Fifteen students from D.C. universities, including AU, organized a gala celebrating the 50th anniversary of the European Union, which took place Saturday night at the German Embassy.
Dressed in formal attire, approximately 250 students from American, George Mason, Georgetown, John Hopkins and George Washington universities came to celebrate this anniversary of the EU.
The German Embassy hosted the event because it currently holds the presidency of EU, said Maike Mollers, a graduate student in School of International Service and coordinator of the event. Each member nation serves as the president for half a year, she said.
Johannes Haindl, minister and deputy chief of Mission for Germany, attended the celebration and thanked the United States government for its support of the EU.
"The U.S. defended our freedom and that will never be forgotten," he said, in reference to the Cold War.
The Treaty of Rome established the European Economic Community, which was the foundation of today's European Union, on March 25, 1957, according to the EU Web site.
"[The treaty] brought peace to a war-torn Europe," Mollers said. "It is an important date because it unified Europe while maintaining our diversity."
The EU, which now includes 27 member states, has taken steps to protect cultural diversity and human rights on the continent, according to eurunion.org.
Posters around the embassy's Carl Schurz Auditorium, where the event was held, displayed achievements of the EU, such as the protection of women's rights through adequate maternity leave, financial support for education and equal pay.
The European Commission, which proposes and implements legislation, provides grants to member countries to implement programs that promote cultural diversity and secure minority rights for groups such as the Roma people, according to reports on the EU's Web site.
Christian Lehmann a Berlin-born student from the University of California, Santa Cruz, said some of the more celebrated measures of economic unification have had adverse impacts on local populations.
There is debate over the open border policy established by the Schengen Agreement in 1985, which eliminated border checks and allows EU citizens to work without special work permits in any member state, according to documents on the EU's Web site. Although the policy is meant to promote employment throughout Europe, in Germany there is a large influx of excess labor from neighboring Eastern European countries, Lehmann said.
As the EU grows, bureaucracy has bogged down its progress. In 2005, France and Holland, two founding member states, caused a blockage in the EU machinery when they refused to ratify the Constitution, according to El Pais, an international Spanish newspaper.
Since then, seven other countries have requested an amended text of the constitution before voting, El Pais reported.
Angelo Pangratis, deputy head of the Delegation of the European Commission in the United States, said pessimistic attitude toward the EU is the result of the United States' inability to escape what it was taught - the concept of economically independent states.
"We are not creating a super state or eliminating identity," Pangratis said.
Pangratis called on the future leaders on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean to think of the EU as a means to better the world.
"The EU's goal is to spread prosperity, equality, peace and stability," Linda Aitio, a graduate student from the University of Turku in Finland, said.
Expansion is the right direction because with each new country, democracy spreads further across the continent, Aitio said.
