The Treaty on European Union

ecause of these devices, ideas and news of events spread quickly all over the world. For example, within seconds, people can know the results of an election in another country. An international football match comes into the homes of everyone with a television set. News of a disaster such as an earthquake or flood can bring help from distant countries. Within hours, help is on the way. Because of modern technology like the satellites that travel around the world, information travel fast.

How has this speed of communication changed the world？ To many people, the world has become smaller. Of course this does not mean that the world is actually physically smaller. It means that the world seems smaller. Two hundred years ago, communication between the continents took a long time. All news was carried on ships that took weeks or even months to cross the oceans. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it took six weeks for news from Europe to reach Americas.

This time difference influenced people's actions. For example, one battle, in the War of 1812 between England and the United States could have been avoided. A peace agreement had already been signed. Peace was made in England, but the news of peace took six weeks to reach America. During these six weeks, the large and serious Battle of New Orleans was fought. Many people lost their lives after a peace treaty had been signed. They would not have died if news had come in time. In the past, Communication took much more time than it does now.

News spreads fast because of______.

A．new technology

B．a peace agreement

C．the changes of the world

D．modern transportation

is with the European ones that took place last week in all 25 European Union member countries. These elections, widely trumpeted as the world's biggest-ever multinational democratic vote, were fought for the most part as 25 separate national contests, which makes it tricky to pick out many common themes. But the strongest are undoubtedly negative. Europe's voters are angry and disillusioned—and they have demonstrated their anger and disillusion in three main ways.

The most obvious was by abstaining. The average overall turnout was just over 45%, by some margin the lowest ever recorded for elections to the European Parliament. And that average disguises some big variations: Italy, for example, notched up over 70%, but Sweden managed only 37%. Most depressing of all, at least to believers in the European project, was the extremely low vote in many of the new member countries from central Europe, which accounted for the whole of the fall in turnout since 1999. In the biggest, Poland, only just over a fifth of the electorate turned out to vote. Only a year ago, central Europeans voted in large numbers to join the EU, which they did on May 1st. That they abstained in such large numbers in the European elections points to early disillusion with the European Union—as well as to a widespread feeling, shared in the old member countries as well, that the European Parliament does not matter.

Disillusion with Europe was also a big factor in the second way in which voters protested, which was by supporting a ragbag of populist, nationalist and explicitly anti-EU parties. These ranged from the 16% who backed the UK Independence Party, whose declared policy is to withdraw from the EU and whose leaders see their mission as "wrecking" the European Parliament, to the 14% who voted for Sweden's Junelist, and the 27% of Poles who backed one of two anti-EU parties, the League of Catholic Families and Selfdefence. These results have returned many more Eurosceptics and trouble-makers to the parliament: on some measures, over a quarter of the new MEPS will belong to the "awkward squad". That is not a bad thing, however, for it will make the parliament more representative of European public opinion.

But it is the third target of European voters' ire that is perhaps the most immediately significant, the fact that, in many EU countries, old and new, they chose to vote heavily against their own governments. This anti-incumbent vote was strong almost everywhere, but it was most pronounced in Britain, the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and Sweden. The leaders of all the four biggest European Union countries, Tony Blair in Britain, Jacques Chirac in France, Gerhard Schroder in Germany and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, were each given a bloody nose by their voters.

The big question now is how Europe's leaders should respond to this. By a sublime (or terrible) coincidence, soon after the elections, and just as The Economist was going to press, they were gathering in Brussels for a crucial summit, at which they are due to agree a new constitutional treaty for the EU and to select a new president for the European Commission. Going into the meeting, most EU heads of government seemed determined to press ahead with this agenda regardless of the European elections—even though the atmosphere after the results may make it harder for them to strike deals.

The relationship between the opening paragraph and the rest of text is that ______.

A．a proposal is advanced in the first paragraph and then negated in the following paragraphs

B．an prophecy is revealed and then proved with concrete examples

C．a generalization is made in the first paragraph and then elaborated in the following paragraphs

D．a proposition is introduced in the first paragraph and then explained in details in the following paragraphs

Section A (30 points, 2 points each)

Directions: This part is to test your reading ability.There are 3 tasks for you to fulfill. You should read the materials carefully and do the tasks as you are instructed.

Telephone, television, radio, and telegraph all help people communicate with each other. Because of these devices, ideas and news of events spread quickly all over the world. For example, within seconds, people can know the results of an election in another country. An international football match comes into the homes of everyone with a television set. News of a disaster such as an earthquake or flood can bring help from distant countries. Within hours, help is on the way. Because of modern technology like the satellites that travel around the world, information travel fast.

