Latest Blog Posts

The indebted states need to spend their fresh RRF funds wisely. The frugals need to acknowledge how they benefit from the euro and single market. Then mutual trust can be built. European integration is indeed one of the most fascinating social and political experiments in modern times. Like all experiments, it developed and continues to […]

At various points in the Brexit process I’ve produced trackers, primarily to capture interactions between the EU and the UK. that included ones for the negotiations on the Withdrawal Agreement and the Trade & Cooperation Agreement (and this), as well as the progress of UK enabling legislation. The aim has been to keep sight of […]

A reader commented that the result of the referendum was clear, and Labour was right to support it. I disagree. The result of the referendum was not clear, and Leave only won by lying and law-breaking on an industrial scale. Brexit has gone ahead on the say-so of a mere 37% of the electorate and […]

Pradeep Singh and Bowen Xu The European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) had its second virtual General Conference held between 30th August – 3rd September 2021. This year ECPR has attracted over 2,400 scholars worldwide participating in 66 sections covering a wide range of topics and presentations. For the ECPR Standing Group on Knowledge Politics and […]

This is a version of a piece originally posted on Euronews. This summer has provided ample demonstration of the difficulties of the relationship between the UK and the EU. The constant rumbling of discontent over the Northern Ireland Protocol has been accompanied by periodic British threats to walk away from it. Last week’s State of […]

Britain is now a country adrift, without a continent, lost, alone and out at sea. Our government, without a proper democratic mandate, shunned our continent of Europe and is now looking for another. We’d have a wonderful trade deal with our cousins in the USA, was the promise. That’ll easily replace our trading arrangements with […]

The government has announced that it will bring in a new Brexit law to allow traders to scrap metric measurements and sell products and food in just pounds and ounces only. Do you know what 1kg of bananas is in imperial measurements? No, I didn’t think so. (It’s around 2 lb 3 ounces.) Since 1974, […]

The main objective of the Treaty of Nice, which entered into force in 2003, was to reform the institutional structure of the EU in order to facilitate the accession of ten new member states, an undertaking which was previously planned to have been accomplished by the Amsterdam Treaty. Nice, however, failed to make significant progress […]

On 9 September 2021, seven European citizens who marched in solidarity with migrants across the Franco-Italian Alpine border were acquitted of facilitating irregular migration. The decision is a victory for activists in France, reaffirming their right to act in solidarity with migrants based on the constitutional principle of fraternity. The trial took place on 27 […]

The past month or so has been relatively quiet in the world of the WA/TCA: the British proposals in its Command Paper had sat, largely uncommented, since late May as more prosaic matters have swirled. However, as Brussels and Westminster have restarted, so too has there been a degree of movement. Most importantly, there has been […]