Joschka Fischer, visiting Ankara, comes out strongly for (eventual) Turkish accession to the EU, reports the S?ddeutsche:
Europa werde ?einen hohen Preis? daf?r zahlen, wenn es die T?rkei aus der Europ?ischen Union heraushalten wolle. F?r Europas Sicherheit sei die T?rkei wichtiger als ein ?Raketenabwehrsystem?…
[Europe will pay a high price if it wants to keep Turkey out [...]

Say hello to another 1,276,000 inhabitants of the EU in 2003, bringing the total to 380.8 million people on January 1st 2004. Most of them were immigrants, out of the total increase of 3.4 people for every 1000 inhabitants, 2.6 was down to net migration while only 0.8 was accounted for by natural increase (births [...]

Somewhere down below, Doug Merrill was perceptive enough to notice a remark - easily overlooked but of fundamental importance - by Renate Schmidt, Germany’s Minister for Puppies and Sad-Eyed Children (or something like that). In short, the minister signalled, in a roundabout way, that the end is nigh for conscription to the Bundeswehr. The German [...]

but one of the most important decisions about the future of European security was announced Monday in Germany. Defense Minister Peter Struck has been on the airwaves and in the papers a great deal since the beginning of the year, talking about military reform. He’s been having a bit of a rough time of it. [...]

Book Review:
The Tainted Source
by John Laughland
A while back, I discovered that my great-grandfather’s estate in Ukraine, Apanlee, figures in a novel which is something of a favourite among neo-Nazis and Aryan supremacists. This led me to a number of websites that I wouldn’t regularly have frequented, including the Zundelsite and Stormfront’s webpage. There [...]

Did you know that in Bavaria, it is illegal to run a service station’s car wash on Sunday?
Apparently, this falls under the category of disturbing the peace. Equally apparently, the coin-operated industrial-strength vacuum cleaners do not disturb the peace.
I learned this where the six-lane A9 autobahn deposits its traffic onto the eight-lane Mittlerer Ring, [...]

Earlier today, the draw took place for next year’s European Football Championships (Euro 2004), placing the sixteen teams into four groups:
Group A: Portugal, Greece, Spain, Russia
Group B: France, England, Switzerland, Croatia
Group C: Sweden, Bulgaria, Denmark, Italy
Group D: Czech Republic, Latvia, Germany, Netherlands
The BBC Sport website has a good page detailing all the fixtures for the [...]

Thanks David for the link. I haven’t commented on this because like Dutch finance minister Zalm (who I imagine working away weblogging into the early hours under a dim light provided only by his mobile phone) I am tired. I can’t help feeling that everything that needs to be said has already been said, and [...]

So the Dutch Finance Minister - Gerrit Zalm - has a weblog. Not understanding too much Dutch it’s hard to make a very thorough assesment, although it does look rather austere. However, unlike Howard Dean and Wes Clark, it does appear that he is posting himself. But it is not for the fact that he [...]

In order to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Franco-German friendship treaty, on January 22nd the French newspaper Liberation and the German Berliner Zeitung linguistically unified the two countries and created La Fran?allemagne. This Friday, the European Council will witness another day in this beautful country.
Both Chancellor Sch?der and Foriegn Minister Joschka Fischer have [...]