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[主观题]

The European Union's Barcelona summit, which ended on March 16th, was played out against t

he usual backdrop of noisy "anti-globalisation" demonstrations and massive security. If nothing else, the demonstrations illustrated that economic liberalization in Europe—the meeting's main topic—presents genuine political difficulties. Influential sections of public opinion continue to oppose anything that they imagine threatens "social Europe", the ideal of a cradle-to-grave welfare state.

In this climate of public opinion, it is not surprising that the outcome in Barcelona was modest. The totemic issue was opening up Europe's energy markets. The French government has fought hard to preserve a protected market at home for its state-owned national champion, Electricite de France (EDF). At Barcelona it made a well-flagged tactical retreat. The summiteers concluded that from 2004 industrial users across Europe would be able to choose from competing energy suppliers, which should account for "at least" 600% of the market.

Since Europe's energy market is worth 350 billion ($309 Billion) a year and affects just about every business, this is a breakthrough. But even the energy deal has disappointing aspects. Confining competition to business users makes it harder to show that economic liberalization is the friend rather than the foe of the ordinary person. It also allows EDF to keep its monopoly in the most profitable chunk of the French market.

In other areas, especially to do with Europe's tough labor markets, the EU is actually going backwards. The summiteers declared that "disincentives against taking up jobs" should be removed; 20m jobs should be created within the EU by 2010. But only three days after a Barcelona jamboree, the European Commission endorsed a new law that would give all temporary-agency workers the same rights as full-timers within six weeks of getting their feet under the desk. Six out of 20 commissioners did, unusually, vote against the measure—a blatant piece of re-regulation—but the social affairs commissioner, Anna Diamantopoulou, was unrepentant, indeed triumphant. A dissatisfied liberaliser in the commission called the directive "an absolute disaster".

The summit's other achievements are still more fragile. Europe's leaders promised to increase spending on "research and development" from its current figure of 1.9% of GDP a year to 3%. But how will European politicians compel businesses to invest more in research? Nobody seems to know. And the one big research project agreed on at Barcelona, the Galileo satellite-positioning system, which is supposed to cost 3.2 billion of public money, is of dubious commercial value, since the Europeans already enjoy free access to the Americans' GPA system. Edward Bannerman, head of economics at the Centre for European Reform, a Blairite think-tank, calls Galileo "the common agricultural policy in space."

According to those who support the liberalization of Europe's energy markets, energy supply monopoly is unlikely on the grounds that

A.business users will choose from supplier competitors.

B.energy markets call for cross-trade coordination.

C.competition will hardly be confined to business users.

D.energy suppliers might cater to economic liberalization.

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更多“The European Union's Barcelona summit, which ended on March 16th, was played out against t”相关的问题

第1题

We can learn from the third paragraph thatA.to have a female CEO is not a commonplace any

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.

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第2题

Europe is desperate to succeed in business. Two years ago, the European Union's Lisbon sum
mit 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 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.

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第3题

Part ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by c

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.

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第4题

The Euro skeptics contend that the risks of monetary union far outweigh any advantages it
may bring. Since exchange rates can (1)_____ be used to offset the strains of different economic conditions prevailing in various member countries, growth and employment problems are inevitable, they say. The resulting political pressures will (2)_____ to demands for large intra-union (3)_____ payments. And (4)_____ political resistance to such payments is inevitable, skeptics regard the EMU as a (5)_____ to further European integration.

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

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第5题

Elections often tell you more about what people are against than what they are for. So it
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

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第6题

in its 14 years of ______ the European Union has earned the scorn of its citizens and skep
ticism from the United States.

A.endurance

B.emergence

C.existence

D.eminence

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第7题

The Treaty on European Union

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第8题

Attacks on Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, have intensified
before the European election held between June 4th and 7th, and ahead of a European Union summit when national leaders will discuss his reappointment to a second five- year term. On the left, the Party of European Socialists (PES) calls Mr. Barroso a conservative who "puts markets before people". Should the PES emerge as the largest group in the European Parliament, it will try to block him.

