Current Affairs

Welcome to Jon Danzig’s new ‘EU ROPE’ blog, where the links between the UK and Europe are explored and discussed.  Stories so far: BBC’s John Humphrys got it wrong about Europe Why did UKIP win in Clacton? Press Complaints Commission: Daily Mail breached The Editors’ Code A country called Europe? Europe Moves – The ‘EU Earthquake’ […]

“Despite speeding up the legislative process, trilogues allow the Council to negotiate directly with majority party leaders in the European Parliament at the expense of committees and minority parties”. Dr Raya Kardasheva is a Lecturer in European Politics at King’s College London The establishment of the co-decision procedure in the EU legislative system led to […]

Raya Kardasheva is a Lecturer in European Politics at King’s College London. Hello Europe, here they are – the educated, the jobless, the hungry and the ruthless. They studied the European project. They believed in the European project. They acted on the European project. Their generation is truly European – they travel without borders, they […]

Congratulations to Jane Beresford and Allan Little (BBC) who were awarded the annual UACES Thomson Reuters Reporting Europe Prize at a ceremony in London on 24 May 2012. They won the prize for their BBC Radio 4 series ‘Europe’s Choice’ which aired on 5 - 19 February 2012.

One of the more notable aspects of the French Presidential elections has been the extent to which all the candidates have been willing to bash the EU and European integration more generally. As the very helpful manifesto comparison tool from Le Monde shows all too clearly, euroscepticism has been rife.

The creation of the euro is an epoch-making event. For the first time in history independent nation-states have decided to merge their monetary sovereignties in a single currency. From the start, however, the project has been based on a marriage between France and Germany.

Ben Rosamond (Copenhaguen University) and Miguel Otero-Iglesias (Oxford Brookes University) discuss the current and future importance of non-mainstream IPE approaches in understanding the European Union and its role in the new world order after the Global Financial Crisis.

In the first part of this short interview, Leonhard den Hertog, University of Cologne, discusses the difficulties in assessing the accountability of the EU Borders Agency (Frontex). The second part of this interview looks at whether the scale of migration to Italy following the Arab Spring has been overstated.

Now in her third year at City University, Shelly Gottfried discusses the challenges of undertaking her PhD with Miguel Otero-Iglesias, Oxford Brookes University. She also offers her views on the immediate problems facing the EU in light of the Arab Spring.

What is the most important lesson that the European External Action Service should take from the 'Arab Spring' ? In an interview by Cristian Nitoiu from Loughborough University, Professor Michael Smith evaluates the development of the External Actions and the goal of creating a coherent strategic diplomacy within the European Union’s foreign policy.