The World Today

Is Europe past its prime? As the continent prepares to celebrate the first half-century of its integration project, should we imagine it is as a middle-aged matron rather than the energetic youngster of those formative years? Producing a vision for the future is critical to combating today’s lean and hungry economies like China.

An ageing population in Europe makes the opinion of young people about their continent’s future even more important. Leading international figures, including the President of the United Nations General Assembly, have been expressing concern over the limited role of young people in shaping policy. With this in mind, The World Today and the National Association for Gifted and Talented Youth have given students the opportunity to share their vision through a competition on Europe: The Next Fifty Years. The three finalists have been invited to an International Economics Programme workshop at Chatham House next month.

Fifty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome, the European Union is a living example of the regenerative powers of opening protected national markets and of the political benefits to states of devolving aspects of sovereign control to new supranational institutions. While the EU’s end-state remains uncertain, and the challenges it faces today are as daunting as at any stage in its evolution, its accomplishments are real.

An extradition treaty between Britain and the United States signed in 2003 is getting a battering in parliament and the media. The procedures had operated pretty uncontroversially for a hundred and fifty years, difficulties over extraditing Irish Republican activists from the US aside. America’s death row unsurprisingly fell foul of the European Court of Human Rights in the Soering case in 1989.But now the arrangements are attacked as biased in favour of America and unfair to defendants pursued by its authorities. What has gone wrong?

The constant alternation of governments in Bangladesh does little to help resolve the country’s many problems. This election campaign is no different, with accusations of corruption and soldiers on the streets. There is even concern that the military might try its hand at government once again.

Australia and Indonesia are distant neighbours. Their maritime borders run alongside one another but there is little political, military and cultural contact between the two. At all levels, mutual suspicion is more common than mutual cooperation. Australia is the largest ‘western’ nation in the east, and Indonesia the world’s most populous Islamic state, with ten times as many people. Despite democratic government in Jakarta, old suspicions still linger. New proposals may still not put things right.