EU foreign ministers were to symbolically cloister themselves inside a 12th century abbey yesterday to consider the bloc's future, almost exactly a year after French voters threw the continent into turmoil by rejecting what would have been the first Europe-wide constitution.
The envoys were gathering informally at the Roman Catholic monastery in Klosterneuburg on the outskirts of Vienna for a two-day "future of Europe" meeting.
Their challenge: bridging a perceived disconnect between the EU's elite and its 455 million citizens.
With most of the EU's 25 member states resigned to keeping the wounded charter on ice for another year, the ministers planned to debate ways to persuade ordinary Europeans -- many of whom remain skittish about their economies and cultural identities -- that closer integration and further expansion are worthwhile.
"We want to deepen and harden up the discussion," said Ursula Plassnik, the foreign minister of Austria, which holds the EU's rotating presidency. "The plan is to come up with specific proposals on how the EU could function better."
French voters dramatically shot down the constitution in a referendum on May 29 last year, and Dutch voters trashed it again less than a week later. Those rapid-fire rejections suspended a draft charter that was intended to accelerate the EU's inefficient decision-making and raise its profile as a global player by establishing an EU president and foreign minister.
But some good news since has emerged.
A one-year "reflection period" since the referendums has shown that Europeans generally support the idea of a constitution, but want the EU to focus on their day-to-day concerns such as crime, unemployment, immigration, social injustice and globalization.
A recently released Eurobarometer survey found that 63 percent of EU nationals favor a constitution. Support rose seven points -- to 67 percent -- in France since the referendum and by nine points -- to 62 percent -- in the Netherlands. Eurobarometer commissioned polling agencies to question 24,924 people across the EU in face-to-face interviews between Oct. 10 and Nov. 5 last year.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
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Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
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