SF-199 Unfolding the European Union
The EU is a powerful political, economic and cultural block that is meant to play a major role, together with the USA and China, in the creation of a new post-crisis world order. The seminar is intended to cover, at a basic but reachable level, the history, the politics, the culture and the functions of the EU in the beginning of the Twentieth Century. An extraordinary experiment of sociopolitical engineering, comparable to that of the United States of America, the EU has been changing the life of an increasing number of Europeans for over 50 years. No American student could afford to ignore the inner structure as well as the particular peculiarities of such inclusive supranational organization in today's world. Issues as institutional functioning, problems derived from individual state sovereignty, economic coordination to face common challenges, cultural integration, future enlargement, etc. are all indispensable to understand the way in which Europe is changing. But also much more day-to-day issues, such as travel mobility, education exchange programs, citizen's participation, supranational networks of people in the arts or in business, unified labor market, gender participation, human rights, consumer's protection, etc. are all in the process of developing a more robust and functional European Citizenship.