On the face of it, the Europeans have been making good on past promises of help.
At a conference last week, the United Nations reminded governments of past promises left unfulfilled.
States protect retirement benefits for existing workers they will pay for past promises for years to come and broader change is politically tricky.
" But he added that first, "we must follow through on the broken promises of the past to secure our borders and enforce our laws.
Public-interest groups, hoping to hold the Louisianans and others to past promises, are dredging up newsclips in which the lawmakers are quoted as saying they will vote for McCain's bill.
It isn't only Germany's Europe of Rules that is restricting policy choice: Policy makers are also held back by fear of the financial markets and by their past promises, such as that Greece would be the last euro-zone government to restructure its debt.
"North Korea has broken all sorts of promises in the past... if it turns out they cannot come back to Japan after going to North Korea it will be too late to do anything, " the relatives said in a letter to the government.
But that sentiment, maybe polite skepticism is a better way to put it, is commonplace in the tiny coal towns where many of the jobs have disappeared, and whatever is said now is judged alongside the many past promises that help was on the way.
But clearly, the question mark associated with past unkept promises hung in the air over that firmly delivered assertion.
His assessment was that Mr Blair, "like his promises", was past their "use-by date" and that voters would not listen to a man who put "snake oil rather than milk on his cornflakes".
We have huge numbers of doctors who have been very busy delivering a service to patients who have seen in the past that promises around IT systems have not manifested themselves in delivery on the ground.
Well and good, but such promises have, in the past, too rarely been kept.
He has made many promises of democratic reform in the past, without fulfilling them.
But whereas the show floor would've been dominated by an abundance of next-gen tablets at shows past, this year promises to be quieter.
"We urge North Korea to live up to the promises it has made in the past and sustain denuclearization on the Korean peninsula, " Choi Tai-young said at a regular news conference.
The Bangalore-based carrier, which has struggled to pay salaries to employees for the past four months amid promises to do so as recently as April, has defaulted on tax payments and bills to its vendors.
He promises to hold the army accountable for past acts of violence.
They are trying to make sure the government's promise of water does not go the way of past white men's promises, which left them where they are: high and dry.
What is important to remember is that we judge the Assad regime by its actions and not by their promises, because their promises have proven so frequently in the past to be empty.
Wherever Mr. Cuomo settles on the issue, there promises to be a stronger effort than in past years to get the legislation to the floor of the Assembly and Senate.
In the past, when Ukraine has broken its economic promises, Mr Kuchma has been able to blame left-wingers.
The past seems like a tragedy, and the future promises worse.
But in the past decade or so, as other sports followed up on promises to get rid of drug cheats, professional road cycling has lagged behind.
The debate will play out at the start of Obama's second term, as he aims to spend the political capital afforded him by his re-election victory on an issue that has eluded past presidents and stymied him during his first term despite his promises to the Latino community to act.
Jetpacks have become something of a pop-culture meme in the past decade, a hipster shorthand for science fiction's unfulfilled promises.
But all were sucked into the same economic abyss of the failed policies of the past -- the same policies, by the way, that Romney promises to repeat as president.
The party's secretary-general, Katsuya Okada, says severing all connections with the bureaucratic habits of the past will be a prerequisite for carrying out the DPJ's other election promises.
Although many of these promises are vague, they come on the heels of several other, voluntary, reforms over the past year.
Over the past four years, the U.S. has scaled down its presence, ambitions and promises overseas.
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