Current Affairs

As Rishi Sunak nears the end of his first month in the job as Prime Minister, we might once again consider how much he might engage with, and progress, the European issue. Like his predecessors before him, Sunak has both a vague sense that this is something that needs sorting, and no real plan about […]

On October 25th, Tous Migrants, a French migrant advocacy organization, announced that it had filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights concerning the death of Blessing Matthew, a young Nigerian woman who died after crossing the Franco-Italian border. This appeal is based in part on new evidence in the case that came to light in an investigation by Border Forensics.

Another month, another Prime Minister. The ructions in Westminster might well have launched a thousand memes about lettuce, but have also clearly put any policy work on hold. This holds true for British EU policy, where the only clear shift since Boris Johnson’s time in office has been a shift in discourse and framing: both […]

New British Prime Minister, Liz Truss, demanded that ‘no EU flags’ should be shown at the Prague meeting of European leaders on Thursday 6 October 2022. EU news website EURACTIV reported that the flags were kept away from the inaugural European Political Community summit at the demand of Ms Truss and the UK delegation. The […]

“We send the EU £350 million a week. Let’s fund our NHS instead” proved an effective – if misleading – slogan for the Leave campaign in the 2016 UK referendum on EU membership. While this may simply suggest a “very British” variety of Euroscepticism, its implications arguably prove further-reaching, with learning for other countries (and […]

Britain’s Children’s Newspaper – subtitled, ‘The Story of the World Today for the Men and Women of Tomorrow’ – was a remarkable and mature publication for youngsters. On 8 October 1938, with dark clouds of war looming, the newspaper ran a visionary editorial describing Europe as ‘one Brotherhood’ with a ‘common interest which binds its […]

Prince Harry, Sir Elton John and Liz Hurley are among a group of celebrities suing the Daily Mail publishers, Associated Newspapers, for what they describe as “abhorrent criminal activity”. Their legal action claims they have “compelling and highly distressing evidence” that they have been “victims” of  “gross breaches of privacy by Associated Newspapers”. The group […]

Conservatives, have you forgotten what your party in power used to stand for regarding Europe? For most of the past seven decades, Tory governments did more than any other to bring us closer to our continent. After all: It’s because of the Conservatives that the UK applied to join the European Community in the first […]

After a summer hiatus for the Conservative leadership campaign, there was much expectation of Liz Truss following through on her stated plans for the Northern Ireland Protocol. Recall that she had been the lead minister for the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill and that she had done much during the campaign to court the support of […]

The editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies and EUradio, looks at the parliamentary elections in Italy on Sunday. We welcome Dr Malin Stegmann McCallion, from the University of Karlstad, in Sweden.