Aim: What challenges has Western Europe faced from the 1990s-Present?

1. Aim: What challenges has Western Europe faced from the 1990s-Present? May 14, 2013

2. Reminders for tomorrow • The test is in Lecture Room B (the one across from the nurse’s office) at 11:30 am. • Bring both #2 pencils and pens • Cellular phones and other electronic devices are not permitted in the testing room. If your cell phone goes off, they can invalidate your test! • Bring your student ID cards with you. • Bring a bottled water (but no other food and drinks)

3. DBQ Feedback • Analysis of Author point of view is critical: • Consider how the political position, economic position, national or ethnic identity, job, audience of the writer is shaping their point of view. • De Gaulle DBQ: In Documents 11 De Gaulle is speaking publicly to supporters after a massive election victory. Wants to reassert the strength of his government, reassure people that he will protect them from communism. • German Civil Peace DBQ: Document 5 states that the ordinary citizens of Berlin were not excited about World War I when it broke out. This is a liberal newspaper (more likely to be critical of the war) and the article was written ten years after the war started (after Germany’s humiliating defeat). • Attitudes towards the Poor DBQ: Document 11 is a wealthy merchant discussing how the poor live carefree lives. As a wealthy merchant, he has not directly experienced a life of poverty, and also he is writing this in a private letter to his children. • You are required to do this for at least four of the documents to get the expanded core points. Try to do for most of the documents you use.

4. DBQ Feedback • Don’t attack the source or use the word “bias.” Just try to analyze why the writer might have this particular point of view. • Make sure you are also analyzing the documents thoroughly and using specific information/ examples from the documents as evidence. • Avoid quoting directly from the documents more than once or twice. Put everything in your own words.

5. I. Greater Unification in Europe • European Economic Community / Common Market – Came together in 1957 out of the European Coal and Steel Community to seek the elimination of tariffs, a free flow of capital and labor, and similar wages and benefits for workers of all countries • Original six members – (France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg) • 1973 – Great Britain, Ireland and Denmark become members. Now becomes known as the European Community (EC) • 1982 – Spain, Portugal and Greece apply to join • European Union – 1993 – Treaty of Maastricht turns the EC into the European Union (EU) with a common currency for twelve of the member nations – the Euro (introduced in 2002) • Membership in union rises to twenty-seven countries in 2007, with 493 million citizens. • Many former Soviet bloc countries join because they need economic aid from the Union

6. The Rise of the European Community / European Union

7. II. Discord in the Union • Proposed European Constitution of 2004 involved a bill of rights and complex economic and political agreements between nations, transferring considerable power from individual nations to a central power • France and the Netherlands defeat the treaty, while Britain postpones voting on it • Several factors contribute to the Treaty’s defeat: • Gap between European elite that dominates the EU and the voting public • Small European nations felt ignored by Britain and France • Fears about the negative economic effects of globalization (see next slide) • Reluctance to cede national sovereignty and authority to a bureaucracy • The controversy over possibly admitting a poor, mainly Muslim state in Turkey to the Union Ultimately, the Treaty of Lisbon (2009), keeps many sections of this Constitution, but streamlines the bureaucracy and political structure of EU. This is approved! Europe has now achieved greater economic and political unity then ever would have been thought possible in the first half of the twentieth century.

8. III. Globalization • EU represents the larger move towards globalization (the emergence of a freer, more technologically connected global economy). Information and capital can now be exchanged rapidly through computers / internet, mutlinational corporations flourish (like Siemens – located out of Munich and Berlin – but has offices and holdings in energy, construction, health care and financial services all over the globe). • Globalization has fueled economic growth and helped create the world of instant entertainment and communication that we live in today. It also has some major disadvantages: • Now that economies all over the world are so intertwined, a collapse in one place can lead to a collapse in others. A 1997 banking crisis in Thailand spread through East Asia and eventually around the world • The 2008 global recession was triggered by a crisis in the U.S. housing market and financial system. As a result, Iceland’s currency and banking collapsed, Britain now faces staggering debt and Spain, Portugal and Greece are on the brink of bankruptcy. • Globalization has made it easier for multinational corporations to outsource manufacturing jobs to East Asia and South America (where labor costs are lower). This has led to the rise of a postindustrial economy in the West, which creates huge incomes for a small number of experts, executives and professionals, and unemployment and declining standards of living for the Europeans who used to work in the industrial sector. The gap between rich and poor continues to rise!

