The UN has elected a brand new Human Rights Council to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission. Why was the old HRC discredited? Well, basically and officially, because several of its members were known to violate human rights and/or to protect their own interests. It is only logical. However, who will be taking a seat [...]

From the BBC News site comes this disconcerting news:
Europe is falling behind Asia in terms of education and skills, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
It blames France and Germany which are criticised for mediocre education systems and their inherent class bias.
And further on:
“Europeans from difficult socio-economic backgrounds don’t [...]

First of all many thanks to the kind folk of Afoe offering me the possibility of expressing my views on some European reactions to the Mittal Steel bid for the European steel giant Arcelor. By now most of you must have heard about this sitation. Mittal Steel is the world’s largest steelmaker and was founded [...]

This is not very encouraging:
European spending on re-search and development is falling further behind target, widening the innovation gap between the EU and competitors such as the US and Japan, two studies show.
North American and Asian companies are outpacing European businesses in R&D investment and spending more in high-technology sectors, according to data to be [...]

As people may have noted, last weekend Tobias and I were in Stockholm. One of the topics I wanted to post on but couldn’t was the latest Human Development report from the UN. There was plenty of press coverage: here, here, and here
There was even coverage in the blogs, but the tone seemed to [...]

In the internal political life of the EU the Common Agricultural Policy seems guaranteed to hold and maintain pride of place as the topic which produces the highest level of acrimony and vitriol per paragraph of debate space. It has also featured of late as the hotspot which lead to the summer low-point in Franco-British [...]

This week seems to be China week. Everyone seems to be asking the same question: why is China so successful? ( see here and here and here.
Now maybe this is just an excuse for a bit of self-publicity, since I have just spent a day ’sprucing-up’ the China page on my website, but lets [...]

Over on Crooked Timber, Henry Farrell comments on the istitutional implications of the Buttiglione affair. While we are shocked to learn that The Economist does not like the recent self-confident behavior of the European Parliament with respect to the Commission hearings, Kieran Healy - duly apologetic - makes a fair point in the comments thread [...]

One of the long-running stories in the British media over the summer has been the antics of British tourists in the Greek resort of Faliraki on the island of Rhodes. Stories of the misadventures of ‘Brits abroad’ have been a staple of the British media over the last few years, fuelled by TV programmes like [...]