On Sunday, the people of Belarus will vote to elect their new president, who will be the same as their old president, Alexander Lukashenko. The incumbent will win about three-quarters of the vote because, I’ve been reading, that is the share that he wants to receive. Which only shows that he is a slightly more [...]

I never thought the manner or timing of his death, while disappointing, would in the end make any difference.
Only a thousand turned uptp pay respect to Milosevic.
Whatever fears there were that Mr. Milosevic, in death, would provoke a nationalist outpouring did not come true today: There were flowers, candles and free lapel pins [...]

Germany - Süddeutsche Zeitung. On March 15 the Ukrainian author
Yuri Andrukhovych was awarded the prize for European
Understanding at the opening ceremony of the Leipzig Book Fair.
In a sensational speech, he attacked EU Commissioner Günter
Verheugen who opposes Ukraine’s entry into the EU. The
newspaper publishes extracts of the speech: “European dialogue
has not taken place,” Andrukhovych notes bitterly, [...]

Well we’re having a fairly lively discussion on the original post about the future of Italian democracy, so I thought it might be useful, as a sort of side plate, to link to this analysis from Morgan Stanley’s Vincenzo Guzzo. He highlights the recent changes in Italian election law, and the impact they may [...]

The Berlin Institute for Population and Development published a study this week detailing falling population in certain parts of Germany, particularly economically depressed parts of eastern Germany, the Ruhr valle and the Saarland. In eastern Germany one of the developments that has been discussed on afoe it becoming clear: Deferred or deterred childbirth in the [...]

The Roman Empire has won significance, and its rulers became famous and mighty, because numerous nobles and sages from various countries congregated there [...] As settlers come from various countries and provinces, they bring with them various languages and customs, various instructive concepts and weapons, which decorate and glorify the royal court, but intimidate foreign [...]

Well Romano Prodi and Silvio Berlusconi finally got to meet up in front of the TV cameras last night, even if they didn’t exactly enter into face to face combat. The poll consensus seems to be that Prodi won it on points.
The debate seems to have centred around economic themes, and Euractiv has [...]

Escape From New York - Will Luxembourg replace Manhattan as the world’s financial capital? By Daniel Gross

Continuing AFOE’s first point-counterpoint debate between two posters, here’s my final post on Montenegrin independence.

Read more… or Read more right here… »

I’ll discuss a few specific points that BG made, then say why I still [...]

Heard the news from Salzburg?
If so, you must have been listening very carefully, for the informal meeting of EU foreign ministers held there this weekend was very quiet, and not just because of the extra dumping of snow the region received, in what has been a very snowy winter.

[...]