Tertulia with Manuel Medina<\/p>\n
Big Statements about an Ever-Narrowing Gap: Views on the EU\/US Relationship<\/strong><\/p>\n By: Catherine Tuttle On January 14th at the monthly Tertulia, or invited speaker forum in Madrid, Fulbright alumnus Manuel Medina presented a talk entitled \u201cThe Relationship between the EU and the US.\u201d It mixed personal anecdotes from his time at Columbia University with comparisons and contrasts between the EU and the US, that are especially pertinent now as the 2014 EU Parliamentary elections, scheduled for May, approach.<\/p>\n Medina\u2019s talk took the form of many grand statements about the sometimes clear but sometimes quite subtle differences between the EU and the US.<\/p>\n Here is an outline of some of his assertions:<\/p>\n \u2022 The US maintains a clearly federalist government while the EU follows a more confederate system Today, there are very few fundamental differences between the US and the EU. Medina argued that in this day and age, we are all Americans–or at least trying to imitate the American way, from style of government to culture and dress.<\/p>\n As Medina\u2019s personal comments and conclusions drew to a close, it seemed quite clear that his personal opinion applauded the American style of government and politics. However, the questions raised by the mostly Spanish audience called Medina to consider some of elements in which the EU trumps Uncle Sam.<\/p>\n One question prompted Medina to look at the faults in the American health, education, public services, poverty care, and death penalty systems. Medina agreed that Europe surely surpasses the US in some aspects and that the US needs to vastly improve its welfare system.<\/p>\n With a preface that he was not defending the American death penalty by any means, Medina in turn urged the audience to consider that the death penalty has been a somewhat rampant part of European history for many centuries. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tertulia with Manuel Medina Big Statements about an Ever-Narrowing Gap: Views on the EU\/US Relationship By: Catherine Tuttle Fulbright Fellow 2013-2014 On January 14th at the monthly Tertulia, or invited speaker forum in Madrid, Fulbright alumnus Manuel Medina presented a talk entitled \u201cThe Relationship between the EU and the US.\u201d It mixed personal anecdotes from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,29],"tags":[143,149,148,35,60,26,34,138],"class_list":["post-3341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-otras-noticias","category-tertuliasfulbright","tag-143","tag-briefing","tag-catherine-tuttle","tag-fulbright","tag-spanish-fulbright-alumni-association","tag-tertulia","tag-tertulias","tag-tertulias-fulbright"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asoc-fulbright.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asoc-fulbright.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asoc-fulbright.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asoc-fulbright.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asoc-fulbright.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3341"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/asoc-fulbright.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3349,"href":"https:\/\/asoc-fulbright.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions\/3349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asoc-fulbright.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asoc-fulbright.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asoc-fulbright.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFulbright Fellow 2013-2014<\/p>\n
\nFirst, Medina joked with the audience about his presumed status as the oldest Fulbright alumni in the Association, having studied in the US from 1961-1962. Medina characterized those years as a \u201cpromising moment\u201d in US history.<\/p>\n
\n\u2022 The US\u2019s governing can be starkly characterized by two things the EU does not have: a military or the CIA
\n\u2022 The government model for the EU was the USA. The EU\u2019s ideal is to make a United States of Europe
\n\u2022 The EU suffers from a lack of a body like the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). Believe it or not, there are only seven veterinarians in the EU to check food products. Thus, there is no guarantee in Europe that what we are eating is healthy and uncontaminated.
\n\u2022 When discussing the \u201casymmetrical\u201d relations between the US and the EU, it is essentially impossible to talk about one economy without the presence of the other. They are inseparable and their political and economic power is deeply interconnected. For example, events such as the recession and the invasion of Iraq many other countries than solely the US.<\/p>\n
\nOverall, Medina sees the relationship between the EU and the US as a \u201clock-step\u201d link\u2014whether either one likes it or not, every year they become increasingly similar.<\/p>\n