I’m going to barf if one more person writes that “multiculturalism” has somehow contributed to the riots in France. How exactly you square “multiculturalism” with France’s ban on the headscarf – and the fact that French is, officially, about as un-multicultural as you can get – is beyond me.
If you ask me, I’d hazard [...]

There’s a letter in today’s (UK-based) Daily Telegraph by that famous KGB-defector and media-darling, Oleg Gordiesvsky:
Sir - France always had a cult of revolution. The French public fully supported extremist political parties, Communists and Trotskyists, which had political violence as an integral part of their programmes.
Now they are reaping the fruits of it.
Oleg Gordievsky, [...]

The general impact of the French riots is, I feel, being ably covered by others here, what I am curious about is how financial markets reach their opinions. According to headlines in many newspapers, the euro is falling aginst the dollar as a result of what is happening in France (or see here). This [...]

Well, I don’t read or speak French, have probably spent less than 30 days in France in my entire life, and I don’t tend to follow French politics much. But what the heck, here I go.
Of leading French politicians, it seems Nicolas Sarkozy has actually made one of the stronger efforts to reach out [...]

Tonight, a French friend sent sent me an email expressing his disappointment about the fact that a Eurodistrict comprising the French (Euro-)city Strasbourg and the German regional authority Kehl, which will be officially created by officials from both parties at a signing ceremony tomorrow afternoon, is falling far short of the enthusiasm it was conceived [...]

It hasn’t only been the July 7th London bombers who have been attracting press attention for having bought return tickets: for some time now European-based Islamic radicals going to fight in Iraq have been causing concern amongst anti-terrorism experts due to the possibility they might one day return. This issue was first covered on Afoe [...]

As I keep indicating the French economy - although not a spectacular success - continues to outperform the German one. This is interesting, since the French political system has been much more laggard than the German one in implementing reforms. That is why I place emphasis on the demographic differential.

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In the comments to a recent post, the question arose of the “natural boundaries” of the EU. Apropos of that, let us briefly consider those parts of the EU that are outside of Europe. Sometimes very far outside.
The EU has a formal name for these territories: they are “the Outermost Regions of Europe”. [...]

Earlier this year, Eurobarometer started asking members what they thought about future EU expansion. The results (which can be found here, as a pdf) were pretty interesting.
52% of Europeans support membership for Croatia, while only 34% oppose it. (War criminals? What war criminals?) And 50% support membership for Bulgaria. But [...]

I’ve been in Canada for the last month, getting in my last family visit before settling in to the serious business of either going back to school or collecting unemployment checks. My family is large - Great-Grandpa had 25 children, and Grandpa had 9 - so it takes a while if you go to [...]