Poland, "bridge" to the West” “

Poland is making every effort to achieve its “return to Europe”, together with the other nine candidate countries for EU enlargement. The timetable is fairly short, since the objective is to arrive at the European elections in 2004 with a group of candidate countries that have already concluded the membership procedure, and hence eligible to […]

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Austria: Caritas aid to the countries of Eastern Europe ” “

“The projects of Caritas are important because they act as pillars of support for the stability of the European house”: with these words pronounced in recent days in Vienna, Franz Küberl, president of Austrian Caritas, presented its new aid programme “Donating for the future”, in favour of the countries of Eastern Europe: Ukraine, Romania, Belarus, […]

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Spain: a fast day for peace” “

A fast day, a minute’s silence, ecumenical celebrations and the collection of donations in all Spanish parishes, as a sign of solidarity with the populations throughout the world that have to endure situations of poverty, violations of human rights and conflicts. These are some of the initiatives of the national campaign “If you want peace, […]

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” “Germany: the Church defends its nursery schools” “

“No to the secularization of nursery schools”. The alarm was sounded in recent days by German Caritas and the federation of Catholic nursery schools in response to the debate now going on in Germany on the reform of education. The issue returned to the top of the political agenda after the results of an OECD […]

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Italy: directory on social communication” “

“To propose to the Italian ecclesial community an organic synthesis of the contents and perspectives of pastoral commitment in the field of social communications”: this is the main objective of the “Directory on social communication in the mission of the Italian Church”; the main lines of the document, which represents one of the main contributions […]

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European Union " "

The Churches dialogue with the Spanish presidency” “

“The Churches are interested in contributing to the work of the Convention for the reform of the European institutions”. So said the representatives of the Christian Churches on recently meeting, in Madrid, Spain’s Secretary of State for European affairs, Ramón de Miguel, and representatives of the Spanish presidency of the EU, which will remain in […]

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Enlargement: the financial forecasts” “

“Fair and balanced”: these were the words with which Commissioner Günter Verheugen defined the proposals recently presented by the Commission in terms of financing EU enlargement, in particular as regards common agricultural policy and regional aid. For Romano Prodi and for the Commissioners Verheugen (enlargement), Fischler (agriculture) and Schreyer (budget) the bottom line consists, on […]

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"Erasmus": a million scholarships” “

The Commissioner for education and culture, the Luxembourger Vivian Reding, outlined to the European Parliament the priorities of his General Directorate for 2002. In the field of education, one objective is the bureaucratic simplification of the “Socrates” Programme, to facilitate and encourage exchanges of students and teachers. Reding announced that the millionth “Erasmus” study grant […]

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” “Dailies and periodicals” “

New York and Porto Alegre: the two simultaneous world forums re-ignited the debate in the main international dailies on the relation between economy and globalization. La Croix of 4/2 dedicated a whole page to the two “summits”: “The struggle against poverty in the southern hemisphere – says a résumé of the article signed by Pierre […]

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agenda" "

EU legislation” “

In the course of last week, the following legislative acts and communications, among others, came into force: · Regulation (EC) no. 178/2002 of the EP and of the Council, of 28/1/2002, that lays down the general principles and requisites for food legislation, establishes the European Authority for food safety and fixes procedures in the field […]

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