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X. Render the text Advantages of Spanish Membership in the EU
Using the plan.
Plan for rendering the text
1. The headline of the text.
2. The contents of the text:
- the beginning of the text
- the bulk of the text
- the end of the text
3.Central idea (State it briefly and in your own words).
4. Summary. (Be sure to make your summary not more than a third or a half as long as the original).
XI. Meet as one group. One of you should lead the meeting. Discuss the relationships of the EU with other countries using the following words and word combinations: the most obvious sign of the benefits, the inflow of funds, the impact of membership, a balance of gains and losses, the gap in income levels, to compete in the single currency zone, unemployment blackspot, a complex set of aids, to take the position.
Text 3
The Netherlands in the European Union
Pre-reading task.
Before you read the article say what you know about the following:
The Dutch model of economy.
Types of capitalism.
Many people think that recent economic reforms in the Netherlands offer a successful halfway house between Anglo-American free marketsand continentalwelfare states.The Dutch model of economic policy has a "success story". It deserves imitation. Economic editors of most international newspapers also praised the economic performance in the Netherlands.
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Favourable comments refer to the above-average economic growth (compared with other member states of the European Union), the increase in employment, the low rate of inflation and the reduction of the budget deficit. This economic performance stems from a number of characteristics typical of the Dutch economic order.
In his well-known book "Capitalisme contre capitalisme", a former director of the French planning agency, Michel Albert, made the following distinction. On the one hand, he said, there is a continental West European type of capitalism (the "Rhine-land" model); on the other an Anglo-Saxon capitalism (in Great Britain and the United States of America).
The Rhineland model may be seen as a regulated market economy with a comprehensive system of social security. Government, employers' organisations and labour unions consult each other about economic goals and on the policy instruments to be used. In the Rhineland, therefore, the welfare state is combined with a so-called "consultation economy".
Rhineland participants in the economic process (widely known as "stakeholders") try to achieve a harmony of interests. In such a stakeholder economy the primary goal, it is said, is not the maximisation of short-term profits for the benefit of the shareholders. The main concern is a sustainable, stable and continuous economic growth.
In contrast to the stakeholder economy there is the American or Anglo-Saxon "shareholder economy". Under the American form of capitalism, private enterprise is about maximising short-term profits for those who invest. It is less regulated than in the Rhineland. Its focus is said to be not on any harmony of interests, but on competition and if necessary confrontation. In going for profits, Americans are more willing to take risks. Where Europeans may be risk-avoiders, Americans are risk-lovers. Under the Anglo-Saxon type of capitalism individual responsibility plays a more important role than in the Rhineland, with its organised care and solidarity. In the Netherlands, the Social and Economic Council (an advisory semi-corporatist council for social and economic affairs) and the Labour Foundation (a council for employers' organisations and unions) have fulfilled important functions. Employers' organisations and unions are called "social partners".
Many in the Netherlands attribute their success to harmonious relations between these social partners. It has been claimed that the so-called Wassenaar Agreement of 1982 has made Dutch success possible. At Wassenaar, a suburb of The Hague, employers' organisations and unions reached an agreement on wage modernisation and the creation of jobs. But this agreement in fact led to an erosion of the Rhineland model. It brought centralised wage bargaining to an end and led to a release of market forces. Decentralisation was a move away from the consultation economy and towards the market.
The Rhineland model was thus not strengthened: rather the contrary. The reduction of the tax burden owing to the slimming of public finance: the policy to stop matching any increase in wages with an equal increase in minimum social benefits; the decentralisation of collective bargaining agreements; the reduction of benefits for the disabled; and the privatisation of health insurance: all these went against the grain of consensual politics.
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But how much success has the Dutch economy actually had? First, one can measure it by GDP per head. According to Eurostat, the Netherlands is still only ninth among the European Union countries. Second, employment. Job opportunities for low-skilled people remain scarce. In the retail trade, American employment figures are 60% higher than Dutch ones. Also, notwithstanding low official Dutch unemployment (on this, the Netherlands scores better than Germany, France and Italy), inactivity remains high. If statistics were to take into account all those who are able to work but who receive social benefits instead, unemployment figures would rise to over 20% of the labour force.
Viewed in this light, the recent success of the Dutch economy is merely relative to a worse past. Of course, improvements have been made. The government has made social security less collective by allowing privatisation and introducing market elements. In so doing, it has supported the setting of wages in private markets. It has also invested in infrastructure. But a favourable trade cycle helped too. More structural reforms are needed to improve Dutch performance and increase participation in the labour market.
Text-study
