Is that there won’t be a compromise under the Italian Presidency. I remeber hearing a few weeks back that the Irish government has been making plans to finish up the IGC’s business during its six months at the helm.
How much of the current worry is due to Berlusconi’s initial fumbles? Six months disappear awfully [...]

As next weekend’s Brussels EU summit about the constitution is approaching quickly, it’s only too normal that all national players are digging their trenches and defence lines by publicly downplaying the importance of an agreement if the “national price to be paid is too high” while Europhiles of all nations are trying to increase pressure [...]

British MEP Nick Clegg has an article in today’s Guardian, putting forward the argument that MEPs and the European Parliament are a lot more powerful than people give them credit for.
But the parliament most certainly isn’t irrelevant or unimportant. In the four years I’ve been an MEP, we have adopted legislation stopping cosmetics being tested [...]

For some reason, I stopped covering the constitution when I started AFOE. Since Cosmocrat has been on hiatus for two months, and Henry Farrell after joining CT generally restricts himself to subjects the US bloggers care about, there’s barely been any informed discussion of these things in the blogosphere, that I know of. That’s a [...]

(Published, then removed earlier version of this when i meant to save it as a draft. Apologies for the confusion.)
Yahoo! News - EU Agrees Drugs Law, Dutch ‘Coffee’ Shops Survive
This shows just how much policy is made in Brussels nowadays. This happens to be real bad policy, too (the small posession stuff.) But regardless of [...]

Ok, so I do have something to say about the stability pact.
The pact was so flawed that this may have been preferable to actually doing what was supposed to be done, but that does not mean this new “pretend it ’s raining” policy is anything short of terrible. This is astunning failure of political leadership [...]

First of all, let me say I’m flattered to be invited to guest-blog on Fistful of Euros, which I’ve long thought was the coolest name of any blog ever.
I’d hazard a guess at two big reasons nobody has much to say about the security pact unraveling: First, there’s simply not that much to say [...]

No one here have said anything about the recent unraveling of the stability pact. That felt after a little weird after seeing that US bloggers Daniel Drezner and Atrios, of all people, have both commented on the issue.
(Edward did write about it on Bonobo Land though)
Drezner links to this article from the Economist, [...]

Not long ago, I asked Where’s Publius?
Today’s Frankfurter Allgemenine reports:
The European Convention Talks Back
Appeal to the Intergovernmental Conference
Modeled on the “Federalist Papers”
Call by 63 Parliament Members
Brussels, Nov 13. Four months after the end of the EU Reform Convention, members of the body that was entrusted with working out a draft constitution are attempting to exercise [...]

I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before, but it was only while talking with a colleague this afternoon, and being asked what I thought about the unwillingness of the candidate countries to reform that it came to me: with all this coming and going on the Pact, what kind of message is being [...]