Various readers are continuing assorted Balkan wars in their comments on this site. It always happens, sooner or later. Keep it cool, folks. Reader Alban (pro-Kosova) makes a strong (and wrong) claim: Kosova never has been part of Serbia. Under Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) it had the status […]
Ben Emmott in the Times says that if Ireland (as expected) says Yes to the Lisbon Treaty, the UK Conservatives need to shut up and move on. Not that he is too impressed with the way the issue has been dealt with: The whole charade should anger anyone who cares […]
I have been mulling over the EU-sponsored Report on the Georgia/Russia conflict which, being a very European document, spreads blame around with great punctilitude. An interesting yarn. This remarkable passage caught my eye: … international law does not recognise a right to unilaterally create a new state based on the […]
More on that self-proclaimed independent EU-sponsored Report on the 2008 Georgia conflict. Points of interest from it, as they come: The Mission had no access to intelligence reports: a serious setback, I’d say. Not least since the whole business was launched because of what Georgia + Washington ‘really’ thought Moscow […]
A new legal move in the Czech Republic to ask the Czech Constitutional Court to opine on the Lisbon Treaty is pretty damn big news. The effect of this could be to delay final entry into force of the Treaty until after a UK general election, when a newly elected Conservative […]
On Tuesday I had the honour of addressing the Conservative Friends of Poland at the fine Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum in London. My attempted and vast unmanageable theme was European Conservatism: What’s the Big Idea? Namely a romp through a few centuries of history and the ideas underpinning contemporary […]
A reader writes: I have been hoping for your comment on the recent move by EULEX concerning the border between Kosovo and Serbia which seems to have equally upset both sides. I think he means this: The EU rule-of-law mission in Kosovo and Serbia have signed the policing protocol, despite strong opposition from […]
The EU gives the UK a ‘rebate’ on its Budget contributions, since otherwise UK payments into the EU pot would be disproportionate. But clever readers of this blog want More. How exactly is it calculated? they clamour. Never one to disappoint, I give you the answer. Here, in a handy […]
Who is to lead Europe? The French and Germans, of course. Who else? Gordon Brown is barely surviving as UK prime minister, and the Conservatives are as provincially Eurosceptic as ever. Europe simply cannot count on the British, at least for a while… Silvio Berlusconi’s sexcapades and Spain’s dire economic […]
Carne Ross of Independent Diplomat says that old-fashioned diplomacy has had its day: Conventional embassies and their ambassadors are equally ill-suited to today’s challenges. The European foreign service, whose embryonic form already exists in the Council Secretariat, is awaiting its first orders once the EU’s Lisbon treaty is ratified. Like […]
