is why I can make this comment based on experience. Furthermore, in our debating class we practised. Although, the class was overloaded and we couldn't practise a lot, it was helpful. It was only a pity that this skill didn't had a longer duration (we only practised twice).

So, I told you about my experience of the minor European Union Policies. The way of education is very helpful to make the material your own. Also, there will be a fun excursion of four days to Luxembourg, Brussels and Strassburg. Because of a full class of 34 students the debating and negotiations trainings couldn't be practised well. Therefore, I would suggest to divide the classes into two separate classes during these skill trainings.

Credit Crisis

Well, as we all know the global economic crisis is confronting the Netherlands with a major challenge. Jobs and incomes are under pressure, companies are in difficulty and the national debt is rising fast: for example in 2009 the public debt in 16 european countries in the eurozone raise with an average of eight per cent, according to measures that have been made by the European Office Eurostat. In the Netherlands there is an increase of 33 per cent compared with 2008. So, the Dutch public debt increased with a third in one year and other eurozone countries didn’t.
Because of this, the government has made a stimulus package for 2009 and 2010 that is worth a total of six billion euros. According to Mr. Balkenende (prime minister of the Netherlands) this package will stimulate economic activity and ensure that as many people as possible keep their jobs. Should the government interfere?

By interfering in the credit crisis, the government disables the market forces and therefore the competition of the financial market. Competition leads to more efficiency. More efficiency stands for better quality of the product en lowering of the costs. The result is a healthy market with economic growth. Therefore a stimulus package wouldn’t be needed if the government let the market force do its job. But on the other hand the crisis would be bigger if different banks like ABN AMRO really did collapse.
Nevertheless, an effect of government interfering is that they will tax us more. Because of the high taxes, we spend less. If we spend less companies will loose revenue (some companies will either move to another country or close down) which eliminates jobs. It will be a vicious circle.

However, Temporarily cutting working hours (a measure of the government right now) means that people are less likely to lose their jobs, since companies did not need to pay the fulltime salary. Employees can count on a temporary unemployment benefit in order to compensate for the salary reduction. By offering secured loans, the government made sure that it is possible for people to spend money and thereby revive the economy.

With the Dutch state as a welfare state, we all want the government to help us. We want money to provide us in our healthcare. We want measures from the government if someone can illegally go to the security system of one of our palaces. We want an answer from the government when they don’t want to listen to the people. Therefore, I think that the government prevented us from a even bigger crisis than what we are in right now!