Interesting new British weblog on matters European: Europhobia - “The musings of a one-time eurosceptic turned pro-European and his better informed friends”

My out-of-consensus speculation that the Bank of England’s round of interest rate rises may be pretty much done looks sounder by the day. There may be one more rate increase, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they were pretty much over with it, and even if the next move (the end of this [...]

After a series of posts on the rise of the euro earlier in the year, I’ve been relatively quiet on this front of late. This doesn’t mean that the problem has gone away. The growing feeling that the US economy was taking off certainly eased the pressure, and the euro has hovered around the low [...]

CDU chief Angela Merkel’s strong opposition to Turkish EU accession faces criticism from her own side, reports the FT Deutschland. Volker R?he, the CDU chairman of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee and one-time defence minister, has lambasted Merkel’s position as ‘populism’, especially in its menacing vision of a Europe ‘flooded’ by Turks. ‘When Europe comes [...]

Colin Powell has been making the headlines over the weekend for his seemingly more realistic appraisal of the difficulties facing current US policy in Iraq when compared to the view emmanating from other members of the Bush administration. Again Juan Cole has been offering some informed comment on the topic here.
All of which makes [...]

Despite the recent revival of optimism about the forthcoming Turkey negotiations following the apparent resolution of the ‘adultery ban’ issue, it is clear to everyone that significant hurdles still remain to be overcome. Among these may now need to be added a referendum on Turkish membership in France.
Turkey will not join the European Union for [...]

Further to that business about the Turkish government advancing, and then as quickly aborting, plans to criminalise adultery, the very valuable ?????????? (Histologion) notes that:
It’s a good thing that the state of Virginia won’t be applying for EU membership anytime soon, since it is one of the 23 US states, where adultery is considered a [...]

This should come as a shock, but somehow I am not exactly surprised. Mediterranean cooking evidently isn’t always as benign and healthy as it seems.
Greece was warned on Thursday that it could face legal action for grossly under-reporting its national deficit and debt figures but was told it would not be ejected from the 12-country [...]

The European Commission won’t release its report on the possibility of opening accesion talks with Turkey until 6 October. But after expansion commissioner G?nter Verheugen’s comments yesterday, the report will not be much of a surprise. ‘There are’, said Verheugen, ‘no further barriers‘ to beginning talks.
(All the links to outside sources in this post, incidentally, [...]

British Conservative MP (and editor of the Spectator) Boris Johnson now has his own weblog. As a commenter somewhere else said, we can all give up and go home now.