The Current Discussion:Is there a growing global agenda -- that is, an agenda of issues being discussed that affects the world rather than individual countries? Or are local concerns still paramount?

High fuel and food prices, climate change, the rise of major new economies, the credit crisis, terrorism and the United States’ shaping of the global security agenda have all shown beyond any doubt that anything that affects the planet becomes a local issue. And though local concerns are paramount in the sense that these are the issues that determine election winners in each country, the problems that affect the world today can only be dealt with at a global level, as the debates on PostGlobal show, coming as they do from all corners of the globe. Local concerns and the global agenda are now inseparable. The question is how individual countries will be able to separate domestic, petty political concerns from their main task, which is to protect their people from the fallout from international problems while doing all possible to make their countries as competitive as possible in an increasingly challenging global environment. This will imply great changes on the domestic political scene, with parties having to reach unprecedented consensus on decisions that cannot be delayed or diluted. These include reforms to education, labor laws, pension systems, and cooperation with neighboring countries and international organizations so as to act swiftly on regional and global issues.

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The Current Discussion: After Ireland voted 'No' in last week's referendum on EU reform, we're left wondering: Is the EU unraveling?

ATHENS - It is pitiful to see how little faith the leaders of European Union countries have in themselves and in the great human, political, economic and social experiment that outrageous fortune has put in their care. European integration is in danger, but not because of the Irish rejection of the diluted reform treaty that aimed to make the Union a more coherent and functional political body. It’s in danger because of the tactical incompetence and lack of inspired leadership on the part of the people who govern the member-states’ governments as well as those charged with running the EU.

The Irish rejection of the EU’s reform treaty in a referendum last week, just as the French and Dutch “no” to its predecessor, the EU Constitution in 2005, will undoubtedly lead to a chorus of declarations that the will of the voters has to be respected. And so, close to 500 million Europeans whose countries are members of the EU will have to be happy with Europe’s continued limbo because a majority of Ireland’s three million voters had a bone to pick with their government and little confidence in the future. After the French and Dutch referenda, Europe froze for about two years. The reform treaty was the EU leaders’ effort to placate skeptics who feared that the EU was taking too much power away from national governments. Now the Irish have sunk even that compromise and there is no Plan C.

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