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2018
年雅思阅读模拟题及答案解析
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年雅思阅读模拟题及答案解析
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Next Year Marks the
EU
’
s 50th Anniversary of the
Treaty
A.
After a period
of introversion and stunned self-disbelief,
continental European
governments will
recover their enthusiasm for pan-European
institution-building in
2007. Whether
the European public will welcome a return to what
voters in two
countries had rejected so
short a time before is another matter.
B.
There are several reasons for
Europe
’
s recovering self-
confidence. For years
European
economies had been lagging dismally behind America
(to say nothing of
Asia), but in 2006
the large continental economies had one of their
best years for a
decade, briefly
outstripping America in terms of growth. Since
politics often reacts
to economic
change with a lag, 2006
’
s
improvement in economic growth will have
its impact in 2007, though the recovery
may be ebbing by then.
C.
The coming year also marks a particular
point in a political cycle so regular that
it almost seems to amount to a natural
law. Every four or five years, European
countries take a large stride towards
further integration by signing a new treaty: the
Maastricht treaty in 1992, the Treaty
of Amsterdam in 1997, the Treaty of Nice in
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2001. And in 2005 they were supposed to
ratify a European constitution, laying the
ground for yet more
integration
—
until the calm
rhythm was rudely shattered by
French
and Dutch voters. But the political impetus to
sign something every four or
five years
has only been interrupted, not immobilised, by
this setback.
D.
In 2007 the European Union marks the
50th anniversary of another
treaty
—
the
Treaty
of Rome, its founding charter. Government leaders
have already agreed to
celebrate it
ceremoniously, restating their commitment to
“
ever closer
union
”
and
the basic ideals of European unity. By
itself, and in normal circumstances, the
EU
’
s
50th-
birthday greeting to itself would be fairly
meaningless, a routine expression of
European good fellowship. But it does
not take a Machiavelli to spot that once
governments have signed the declaration
(and it seems unlikely anyone would be
so uncollegiate as to veto it) they
will already be halfway towards committing
themselves to a new treaty. All that
will be necessary will be to incorporate the
50th-anniversary declaration into a new
treaty containing a number of institutional
and other reforms extracted from the
failed attempt at constitution-building
and
—
hey
presto
—
a new quasi-
constitution will be ready.
E.
According to the German
government
—
which holds the
EU
’
s agenda-setting
presidency during the first half of
2007
—
there will be a new
draft of a
slimmed-down constitution
ready by the middle of the year, perhaps to put to
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voters, perhaps not. There would then
be a couple of years in which it will be
discussed, approved by parliaments and,
perhaps, put to voters if that is deemed
unavoidable. Then, according to
bureaucratic planners in Brussels and Berlin,
blithely ignoring the possibility of
public rejection, the whole thing will be signed,
sealed and a new constitution delivered
in 2009-10. Europe will be nicely back on
schedule. Its four-to-five-year cycle
of integration will have missed only one beat.
F.
The resurrection of the
European constitution will be made more likely in
2007
because of what is happening in
national capitals. The European Union is not
really
an autonomous organisation. If
it functions, it is because the leaders of the big
continental countries want it to,
reckoning that an active European policy will help
them get done what they want to do in
their own countries.
G.
That did not happen in 2005-06.
Defensive, cynical and self-destructive, the
leaders of the three largest euro-zone
countries
—
France, Italy and
Germany
—
were
stumbling towards their unlamented
ends. They saw no reason to pursue any sort
of European policy and the EU, as a
result, barely functioned. But by the middle of
2007 all three will have gone, and this
fact alone will transform the European
political landscape.
H.