“A moralising article from Tony Blair is enough to make anyone choke over their Sunday morning cornflakes, and his opinion piece in today’s Observer is no exception. It’s here if you feel like a browse. One line from Blair’s piece, even quoted in the front page article about it, struck...
“Sometime around the turn of the century I was a reluctant economics student and posed an essay question by my cantankerous macroeconomics professor as to whether the Euro is an optimum currency area. The idea comes from Candian economist Robert Mundell and seeks to define an area in which economic...
“This week I was in the audience at a Young Fabians* event about Britain and the EU with Mary Honeyball MEP as the speaker. The event was part of one of the Young Fabians Policy Commissions, with the aim of putting together ideas for the future EU policy of the...
“I’ve spent three weeks in July in Cairo, Alexandria and Dahab, one of the very few tourists in Egypt these days. According to the New York Times tourism – previously 10% of Egypt’s GDP – has plunged by 40%. That seems to be an underestimation judging by the deserted tourist...
“We’re on track for a multispeed EU and the UK government is OK with it. That is the main conclusion for the UK from a week from a week when the Euro was, at least temporarily, brought back from the brink with a 15 point plan for its rescue. Oh,...
“Scandal! The European Union wants to increase its budget by 5% for the period from 2014 onwards. Prompt critical statements from Downing Street, the leader of the Tory MEPs in the European Parliament and even Tony McNulty. How dare those bureaucrats in Brussels propose such a thing? Unsurprisingly the whole...
Calls for EU referendum in UK ‘a distraction’ – Public Service Europe.
“Earlier this week, European Commissioner for the Internal Market Michel Barnier prompted stinging headlines in UK broadsheets for his comments about agencies such as Moody’s that have downgraded their ratings on Irish, Portuguese and Greek sovereign debt. “EU attacked for plan to gag rating agencies” screamed the Indy, while The...
“You have to understand: you are the enemy.” Those were the words I heard uttered by a researcher in the European parliament to civil servants from the EU’s member states a couple of years ago. What – with aghast looks on their faces – did the researcher mean, the civil...
“There are two main motivations for national leaders when nominating candidates for high positions in international organisations. Either send away a politician who could be a domestic opponent – for example Nicolas Sarkozy nominating Dominique Strauss-Kahn for the IMF – or choose someone with a low enough profile not to...
“While Wills and Kate paraded along The Mall on Friday, a smaller story was developing online – reports that Facebook had purged more than 50 accounts of left wing and student groups emerged, at the same time as police were preemptively arresting eccentric anti-royal protestors.” Read the full piece at...
“The reactions to the election gains of Timo Soini’s True Finns (Perussuomalaiset) in Sunday’s general election in Finland have been full of earthquake metaphors. “A tremor hit the EU” is the way the BBC’s Gavin Hewitt describes it. If that is so, then this was only the latest in a...