URL: Latest posts
UK gets ready for ‘American’ mayors
In three months, on 3 May, citizens of some of England’s largest cities will hold a referendum on whether or not they want their cities to be run by mayors. Though it may not seem like a revolution-in-the-making, it would represent a big change. Am...
What’s wrong with a transfer union?
The eurocrisis has introduced a plethora of strange words into our everyday vocabulary: ‘Contagion’, ‘technocrats’, ‘moral hazard’, ‘austerity’ and of course the derisive description, ‘transfer union’. This last term is used by th...
Europe’s SOPA?
The European Parliament’s website has been shut down by hackers today, allegedly in a denial-of-service attack from Anonymous in protest of imminent anti-piracy legislation restricting internet freedom. But as the IT folks in parliament scramble to...
Croatians vote to join EU
Amidst all the bad news, the EU can feel at least a bit reassured following the strong endorsement given by Croatians this weekend to their country joining the European Union. Though you'd be forgiven for getting the impression from the English-speak...
The biggest American political story Europeans haven't heard of
The US presidential primary race has attracted its usual amount of fascination here in Europe, and yesterday’s developments - with the Iowa race being re-called for Santorum and Rick Perry dropping out - were front page material. But behind the spe...
Would the EU allow a Scottish secession-accession?
Following the whirlwind events of this week, Scotland now appears to be closer to secession than it has ever been in the 300-year history of Great Britain. This week the first minister of the devolved Scottish Parliament set a date for the first refe...
Azerbaijan could make this an awkward year for Eurovision
It’s a new year, and of course this week everyone’s minds are on one thing – Eurovision 2012! Ok maybe not, but an interesting article in Der Speigel this week details the way in which Azerbaijan is already engaged in a public relations push ah...
Is Iowa the problem, or is it the primary system?
While I was home in the US over the past few weeks I witnessed the quadrennial spectacle of the Iowa caucuses - shivering reporters in front of the capital dome in Des Moines, candidates eating corn on the cob while clutching plump cord-fed babies, t...
Protest over Ikea meatballs - welcome back to Absurdistan
I’m back in Brussels after spending the Christmas break home in the US. It was yet another trip where I spent most of the time regaling people with the insane stories of the strange place I now find myself living in. I’m pretty sure most of my Am...
An itinerant decade
I came to a startling realization yesterday. 2011 will be the first year in a decade that I have not moved to a different city during the course of the year. Since 2001 I have packed up and moved to a new city at least once each year. And there has a...
This isn’t about the UK any more
The markets have returned to panic mode today as their confidence in national governments to approve the new Eurozone financial consolidation treaty wavered. Ratification has hit some bumps in the road, with Finland’s prime minister expressing diss...
Last-minute surprise deal in Durban to save Kyoto
Chaos may be erupting at home in the European Union, but in South Africa news came this morning that the EU has scored a surprising success in international climate talks. A binding roadmap for a globally binding agreement by 2015, which the EU had d...
9 December 2011: The day Britain left Europe
David Cameron emerged as the villain of the hour in the early hours of this morning as news broke that after tense all-night discussions, the UK has vetoed treaty change to save the faltering euro. The meeting then went to plan B, forging ahead on a...
Cameron's choice tonight: will UK be inside or outside the room?
The degree to which the Left has become irrelevant in Europe was in evidence today as the European People’s Party (EPP), the EU grouping of Europe’s centre-right conservative parties, met in Marseille. The annual meeting of centre-right leaders,...
Kicking them while they’re down
It wouldn’t have taken much to make the US-based ratings agencies less popular in Europe. But Standard & Poor’s decision last night to put all 17 countries that use the euro on review for a possible downgrade has left European leaders seethin...
Customs, security and immigration - learn it, live it, love it
I have many irrational pet peeves, and many seem to involve air travel. One of the most silly may be my disproportional irritation when people use the word 'customs' when they really mean immigration or airport security. But as silly as this little h...
After 18 months, Belgium will have a government again
Belgium will make history this weekend in two ways. When a new government is finally formed on Sunday it will end the longest period that any country has gone without a government in modern history. And when Elio di Rupo is appointed prime minister,...
Brussels – enter at your own risk
Fontainas, a cafe in central Brussels that could best be described as the headquarters of the city’s gay community, is shut down this week. Its doors have been closed since an incident Sunday night that sent a man to the hospital with severe stab w...
Europe's left has vanished from the map
It's a process that's been long in the making, but this weekend's election in Spain seemed to be the final nail in the coffin for European Democratic Socialism - at least for the moment. With the fall of the Socialist government of Jose Luis Rodrigue...
The new Italy: this is what technocracy looks like
Former EU commissioner Mario Monti, appointed as Italian prime minister on Sunday after Silvio Berlusconi was forced by the markets and EU leaders to resign, had his ‘technocrat government’ approved by the Italian parliament today.Neither Monti n...