9. IV. European Population Trends Today • European birth rates having been dropping since the 1950s (the baby bust). In 2006, the average European fertility rate was 1.4 children per woman. The economic struggles Europe has experienced from the 1970s through today and the growing number of married women pursuing careers have contributed to this trend. • With a decline in fertility rates, Europe has an aging population. By 2050, Germany’s population will fall from 82 million to 62 million. The number of people of working age will drop by a third, and almost half the population will be over sixty. The social security taxes paid by the shrinking labor force will rise enormously to pay for pensions and health care for seniors.

10. V. Migration / Immigration • Although the European population in decline, legal and illegal immigration into Western Europe has increased since the 1960s (e.g. Great Britain received thousands of immigrants from its former colonies in the Caribbean, Africa, and India). By the early 2000s, the EU was receiving 500,000 illegal immigrants a year. Lack of border control in the EU makes it easy for these illegals to move from place to place. • Encourages multiculturalism, but also racial tensions as many working class people resent the new immigrants (they can often become citizens even without accepting the cultures of their host countries, are accused of taking jobs from Europeans, undermining national and cultural unity, draining government welfare programs). • Extreme right-wing group National Front in France runs Jean-Marie Le Pen (calls to rid France of its immigrants altogether) in a losing election to Jacques Chirac in 2002. Similar racist movements arise in many other European countries

11. V. The New Muslim Population • Immigration of Muslims into Europe come from two chief sources • European economic growth – labor shortages in the 1950s and 1960s lead some European nations to invite “guest workers” to their country • Decolonization – Muslims from India, Pakistan and Africa come to Britain, while Muslims from Algeria come to France • As of 2010, there are 20 million Muslims in the EU. They outnumber Catholics in the Protestant North, and Protestants in the Catholic south. By 2025 there will be 30 million Muslims. • Prejudice against Muslims increases in Europe after the 9/11 attacks, and subsequent bombings on trains in Madrid (2004) and the London transit system (2005). Some warn that Muslim culture is opposed to the West’s Enlightenment traditions (representative government, religious tolerance, separation of church/state, etc.). However, most Muslims in Europe oppose extremism and favor democracy. • Muslims in France rioted in 2005 and 2009 against high unemployment and systematic discrimination and exclusion.

12. VI. Growing Conflict between the U.S. and Western Europe • Although Europeans remain big consumers of American culture (movies, music, television) and companies (McDonalds, Starbucks, the Gap), their close foreign policy relationship with the U.S. starts to decline after the Cold War: • The EU is asserting more independence • NATO has expanded to include many of the territories of the former East Bloc. With twenty-eight member states, it is harder for the U.S. policy to always carry the day in NATO (example: In 2010, NATO allies only reluctantly supported Obama’s push to send more troops to Afghanistan). • Other than Britain, Europeans have been skeptical of the wars fought by the United States over terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq during the 2000s (especially France and Germany). Many EU states doubt the legitimacy of a “war on terror” (argue that military victory in a single state doesn’t end terrorism because militant groups will move somewhere else), are concerned that the United States violated international law by attacking Iraq without U.N. backing, and are disgusted by American human rights abuses (Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay).

13. Concluding Question (for the course!) • In a way, this course if really the story of how European political and cultural values (humanism, enlightenment beliefs, classical liberalism) come to dominate the globe and create the world that we know today. Based on what you have read today and learned in this course over the past eight months, do you think European values will continue to dominate the world politically and / or culturally over the next century? Why or why not?

14. And that was AP European History! Thanks for a great course!