Actually the Scotsman puts it like this: “Enlargement of the European Union in May will bring the world?s fastest-growing area of HIV infection on to the doorstep of the EU, United Nations experts warned today.”
Which pretty much scandalises me: how can you turn a human tragedy into a eurosceptic thing, for gods sake? The problem [...]

On the previously mentioned subject of Europe’s “free” movement of labor (and the possibility of a massive influx of cheap labor from the east come EU accession time) here’s an article I wrote on the topic in November for Czech and Slovak Construction Journal (for some reason the article’s not posted online).
If you’re too [...]

As someone who lives and works in Barcelona (capital of Catalonia, and formal definition in the eyes of the local nationalists of being Catalan), it is really rather frustrating to find that about the only time we make it to the European headlines (apart, of course, from when Bar?a wants to buy some world famous [...]

To my new colleagues at Fistful, I’d like to offer an apology for being silent lately. I’ve taken over back-of-the-house management duties at the restaurant I co-own in Prague, Tulip Cafe and, well, managing a restaurant is about as much work as you’d imagine, and then some.
The kitchen at Tulip is truly a cultural [...]

On February 6th, just when I thought it was actually possible to escape the ?German reform debate? for only a couple of days, on the way from the slopes to the fireplace, Gerhard Schroeder hit back through the airwaves. A coalition of campaigning regional party establishment and the inevitable loony lefties had apparently won their [...]

A search for “Zimbabwe” on A Fistful of Euros currently yields:
No pages were found containing “zimbabwe”.
Not for much longer.
See the reports here and here respectively:
The EU is to increase the number of top Zimbabwean officials facing targeted sanctions by the end of February.
…..
The EU imposed travel sanctions on Mugabe’s regime in February 2002 [owing] to [...]

Now here’s an interesting one. (And please note that in keeping with recent Fistful tradition - as identified by Ms T - I am putting a question mark before the title). Pascal Lamy is reportedly considering a discussion paper which proposes allowing countries to impose import bans on products from other countries that do not [...]

I don’t know if one day when historians come to examine what exactly happened (or should I say what went wrong) with the EU they will be able to identify that defining moment, the decisive hour, when everything went sailing down the river. If they are so able I wouldn’t mind a quick bet that [...]

While EU politicians over at Davos have been mulling over the possibilities of Turkey’s membership of the EU, Kofi Annan apparently has things much clearer. In a speech to the European parliament he bluntly told MPs that Europe needs migrants to ensure a prosperous future and that Europeans should stop using immigration as a [...]

A post today on The Final Word, a Prague-based email bulletin put out by a local English-language Czech news digest, got me thinking. Titled “PPF spreads its tentacles,” it’s about the secretive Czech corporate conglomerate PPF and how it uses its media holdings to advance its numerous business interests.
It’s long been the Czech Republic’s [...]