proof (that I have actually been learning things)

Hey guys. Since my brothers have been joking that I don't go to class and am learning absolutely nothing (both accusations are false and slanderous), I figured I'd talk about a guest speaker that I had in my Deutschland/EU in der internationalen Politik class yesterday (and prove once and for all that I am learning things). Our guest speaker  was a Finnish woman named, Teija Tiilikainen, and she is wicked awesome. She has had various jobs representing Finland in the EU's parliament, was the Finnish Secretary of State, and a head honcho at the University of Helsinki. Yesterday, she spoke to my lecture about the EU Identity, something that we had been covering (albeit in a slightly different capacity) in this class. 

Ms. Tiilikainen first discussed how the European Union as a collective identity/unitary actor came about. Then she moved on further to the way the EU acts in international politics. Namely, she made the argument that the EU is, in fact, more of a state-like actor than many politicians on a member state-level are willing to admit. To back up her assertions, she discussed the single monetary policy, interdependent economic policy,  and unified military actions. Furthermore, she went on to discuss how the EU emerging as a strong state could mean in terms of the global balance of power, and whether the EU could use its normative power (an area which Thomas Diez, my professor, has done much research into) to change that stage. Obviously, there are questions to be raised by her assertions, a few of which she covered. The few that I am remember are: the EU seems weak (especially compared with such superpowers as the USA) due to its limited military strength and heavy reliance on NATO and the whole Ukraine debacle. 

From an American perspective, this discussion is very interesting and kind of funny. For one thing, it brings me back to discussions I had in Doc Wend's AP US History course my junior year in high school: the Federalist debates. It's kind of funny to hear a debate, effectively, about Federalism in the 21st century, since, as an American, that seems like something that was handled so long ago in our hemisphere (but of course is still being rehashed). But the EU is, in some ways (and I am aware this is a bit of a stretch), going through what the US first went through after the revolutionary war. The difference, however, is that the countries in this union have been completely sovereign, separate states for far longer than the States back post-1783, and these separate states have far different historical experiences, cultures, values, political and economic landscapes, the list goes on. 

I wanted to asked Ms. Tiilikainen a question at the end of the lecture, but my European classmates instead wanted to attack the core of her argument, and I figured, since it is their supranational government we were talking about, they had more right (and were far more informed) to ask questions about the topic than I. However, I was still very curious as to her view how (if at all) the economic crisis has changed the development of EU state-like actordom or, at the core, the desire to be a unitary actor in the first place. 

So yes, there's my proof, family. Now Billy and Dobby can stop spreading their malicious rumors.