It’s shaping up to be an important week in Ireland for the prospects of Treaty of Lisbon ratification.   As EU-watchers know, Ireland is the only country planning to ratify the treaty by popular referendum (although events in Poland could add a referendum there too).  While the treaty should in theory have little problem passing, there’s a [...]

It is simply intolerable that a EU member state’s government should try to dismiss an MEP elected by the people. I think everyone can agree on that, right? It’s for the public to decide who should represent them. It’s for the member states as a whole to decide on the overall organisation of the EU. [...]

The scandals seem to keep coming. On the heels of news that an assistant to the former presidential candidate from the League of Polish Families (Liga Polskich Rodzin, LPR) party took part in a neo-Nazi festival in the summer of 2005, come reports that parliamentarians from the Self-Defense (Samoobrona, SO) party made sex a condition [...]

Sometime during the group phase of the last World Cup, a lefty German newspaper, the Berlin-based taz, compared Poland’s current president to a potato. I’m sure that there was more to it than that, but the original version has disappeared into pay-per-view is here, and my reading knowledge of Polish isn’t what it was a [...]

Yes we are really, aren’t we. Especially if we are called Arcelor, or Danone, or Endesa, or Eni, or Enel, or Banca Antonveneta or Pekao. And what these champions have in common, and it is this which sets them so much apart from their footballing equivalents, is not the ability to win anything, but [...]

The EU Observer has a piece on a row which has blown up in Denmark over some ‘new arrivals’ from Poland. The issue is itself interesting since there has been a good deal of talk in recent weeks about flexibility in the Danish labour market and the idea of ‘flexicurity’:
Danish trade unions have accused the [...]

Well, its the weekend, and even if domestic commitments keep me away from the beach, perhaps a lighter note is in order. The press have gotten hold of the Polish ‘anti-plummer’:
“He is blond, strapping and sexy. He holds the tools of his trade in a suggestive pose. But the news for the French people is [...]

Not mine, of course, the 50 novels from the Sueddeutsche Zeitung’s list. Since several of my recent book reviews have been negative or lukewarm, I’ll say here above the fold that the latest batch has indeed brought me in touch with literary greatness.

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AP is running a report that Poland’s president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, will withdraw Polish troops from Iraq.
President Aleksander Kwasniewski, a key Washington ally, said Thursday he may withdraw troops early from Iraq and that Poland was “misled” about the threat of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
His remarks to a small group of European reporters were [...]

South Korean manufacturing giant Hyundai has picked Slovakia as the site for a new $870m (?466m) car plant, one of the biggest deals in the car sector this year. The factory, which will open in 2006, is intended to produce up to 200,000 vehicles a year under Hyundai’s Kia brand. The north [...]