Word: european
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...also functions as a kind of court, making binding rulings when member states are in dispute - for example, when European governments tried to stop importing hormone-treated beef from the U.S. on health grounds, they were overruled by the WTO. The WTO's members gave the body such powers precisely to ensure that trade disputes between countries are resolved quickly and smoothly, by an arbitration mechanism they all recognize as legitimate...
...intended to protect the environment or public health, arguing that the organization puts the narrow interests of business over those of society in general. But countries disadvantaged by such measures often charge that they're invoked as a fig leaf for old-fashioned protectionism. For example, Washington has dismissed European health concerns over the import of hormone treated beef as an attempt to protect less competitive European farmers...
...Agricultural subsidies Europe and Japan continue to heavily subsidize their farmers, making those markets less competitive for food exporting countries such as the U.S., Canada, Australia and Brazil. Although they'll find it difficult to maintain those subsidies in the face of WTO opposition, European and Japanese leaders are under intense political pressure from their domestic farming communities. They'll fight hard to slow the advance of agricultural imports into their markets, using arguments about food safety and consumer protection...
...Harvard instructor of my acquaintance tells a good anecdote about the contrast between the American and the European educational philosophies. One year he noticed that a high school student in the summer school electronics course he was teaching was doing poorly, and he and the teaching fellow were discussing why this might be. Perhaps, they suggested, he was not really interested in the material and was attending summer school only because his parents had made him. Perhaps he was having trouble adapting to being so far from home. That year the co-instructor for the course happened...
...part of the reason why I chose to attend an American college known for its unwillingness to give students C's. But this plan failed because intelligence is evident only in comparative terms, and it is painfully obvious that, judged by the standard of my peers, the Eastern European professors must be looking at my test papers and saying to themselves "I think that he is just very stupid...