The EU

I was talking to a friend yesterday evening, who felt that a referendum on EU membership was a good thing. He agreed with my point that what the UK (and the Union more generally) needed was a full public debate, but saw a referendum as a way to kick-start that into life. Fortunately, the rest […]

Every five years the European Union changes the composition of its Commission. While this year’s discussions have mostly focused on who will be appointed to the Commission, two other issues, repeatedly pushed for by the Netherlands and France, loom large on the political agenda: the Commission’s political programme, and the need to  restructure the Commission [1]. […]

Cynicism comes easily: to watch the events of this week unroll has been to see every cliche of European integration at play. Backroom deals, grandstanding eurosceptics, scapegoating and general ignorance – sadly, an all too common sight in and around the EU. Rather than wallow in this, I would rather try to step back and […]

The European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) is currently the world’s largest market-based policy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Operating since 2005, the EU ETS sets a steadily-decreasing cap on the greenhouse gases that installations can emit in 31 countries.[1] “Emission allowances”, tradable permits to emit one ton of greenhouse gases[2], are allocated for […]

Coming to Brussels this week, it’s be heartening to see so much discussion of key international developments, coupled to an emergent sense of collective identification. Sadly, the World Cup and the Red Devils’ successes remain of limited interest to me. However, I do find it telling that the heat of public debate that followed the European elections […]

In Monty Python’s Life of Brian, Reg, a character played by John Cleese, famously asks what the Romans have ever done for the people of Judaea. That no one had asked this question before may have been because Roman rule had become taken for granted. But after a moment’s reflection, his fellow freedom fighters quickly […]

It is with great interest that I read Borja García García‘s exchange with Simon Usherwood on football and Euroscepticism. One point particularly caught my attention. I fully agree with Simon Usherwood’s statement that “If anything, as much as the EU does figure in supporters’ minds, it is the challenge to national teams posed by Bosman […]

I was of all places in Brussels, at the presentation of the European Week of Sport, when Simon Usherwood proposed to write something on Euroscepticism and the theme of the week, the World Cup. Because, yes, it is that time again, football’s biggest tournament is upon us and this time it comes from Brazil. Unlike […]

Maybe it’s all the sun we’ve been having this week, but some foolish impudence leads me to write about football, a subject about which I know little and possibly care less. After an exchange of tweets with @DrBorjaGarcia yesterday, we decided that we’d tackle (sic) the question of the relationship between the World Cup and euroscepticism, each […]

I’m just back from Montreal, where I was invited by the EU Centre of Excellence at the Université de Montréal and McGill University to participate in a roundtable on the European elections. My plan was simple: to go and talk about how well eurosceptic parties of different stripes had done, but how they were likely to be […]