Last week we announced that EU Ambassador John Bruton would receive an honorary doctorate from MU. It as my great pleasure to host his visit here. Ambassador Bruton shares this account of his experience in our State.
Here's a brief excerpt:
An Honorary Doctorate from the University of Missouri
Last week I visited Missouri to receive an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of Missouri at the convocation on the University campus in Columbia. Hundreds of students received degrees, and the total attendance at the event came to 5,000 people.
I have had an association with the University of Missouri since my time as Taoiseach (Prime Minister)....
In the course of my address at the ceremony in Columbia, I said that those graduating should see themselves not only as citizens of their state and country, but also as citizens of the world. The big problems we face today are global problems. Yet our democratic systems of government are confined within individual states. I said I believed we needed to develop forms of global or regional democracy beyond the confines of the nation state.This theme was also taken up in a recent address by President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, at a Conference on Global Governance. He said the EU was a model for systems of democratic government above the level of the nation state. As he put it, the EU is:
“a union of states, peoples and citizens based on democracy, the rule of law, human rights and open markets with free competition. It has rejected traditional international politics, based on the threat of violence, in favour of international relations based on supranational laws and institutions.”