How has this speed of communication changed the world？ To many people, the world has become smaller. Of course this does not mean that the world is actually physically smaller. It means that the world seems smaller. Two hundred years ago, communication between the continents took a long time. All news was carried on ships that took weeks or even months to cross the oceans. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it took six weeks for news from Europe to reach Americas. This time difference influenced people's actions. For example, one battle, in the War of 1812 between England and the United States could have been avoided. A peace agreement had already been signed. Peace was made in England, but the news of peace took six weeks to reach America. During these six weeks, the large and serious Battle of New Orleans was fought. Many people lost their lives after a peace treaty had been signed. They would not have died if news had come in time. In the past, Communication took much more time than it does now.

News spreads fast because of______.

A．new technology

B．a peace agreement

C．the changes of the world

D．modern transportation

A.trend

B.tread

C.trench

D.treaty

A.条约，协定

B.目光；眼光

C.验证；检验

D.背叛；叛离

A.chaos

B.treaty

C.alliance

D.zeal

Their signing of the treaty was regarded as a conspiracy against the British Crown.

A．secret plan

B．bold attack

C．clever design

D．joint effort

Part A

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)

She was French; he was English; they had just moved to London from Paris. When he found out about her affair, she begged for a reconciliation. He was more ruthless: the same afternoon, he filed for divorce in France, one of the stingiest jurisdictions in Europe for the non-earning spouse and where adultery affects the court's ruling. Had she filed first in England her conduct would have been irrelevant, and she would have had a good chance of a large share of the marital assets, and even maintenance for life.

International divorce is full of such dramas and anomalies, so the natural response of policymakers is to try to make things simpler and more predictable. But the biggest attempt in recent years to do just that, in a European agreement called Rome Ⅲ, has just been shelved. Instead, several EU countries are now pressing ahead with their own harmonisation deal. Many wonder if it will work any better.

At issue is the vexed question of which country's law applies to the break-up of a mixed marriage. The spouses may live long-term in a third country and be temporarily working in a fourth. The worst way to sort that out is with expensive legal battles in multiple jurisdictions.

The main principle at present is that the first court to be approached hears the case. Introduced in 2001, this practice has worked well in preventing international legal battles, but has made couples much more trigger-happy, because the spouse who hesitates in order to save a troubled marriage may lose a huge amount of money. Rome III aimed to remove the incentive to go to court quickly. Instead, courts in any EU country would automatically apply the local law that had chiefly governed the marriage. This approach is already in force in countries such as the Netherlands. A couple that moved there and sought divorce having spent most of the marriage in France, say, would find a Dutch court dividing assets and handling child custody according to French law.

That works fine among continental European countries where legal systems, based on Roman law, leave little role for precedent or the judge's discretion. You can look up the rules on a website and apply them. But it is anathema in places such as England, where the system favours a thorough (and often expensive) investigation of the details of each case, and then lets judges decide according to previous cases and English law.

Another snag is that what may suit middle-class expatriates in Brussels (who just happened to be the people drafting Rome Ⅲ) may not suit, for example, a mixed marriage that has mainly been based in a country, perhaps not even an EU member, with" a sharply different divorce law. Swedish politicians don't like the idea that their courts would be asked to enforce marriage laws based on, say, Islamic sharia.

The threat of vetoes from Sweden and like-minded countries has blocked Rome Ⅲ. But a group of nine countries, led by Spain and France, is going ahead. They are resorting to a provision in EU rules-never before invoked-called " enhanced co-operation" This sets a precedent for a "multi-speed'" Europe in which like-minded countries are allowed to move towards greater integration, rather than seeking a "big-bang" binding treaty that scoops up the willing and unwilling alike. Some countries worry that using enhanced co-operation will create unmanageable layers of complexity, with EU law replaced by multiple adhoc agreements.

The real lesson may be that Rome III was just too ambitious. A more modest but useful goal would be simply to clarify the factors that determine which court hears a divorce, and then let that court apply its own law. David Hodson, a British expert, proposes an international deal that

A．Divorce filed in England will be advantageous.

B．France stipulates rigid laws towards divorce.

C．In Europe international divorce cases always encounter the problem that which country's law is applicable.

D．International marriages shall be discouraged due to the complexity in divorce affairs.

. S. officials who disregard the new stricture.

A．profaned

B．contemplated

C．acceded

D．manipulated