Back in Europe - And Why We Are Here....

By John Callahan - Blog 1

I volunteered to go first with my blog entry for this trip, for many reasons. I want to compare this trip to others I have taken, and I want to see how recent upheavals have changed Europe, even in the year since I last visited.
I have returned to ODU after a 10 year hiatus to earn my Doctorate in International Studies. International travel has always been both a passion for me and a specialty of various university programs, which was something that drew me back.
I first came to Brussels for a similar study trip in 1997, and have visited numerous times since. For me, this trip is about change, and seeing how the upheavals of the world are impacting Europe and the European experiment. The greatest challenges for now appear to be in the future of the Monetary Union, as the Greek crisis continues to create waves of uncertainty throughout the continent and the world. Americans should not delude themselves that we will be unaffected if the Euro goes into a free fall. We are leveraged in a way that ensures that we will feel the pain, which may be significant as we face a fundamentally stagnated recovery. It is quite interesting to leave a country already locked in the throws of a Presidential election and see what is going on in the rest of the world. Indeed, the main news items of the last week, including candidates bullying each other, and the legal status of Gay marriage, strike me as breaking out the fiddles to start playing while Rome Burns in the form of the Greek debt crisis.  
Back to Europe, and our purpose for being here… This trip is designed to give us a renewed sense of what is going on in Europe, both at the National and Regional levels. While we are here in Belgium, our focus is on the Region. For example, today we met with Kirsten Jorelson, an information officer from the European Parliament. The discussion topics ranged from growth of the EU to the Monetary crisis.  A primary topic was the prospect for new admissions into the European Union, particularly focused on Turkey.  Turkish entry into the EU has been on the table in one form or another since the 1960s, however, it seems unlikely that the issue will be resolved any time soon.  Even less likely does it seem that a resolution will mean Turkish accession. Today was a great immersion, both into Brussels itself, through an excellent walking tour, but also a warm up for the even weightier issues to be discussed in the coming weeks.