Current Affairs

The British vote to leave the European Union on Wednesday 23rd June sent shock waves throughout the Member States and is proving particularly costly for the Eastern countries that joined the EU in the last enlargement rounds (2004, 2007, 2013). The central banks of Poland, Hungary and Romania started the day of the 24th of […]

Just five weeks ago, UKIP leader Nigel Farage, anticipating a close-finish in the EU referendum, told The Mirror, “In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way.” In those circumstances, said Mr Farage, pressure would grow for a re-run of the 23 June ballot, and he would fight for a second […]

With last than a week to go until the EU referendum, the campaigns on both sides are now in overdrive. Since late January, we have been following the social media campaigns, particularly on Twitter, to understand better the messages that different groups are making, the way in which they frame and the extent to which […]

With the referendum on UK EU membership fast approaching, both the Leave and Remain campaigns have put forward their views on the future of environmental policy in the UK and its relationship with the EU. This political debate raises a number of questions:  how green is the European Union; how effective or in some cases […]

The definition of sovereignty is ‘supreme power or authority’. Only one country in the world has that. North Korea. But whilst North Korea has cast iron sovereignty over its nation and people, in the outside world it has very little power, authority or influence. In the modern, rational, democratic world, countries recognise that sharing some […]

‘We are inextricably part of Europe. [No one] will ever be able to take us ‘out of Europe’, for Europe is where we are and where we have always been.’ These words were pronounced by one of the UK’s most prominent PMs, Margaret Thatcher, on 16 April 1975. This was 2 years after the UK […]

‘We want our country back!’ is the clarion cry of many who want Britain to leave the European Union. But whose country do they want back exactly? Your country? My country? Or really, just their country? Before we leave the European Union and possibly change our country forever, we need to have an idea what […]

Looking around in these final weeks before the 23 June vote, there hasn’t much reason to feel that the EU referendum has come to occupy a central place in the lives of the British public. While the papers and the news programmes have been full of stories and arguments, this hasn’t seemed to fully translate […]

On BBC Question Time last week, Frank Field, MP, got it wrong by repeating that old myth that the EU accounts hadn’t been signed-off. I wrote him an open letter – to which I am still awaiting a reply: Dear Mr Field On BBC Question Time last night (2 June) you told the audience: ‘I […]

The Eurovision Song Contest can be a useful and fun allegorical tool for explaining the dynamics of the EU, writes Anna Wambach. She argues that, although comparisons between the two can create strong cognitive associations over time, if taken too seriously such links can lead to misunderstandings about how the EU works in practice. It […]