Yearly Folwell Lecture another success

by: jenna stevens
Features Editor

On the evening of Oct. 27, the Political Science Department at St. Ambrose hosted its third annual Folwell Lecture in Political Science and Pre-Law. This lecture is graciously sponsored by a pillar in our community, Jane Folwell, and this year hosted a speaker from one of Davenport’s sister cities in Europe. Dr. Berthold Rittberger is from Kaiserslautern, Germany, which happens to be connected to Davenport through a program designed to strengthen relationships overseas.

Dr. Rittberger is a junior professor of Political Science at Technische Universitat Kaiserslautern and received his masters and Ph. D. from the University of Oxford. The title of his lecture was “The EU Constitution is Dead: Long Live the Constitution?”

The EU, also known as the European Union, does many of the same things the government here in the United States does. The EU is made up of 25 European counties called member states.

According to Dr. Rittberger, “the EU tries to act on a global scale from [an] economic standpoint”.

The EU works to gain economic and financial cooperation, they have a highly developed foreign and security policy and they have a common monetary cooperation called the Euro. The major difference between the EU and the United States government is that the EU does not tax its citizens. While this is a good thing for the people living in these countries, it also means that the EU does not have the massive financial resources that we have in the United States.

This system is run by a representative body and has an elected president to oversee the daily business much like we have here. The cabinet, however, is comprised of 24 members so each country has their own leader in a position of power.

The main focal point of the lecture dealt with the topic of democracy and the constitution. The EU’s constitution was developed similar to the constitution of the United States in 1787. Its development, however, did not take place until 2001.

The EU constitution does not deal with a vast realm of social issues that face individuals on a daily basis, instead, it deals with economic matters and provides the citizens with confidence and the government with a simpler decision making process.

“What happens in the U.S. [democracy] is what we observe in the EU,” Dr. Rittberger said, when referring to the way the constitution and the democracy work in relation to all 25 nations.

As the EU continues to grow, so does its power and influence on what happens throughout the world. The Euro has become a major contender for the American dollar and as more and more counties from Europe join together, the European Union will only grow stronger.