Expanding on (and slightly copying) my comments in Edward’s post below, I was really shocked to see the spin in the western coverage of the Ukrainian gas crisis. The part that didn’t shock me - just made me groan - is the spin of a western press that seems to have decided in advance [...]

Are the good times and the good life still going to continue to roll in the Italy of the twenty first century? This is the core question the Economist’s Europe editor John Peet asks in the latest Economist Survey: Italy, Addio, Dolce Vita. As Peet says:
Italy is approaching a crunch. Rather like Venice in [...]

After starting off this year’s early election campaign with a debate about the dangers of the sometimes problematic short term investment horizons of private equity firms, it was the SPD’s very own loony left’s locusts in the party’s board that forced their chairman, Franz Müntefering, to declare that he would not seek re-election at the [...]

Michael Moore gives us a thoughtful article about Joschka Fischer (and some priceless Fischer anecdotes) in Slate today. Before going any farther I should make clear that I refer not to the notoriously fat filmmaker but to Michael Scott Moore, an American novelist living in Berlin. Of his fatness or otherwise I am entirely ignorant.

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As we have been able to witness with unfortunate regularity lately, not every election helps move politics forward. Fortunately, some still do.
While Sunday’s regional election in the Austrian state of Steiermark, which was widely expected to be the decisive reason behind the Austrian government’s determination that the treaty opening EU accession talks with Turkey - [...]

The sharp eyed will have noticed that I have copiously refrained from commenting on the unexpectedly high reading obtained in yesterday’s German Ifo Institute Business Climate index. The index registered a slight unexpected increase, but as Ifo President Hans-Werner Sinn notes: “An evaluation of responses submitted before and after the federal election showed a tendency [...]

Over on Crooked Timber, Henry Farrell - I think somewhat accidently, because I get the impression he believes Germans do *NOT* want to change their distorted labour incentive and tax systems - writes about the fundamental reason for the result of last Sunday’s election.

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In one of his many excellent pieces in the run-up to the German election, Alex mentioned the phenomenon of ‘overhang mandates’. These are extra parliamentary seats that a party gains by winning more seats via one of German’s two electoral methods than by the other. This might seem odd enough. What’s even odder is that [...]

Despite appearances, and for all the stalemate it produced, yesterday’s German election has certainly confirmed that Germans are neither too afraid of change, nor too scared of instability. In fact, they chose both.

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I’ve been harshing on the Union and their little dog Toto the FDP pretty nastily throughout the campaign.1 Surely, though, I should spare a thought for Die Linke.
It’s easy to fail to pay the ‘Left Party’ the attention they deserve, mostly because nobody is likely to form a coalition with them. But still it [...]