I’ll keep this brief since there are some excellent guest posts just a little bit further on down the page just waiting for you to read and comment on. I’m not sure whether this is more about form or content, but the UN has a supremely interesting and readable report out today, as part of [...]

An unlikely Helen, Spain’s deputy prime minister, Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, that’s for sure. Yet outside a few thousand years difference in timing the two seem to have been cut out for one and the same the same historical role: urging the boats to go back. Indeed the only thing which really separates [...]

From The Weekly Standard’s essay The return of the tribes by Ralph Peters (emphasis mine):
Now, in 2006, we see one European state after another enacting protectionist measures to prevent foreign ownership of vital industries (such as yogurt-making). France paused, as hundreds of thousands of its best and brightest protested the creation of new jobs for [...]

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind - Hosea 8:7
The new American-Israeli proposal for peace in Lebanon is a NATO-led force with a “strong mandate” rather than UN-led blue helmets. “NATO” in this case is a code word for European troops under effective US command, since it must be [...]

Her lies in the naturalisation process notwithstanding, it seems that, one way or another, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the controversial feminist, Islam critic, and former Dutch parlamentarian, will be able to retain her Dutch citizenship. If she still wants it.
Even though she had reportedly planned to move to the United States to work for the [...]

Continuing AFOE’s first point-counterpoint debate between two posters, here’s my final post on Montenegrin independence.

Read more… or Read more right here… »

I’ll discuss a few specific points that BG made, then say why I still [...]

Heard the news from Salzburg?
If so, you must have been listening very carefully, for the informal meeting of EU foreign ministers held there this weekend was very quiet, and not just because of the extra dumping of snow the region received, in what has been a very snowy winter.

[...]

Well the new EU energy plan has been released (and here, and you can also find the actual Commission statement here). The final product is pretty much as the leaks suggested.
As was indicated yesterday, Russia related concerns are central. The FT comments:
Russia supplies a quarter of Europe’s gas needs and the Union’s dependence [...]

Thursday’s edition of the International Herald Tribune features an interesting article concerning the recent European rows about state interference in favour of so-called national champions.
Quoting Elie Cohen, the Tribune’s authors - Katrin Bennhold and Graham Bowley - suggest that both the French government’s allegedly new/refound role as M&A consultant in the Suez and Gaz de [...]

Do you want to save the Euro? Well one idea for how to do it has been proposed by University of Missouri-St Louis history professor John Gillingham: reissuing the 12 national currencies that were replaced with just one, while at the same time retaining the euro as a parallel currency that finds its market value [...]