2001-05-01 Something of interest in today's paper: By Edmund L. Andrews New York Times Frankfurt, Germany - Chancellor Gerhard Schr�der's governing party proposed a far reaching plan yesterday to restructure the European union into a single federal state. The plan would give much more power to the European Parliament but will almost certainly arouse anxiety in France, Britain and other nations that quietly fear Germany's ascendancy and its pivotal status in the new Europe. The proposal reflects Germany's increased self-assurance and willingness to play a leading role in European affairs, and it comes just a few months after the French government failed in its attempt to persuade member EU nations to support a plan to reform Europe's current tangled system for making decisions. The plan unveiled yesterday by Schr�der's Social Democrats would create a federal system modelled after the one in Germany. It would give the European Parliament the power to set budgets and would try to establish much clearer divisions of authority between a European government and individual national governments. The proposal also calls for creating a two-chambered system of government, one chamber being the popularly elected European Parliament - much invigorated from its current weak state - and a second made up of ministers from each country. The plan is important, because Germany is by far the largest member of the European Union and pays a disproportionately large share of its annual budget. European leaders all agree that their system has become too unwieldy, because key decisions require unanimous agreement by all 15 member nations, and the number of members will expand as Central and Eastern European nations are allowed to join. But, the idea of a more powerful European government inevitably stirs up prickly national sensitivities, and efforts to simply decision-making have repeatedly foundered because they threatened to upset the existing distribution of power. Any far-reaching reform is likely to take years. While German officials, for instance, said the plan reflected their willingness to transfer more of their sovereignty to a European government, leaders in other countries suspect that Germany would end up with more influence then ever before. John Keiner ist hoffnungsloser versklavt als derjenige, der irrt�mlich glaubt frei zu sein. There are none more hopelessly enslaved then those who falsely believe they are free! Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
