The European Union countries were once worried that they would not have ______ supplies of
A.sufficient
B.proficient
C.efficient
D.potential
A.sufficient
B.proficient
C.efficient
D.potential
第1题
A.endurance
B.emergence
C.existence
D.eminence
第2题
Operating a single currency is not going to be easy. European economic and (1)_____ union will not function (2)_____ hitches. (3)_____, signs of (4)_____ have already appeared. And these political, economic and social pressures will almost certainly (5)_____ in the years to come.
(6)_____ EMU failure is a topic generally (7)_____ in continental Europe. And for good reason. The (8)_____ of monetary union would almost certainly slam the European Union (9)_____ political (10)_____ and the world into (11)_____ crisis. "It would be almost as bad as a (12)_____ in Europe," says Uwe Angenendt, chief economist (13)_____ BHF-Bank in Frankfurt. The (14)_____ contend EMU failure is not possible. They (15)_____ insist that the political (16)_____ in Europe for monetary union is simply (17)_____ strong to allow (18)_____ to fail. But they (19)_____ a simple fact: European (20)_____ concocted monetary union, and therefore they can unconcoct it.
A.monetary
B.political
C.cultural
D.commercial
第4题
A.proficient
B.efficient
C.potential
D.sufficient
第5题
第6题
We can learn from the third paragraph that
A.to have a female CEO is not a commonplace any longer.
B.the FTSE have enough of 17 women executive directors.
C.in the European Union parliament, about 20% members are women.
D.women's status in workplace is not so ideal though it's being improved.
第7题
Part A
Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)
Europe is desperate to succeed in business. Two years ago, the European Union's Lisbon summit set a goal of becoming the world's leading economy by 2010. But success, as any new-age executive coach might tell you, requires confronting the fear of failure. That is why Europe's approach to bankruptcy urgently needs reform.
In Europe, as in the United States, many heavily indebted companies are shutting up shop just as the economy begins to recover. Ironically, the upturn is often the moment when weak firms finally fail. But America's failures have a big advantage over Europe's weaklings: their country's more relaxed approach to bankruptcy.
In the United States the Chapter 11 law makes going bust an orderly and even routine process. Firms in trouble simply apply for breathing space from creditors. Managers submit a plan of reorganization to a judge, and creditors decide whether to give it a go or to come up with one of their own. Creditors have a say in whether to keep the firm running, or to liquidate it. If they keep it running, they often end up with a big chunk of equity, if not outright control.
But shutting a bust European company is harder in two other ways. First, with no equivalent of Chapter 11, bankruptcy forces companies to stop trading abruptly. That damages the value of the creditors' potential assets, and may also cause havoc for customers. Second, a company that trades across the European Union will find that it has to abide by different bankruptcy laws in the 15 member states, whose courts and administrators may make conflicting and sometimes incompatible stipulations.
The absence of provision for negotiations between companies and creditors increases the temptation for government to step in. When governments do not come to the rescue, the lack of clear rules can lead to chaos. As a result of all this, Europe's teetering firms miss the chance to become more competitive by selling assets to others who might manage them more efficiently. Their sickly American rivals survive, transformed, to sweep the field.
An opportunity now exists to think again about Europe's approach to bankruptcy. The European Union is expected to issue a new directive on the subject in May. Germany has begun to update its insolvency law. And last year Britain produced a white paper saying that a rigid approach to bankruptcy could stifle the growth needed to meet Lisbon's goals.
One of goals set by the European Union's Lisbon summit is
A.to strive for the lead in the world's economy.
B.to subject more companies to bankruptcy.
C.to revise an approach to bankrupt stipulations.
D.to have advantage over American firms.
第8题
In Europe, as in the United States, many heavily indebted companies are shutting up shop just as the economy begins to recover. Ironically, the upturn is often the moment when weak firms finally fail. But America's failures have a big advantage over Europe's weaklings: their country's more relaxed approach to bankruptcy.
In the United States the Chapter 11 law makes going bust an orderly and even routine process. Firms in trouble simply apply for breathing space from creditors. Managers submit a plan of reorganization to a judge, and creditors decide whether to give it a go or to come up with one of their own. Creditors have a say in whether to keep the firm running, or to liquidate it. If they keep it running, they often end up with a big chunk of equity, if not outright control.
But shutting a bust European company is harder in two other ways. First, with no equivalent of Chapter 11, bankruptcy forces companies to stop trading abruptly. That damages the value of the creditors' potential assets, and may also cause havoc for customers. Second, a company that trades across the European Union will find that it has to abide by different bankruptcy laws in the 15 member states, whose courts and administrators may make conflicting and sometimes incompatible stipulations.
The absence of provision for negotiations between companies and creditors increases the temptation for government to step in. When governments do not come to the rescue, the lack of clear rules can lead to chaos. As a result of all this, Europe's teetering firms miss the chance to become more competitive by selling assets to others who might manage them more efficiently. Their sickly American rivals survive, transformed, to sweep the field.
An opportunity now exists to think again about Europe's approach to bankruptcy. The European Union is expected to issue a new directive on the subject in May. Germany has begun to update its insolvency law. And last year Britain produced a white paper saying that a rigid approach to bankruptcy could stifle the growth needed to meet Lisbon's goals.
One of goals set by the European Union's Lisbon summit is to
A.strive for the lead in the world's economy.
B.achieve great success in business.
C.come up with a plan for reorganization.
D.prevent excessive economic growth.
第9题
The (6)_____ of the EMU is groundless. The countries that will soon formally renounce the right to adjust their nominal exchange rates are not (7)_____ up anything they have not already voluntarily surrendered as part of preparations for monetary union. In the past years not one of the 11 founding members of EMU has (8)_____ in order to enhance its (9)_____. What better proof of the determination and (10)_____ of the European countries to form. an economic and monetary union?
The claims by Euro skeptics that the (11)_____ to EMU membership have sacrificed growth and employment in order to fulfill the convergence criteria don't hold water.(12)_____, government spending of over 50 percent of GDP and taxes and social (13)_____ contributions of over 40 percent were clear (14)_____ that many countries had widely (15)_____ from being market economies. True, the plan for monetary union (16)_____ countries to get their public finances in (17)_____. But such reforms—to put fiscal and social policies on a healthy, economic footing would have been indispensable anyway.
Only with a common currency will the EU's single market develop its full dynamic potential. The euro will make pricing more transparent, (18)_____ in greater competition and, (19)_____, stronger growth. The days will be over (20)_____, for want of competition, Europe's economies became rigid and inflexible.
A.on no account
B.no longer
C.without exception
D.in vain
第10题
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