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In 2008, the election of US President Obama raised hopes in Europe that transatlantic relations would improve dramatically. Four years later, most Europeans indeed consider relations to be “good” or “mixed”. However, some hopes have given way to realism, for example in the field of climate change.
The Obama administration has given multilateralism a higher priority, but has also reminded Europe that it needs to take a greater role in global leadership and rely less on US military capabilities. Obama has also rebalanced US attention towards Asia and the Pacific.
EU-US Summits take place annually. In 2011, leaders agreed to explore the possibility of a transatlantic free trade and investment agreement.
The European Parliament has occasionally clashed with US interests during this time. It rejected the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) outright, as well as initial versions of agreements on exchange of banking data (SWIFT) and passenger name records.
President Obama showed that he has a heart and compassion for people. The biggest problem is that people have to start accepting the fact that Obama is the right person for the job.
So holding any views disagreeable to him have to simply be abandoned? And we need to simply accept the rule of a leader without being critical in the slightest way? Absolutely! Forget the idea of excercising any scrutiny any more! Let’s all be servile subjects of a chef d’etat!
pfft.
He does not have any specific compassion for people: he shovelled a record amount of money at voting blocks using stimulus money that neither stimulated the economy, nor was funded.
Sorry. If you aren’t an American who is to be governed by him, you should mind your own business.
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