Things really are starting to hot up: The European Commission said Wednesday it is investigating the reasons why Italy’s central bank intervened in foreign takeover bids for Italian banks.
The European Union’s head office said it had received a letter from the Bank of Italy explaining its actions in the recent takeover bids by the [...]

From Malta Today:

The European Commission is asking the Maltese government to explain its policy of banning journalists from immigrants? detention centres in response to a petition signed by 100 journalists and editors last February.
European Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security Franco Frattini told the European Parliament that the Commission was demanding information from the Maltese [...]

According to the German research institute DIW, the number of migrants from the EU 10 accession countries was far less than many anticipated.
According to the Berlin-based Deutsches Institut for Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW), the number of people who have migrated from the new member states to the older members can be estimated at 150,000. Of them, over [...]

I don’t think it’s fair to talk about European regulatory madness as long as there isn’t a directive handling… Cheese Rolling (from the BBC, hat tip to viewropa)
“Cheese Rolling is one of the oldest customs to have survived in Great Britain. It’s been going on for hundreds of years and some say it has its [...]

Angela Merkel, the German opposition Christian Democrat leader, has promised that initiatives to cut unemployment would ?be at the centre of my thoughts and actions?. Laudible ideals, delivering on them may prove rather more difficult than Ms Merkel imagines. Still, she is focusing the debate on the relevant areas:
Mrs Merkel acknowledged that Germany was [...]

The Guardian Newsblog has a nice summary of the reasons Why the French are saying ‘non’. I’m not sure they will in the end, but in case they do, it will be a political earthquake. To help us understand the near B-plan European future, Janis A. Emmanouilidis and Bettina Thalmaier from the Center for Applied [...]

“Italy will do all it has to in order to respect the Maastricht paramters…….”we’ve never deliberately aimed at exceeding the 3pct ratio. The fact that this may be happening now is merely due to the state of the economy”.
EU Policies minister Giorgio La Malfa

Last week, the Swedish finance minister said that we should consider allowing immigration of labor. (Link in Swedish) This has long been demanded by the right-wing opposition, but the Social Democrats were against it, partly because of opposition from the unions. This is just a trial baloon, not a shift in policy, and is unlikely [...]

The French embassy in Germany (which just relaunched its website) offers a
German review of the daily French press (and as well a French review of the German press) but unfortunately not as RSS streams.

Tensions between Russia and Latvia have been escalating since escalated during the Moscow to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of the war. In particular the two countries have an outstanding territorial dispute. The war of words is now on the rise with Putin today resorting to what Mosnews calls a Soviet-era [...]