Construction of the Elbe Philharmonic is underway, with its opening planned for autumn, 2011. Hamburg?s creative artists are not alone in seeing a new landmark for their city in this spectacular concert hall....
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Philosopher Jürgen Habermas called for a pan-European referendum in the wake of the Irish 'No'. He overestimates the wisdom of the masses and underestimates what has been achieved up to now, counters Alfred Grosser.
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Galicia might be a Ukrainian myth but this is no reason to try to thwart Ukraine's bid to join the European Union. Even its failure to fulfill the Copenhagen criteria would not be enough to eliminate it from the running. The EU's problem is its own crisis, argues Sonja Margolina.
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Author Martin Pollack issues a rebuttal of Richard Wagner's arguments against Ukraine's EU bid, accusing him of Western bias and ignorance. If we follow his line of thought, even Italy has no place in the European Union.
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It was the fall of communism and its attendant anxieties that gave birth to the European ideal. The first task of a new Europe must be to hack out clear paths through the jungle of ideologies, because a civilisation that does not clearly proclaim its values, or leaves its proclaimed values high and dry, treads the path to perdition and terminal debility. By Imre Kertesz
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A bold vision for 50 years down the line will not help us get on right now. I am content with a vision for the period leading up to the European elections in 2009. Those elections should be coupled with a Europe-wide referendum on three questions: whether the Union, beyond effective decision-making procedures, should have a directly elected president, its own foreign minister, and its own financial base. By Jürgen Habermas
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Nationalist chic has Bulgaria in its grip and anti-Europeanism is catching on fast. Europe's main problem is the divergence of rule of law and democracy and the consequences will be extremely hard to turn back, writes the Bulgarian cultural anthropologist Ivaylo Ditchev.
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With many hands turning the gears, Brussels is seen as the production headquarters of superfluous regulations. But occasionally, EU officials have a good idea. The tale of Ordinance 2006/502/EC. By Jeanne Rubner
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Jürgen Habermas laments the swelling feel-good patriotisms in Europe and the flagging communal European spirit. The EU will only be able to fulfill its international mandate if Europeans learn to form a common front, and to recognise that the Polish plumber and the Portugese winegrower are key to European unity.
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Year after year war is declared on the Mafia in Bulgaria, and each time it is ineffective. The Mafia has infiltrated society in Eastern Europe, and is on the verge of infecting the old EU countries as well. Because the Mafia in Bulgaria is not a part of the state: the state, instead, is a part of the Mafia. Writer Ilija Trojanow looks at the tangled web of crime and politics in his home country.
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Europe must pluck up the courage to introduce reforms. It needs its own
armed forces and foreign minister, a directly-elected president and an
independent financial basis. These should be decided on by a referendum
binding only in states where a majority had voted in favour. We present
excerpts from a speech in which Jürgen Habermas calls on Europe to act - and sketches a critique of the Internet.
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Adam Krzeminski is outraged by Luciano Canfora's highly selective "Democracy in Europe" which puts Stalinism on a pedestal. He congratulates a German publishing house for refusing to print it and believes European scholarship has shamefully neglected Polish history.
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The autumn of 2005 was marked by the anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Repubic, the start of EU accession talks and, most importantly, the first open discussions in the country about the Armenian genocide. Seyla Benhabib looks at changing attitudes in Turkey toward its past and its multicultural legacy.
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Now that social and political conditions in Turkey seem to be fast approaching EU requirements, the opponents of Turkish EU entry are using a new line of argumentation. Europe is being defined more as a unit forged by a common past and common cultural values than a project for the future. This obsession with identity is a threat to European unity and the universality of European ideas and values. By Nilüfer Göle
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Sengalese writer and journalist Boubacar Boris Diop describes the combination of pain, shame and anger that he feels looking at the images of utter desperation that are coming out of the Spanish exclaves Ceuta and Melilla.
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In the heated debate over Turkey's entry into the EU, something is being forgotten: the fact that the two continents are within spitting distance of each other. And that Europe in its current form would not exist were it not for the Middle East. By Hilal Sezgin
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