But prominent federalists are also unimpressed. Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister, speaks for many in Brussels when he denounces Mr. Barroso for a lack of ambition for Europe. Mr. Verhofstadt invokes the memory of Jacques Delors, the pugnacious Frenchman who ran the commission from 1985 to 1995.Mr. Delors proposed many ambitious plans, he says, and got 30% of them: that 30% then became the European internal market. Mr. Verhofstadt thinks that last autumn Mr. Barroso should have proposed such things as a single EU financial regulator, a single European bad bank, or a multi-trillion issue of "Eurobonds". That would have triggered a " big fight" with national governments, he concedes. But "maybe the outcome would have been 10%, 20% or 30% of his plan. "

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has endorsed a second tenn for Mr. Barroso, a former centre-right prime minister of Portugal. Yet he seems keen to make him sweat. French officials have briefed that the decision on Mr. Barroso's future taken at the June 18th-19th summit should be only political, leaving a legally binding nomination for later.

Yet the attacks on Mr. Barroso are unlikely to block him. No opinion poll shows the PES overtaking the centre-right European People's Party in the European Parliament. The centre- right leaders who hold power in most of Europe have endorsed Mr. Barroso, as have the (nominally) centre-left leaders of Britain, Spain and Portugal. This helps to explain why the PES, for all its bluster, has not fielded a candidate against Mr. Barroso.

It is equally wrong to pretend that Europe was ready for a federalist big bang last autumn. Officials say Mr. Barroso spent the first weeks of the economic crisis bridging differences between Britain and France on such issues as accounting standards and the regulation of rating agencies. Later, he kept the peace between Mr. Sarkozy and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, after the French president pushed for summits of EU leaders from euro-area countries (Ms Merkel thought that sounded like a two-speed Europe). In any case France has no veto over Mr. Barroso's reappointment: the decision is now taken by majority vote. Some diplomats suggest that France's stalling tactics are meant to extract such concessions as a plum portfolio for its commissioner.

Those calling for "European" action often talk as if they are describing an elegant mechanism, needed to make the union work properly. They argue that only a single financial regulator can police Europe's single market, or complain that 27 national bail-out plans lack "coherence". In fact, these apparently structural calls for "more Europe" are pitches for specific ideological programmes. Thus, in a joint statement on May 30th Mr. Sarkozy and Ms Merkel announced that "Liberalism without rules has failed. " They called for a European economic model in which capital serves "entrepreneurs and workers" rather than "speculators", and hedge funds and bankers' pay are tightly regulated. They added that competition policies should be used to favour the "emergence of world-class European companies", and gave warning against a "bureaucratic Europe" that blindly applies "pernickety rules". If all this sounds like Europe as a giant Rhineland economy, that is no accident.

Mr. Verhofstadt, a continental liberal, means

A.Barroso adopts policies that are in favour of market economy rather than social welfare.

B.Barroso does not care about European people.

C.Barroso suggests EU establish more markets for the convenience of European people.

D.Barroso is the owner of many markets in Europe.

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第9题

The European Union countries were once worried that they would not have ______ supplies of
petroleum.

A.proficient

B.efficient

C.potential

D.sufficient

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第10题

The European Union countries were once worried that they would not have ______ supplies of
petroleum.

A.sufficient

B.proficient

C.efficient

D.potential

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第11题

German Chancellor Angela Merkel won over German voters in the Federal Election on Sept. 27
. Can she now be won over by a French charm offensive【1】at repairing the relationship that was once at the heart of Europe? That's the question being asked in Paris,【2】top government officials are【3】talking about their desire to rekindle closer ties【4】their neighbors across the Rhine.【5】the end of World War II the Franco-German relationship has been the motor of European integration, the【6】force behind the creation of the European Union and, more recently, the introduction of the euro. But the ardor has【7】in this decade, particularly under Merkel, who has regularly struggled to【8】her irritation with French President Nicolas Sarkozy's grandstanding. Sarkozy,【9】, has often been impatient with what he【10】Merkel's lack of resolve.

The sometimes【11】personal rapport is a long way from the public shows of affection their predecessors staged, particularly Helmut Kohl and FranCois Mitterrand, who movingly held【12】in 1984 in a Verdun cemetery. There's been tension on【13】, too. Charles Grant, director of the London-based think tank Centre for European Reform, points out that France and Germany have been【14】on issues from how best to reflate their economies during the economic【15】to the smartest strategies for dealing with Russia.

But influential movers in France are now【16】to put the relationship back on a friendlier footing. In a recent paper French think tank Institute Montaigne【17】an ambitious agenda for the two nations,【18】that a new impetus is needed if Europe's voice is to be heard in a world【19】of big new players, such as Brazil and India, and at a time when President Obama seems fax more【20】with China and the rest of Asia than with America's traditional allies in Europe.

(1)

A.conducted

B.struck

C.intended

D.aimed

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