Day 1 of the French presidency of the European Council is off to a bad start.   It now seems that both the Czech Republic and Poland will have constitutional struggles over the treaty, with presidents who had been assumed to have mainly titular powers deciding to exercise their right not to sign approved legislation and [...]

Another Euro 2008 open thread but one in which we feel compelled to note how tonight’s match was an insight to the central role of television in the experience — as evidenced by how flat things went (at least where I was watching) when the global TV feed apparently collapsed for significant portions of the [...]

It wasn’t clear over the weekend how the Zimbabwe crisis could manage to get more complicated but now we know: Morgan Tsvangirai has taken refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare.  It seems that he was left with little choice since, far from seeing his withdrawal from Friday’s “election” as a concession, the state security [...]

With the obvious topic being that breathless incredible match in Geneva.  Now while the superlatives like “best match ever” should be held in reserve (particularly given the extent to which the goals turned on simple mistakes — and possibly the Geneva rain), the Turks did a great job, especially in staying positive after conceding the [...]

UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband provided indication today of the emerging EU strategy for dealing with the Irish No to Lisbon: it’s being left up to the Irish government to sort it out, but with a reminder of the high stakes should they choose to accept the referendum result.  Or, as Miliband colourfully put it [...]

In which we discuss the European Union Treaty of Lisbon, due to come into force in 2009. Irish state broadcaster RTE is sticking to its earlier prediction (based on the Irish specialty of “tallymen” who watch the ballots as they are being sorted) that the Treaty has been rejected. See RTE news updates [...]

One thought: Probably the first true upset of the tournament with Croatia’s win. Germany looked strangely like England against them. It means that Austria’s final match will matter a lot despite its likely irrelevance to Austria’s prospects.

One thought from the first match: qualification form seems to matter. Russia scraped into the tournament. They had some nice touches but the gulf in quality showed. Would England have been picked apart the same way?

Lest we be accused of running an all-football blog in June, let’s pause to briefly take note of the fact that George Bush is on the continent at the moment, beginning in Ljubljana (and a little unsteady on his feet?) for the EU-US annual summit before going to Rome, Berlin, Paris, London, and Belfast.  One [...]

That has to be the theme from Les Bleus following yet another slow start to the group stages of a tournament — such a start a couple of years ago not precluding an eventual run to the final.  Since there will be more attention on Raymond Domenech’s starting selections: Anelka?  The man who somehow dodged [...]