As opinion polls produce results wobbling uncomfortably back-and-forth between ‘yes’ and a ‘no’, France is in the grips of a chaotic day of ’solidarity under duress’ whose consequences for 29 May seem hard to foresee.
News that parliaments in Germany, Austria and Slovakia have approved the constitution treaty is tempered by the results of the latest [...]

Last week, on a visit to Germany, Henry Kissinger stated that Europe “now has a number”. Well, I’m not sure which one in particular he was referring to, or if the CIA’s decision to list the EU in its world fact book has anything to do with Kissinger’s realisation - but depending on the outcome [...]

European Commissioner For Communications (no pun) Margot Wallstr?m is in the news, not for what she said, but for what she didn’t say. The EU observer reports she excised part of a speech she had prepared for her visit to Terezin in the Czech Republic where she was scheduled to mark the 60th anniversary [...]

The FT is running the following story about Barroso:
Jos? Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, will drop his supervision of antitrust cases affecting the shipping industry, shortly after it emerged he took a holiday on the luxury yacht of a Greek shipping tycoon….
the timing of Mr Barroso’s decision is likely to reignite the controversy over his [...]

Just a quick follow up on the state of play with opinion poll outcomes in France. Le Monde today reports that of four polls published yesterday two gave a majority for the ‘yes’ vote, whilst the other two suggested a significant decline in ‘no’ support (details in fold). Since the shift is partly among socialist [...]

Yesterday was the first anniversary of the entry of ten new states into the EU. It was an anniversary generally celebrated amidst a notable lack of champagne and fireworks. Perhaps we are living in more discrete and austere times. Nonetheless there have been articles here and there in the press, amongst them the one in [...]

On Friday I suggested (using an Economist article as my point of support) that the French referendum result was far from a foregone conclusion. Further evidence for this comes from a poll published in today’s Le Monde. For the first time in recent weeks we have evidence to support the possibility of a ‘yes’ vote: [...]

Because no one has one. Well, no one has a public plan about how to handle one or more rejections of the European consitution in upcoming national referenda. But as the French referendum is approaching and the numbers do not look too good for the “yes” camp, unofficial Plan Bs are suddenly everywhere, if only [...]

Speaking of the Classics, I recently discovered to my shock and amazement that in Belgium, students still study Latin in secondary school. My Dutch teacher was talking about the structure of secondary school, and described how there is still a Latin/Classical Greek track, as well as a Latin/Math track that students almost have [...]

I often marvel at the absurdities of the debate around the EU’s economic agenda.
Take, for instance, this pithy summary of Sunday’s meeting from EurActiv:
The costs of German reunification will be counted as a mitigating circumstance in the reform of the EU Stability and Growth Pact, EU finance ministers have agreed.
Because, of course, [...]