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The House of Commons is debating the Referendum Bill on Monday, which can bind the British government but cannot bind the European Union. Two arch-critics of the EU, Philip Davies MP and David Nuttall MP, have proposed that if the referendum is in favour of leaving the EU, the government should give formal notice of […]

On the 6th of October 2015, I presented the results of my research about the use of Estonian terms in my PhD Dissertation at the National Library of Estonia, during the X oskuskeelepäev [Xth Day of Language for Professional Use], organized by the Estonian Librarians Association, Estonian Ministry of Education and Researchers under „Eestikeelse terminoloogia […]

The real European Games have only just begun: Finding the right approach on Azerbaijani prisoners of conscience. By Eske van Gils   Last June, Baku hosted the first European Games with much grandeur. Azerbaijan spent great amounts on the Games (dubbed by locals as ‘the Games for Europeans’) and wanted to put the country positively […]

The European Union very often likes to remind us that it is a community of values – solidarity, non-discrimination, human rights, and so on. This is all very well but, as Khrushchev once reminded Marxist enthusiasts in the Politburo, you cannot simply put theory into your soup. The question therefore is, what do these values […]

The car is important for our personal mobility; it gives you freedom and independence. In rural areas and small towns a car is necessary to be able to get around, whereas people living in cities often do not own a car as their mobility is orientated towards walking, biking or public transport within the urban […]

Shortly after SYRIZA’s electoral victory last January, I wrote on this blog that SYRIZA’s positions showed that they did not understand European Union (EU) politics. They were proposing changes to Greece’s bailout programme, which they did not have the bargaining power to negotiate successfully. Shortly before the Euro Summit on Greece (the summit of the […]

Little over a month ago, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was still claiming that his party’s electoral victory last January had put an end to bailout programmes. A few days ago, he told the Greek people that a ‘No’ vote in the Greek referendum would lead to a deal with Greece’s creditors within 48 hours. […]

When Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras decided to unilaterally abandon negotiations over Greece’s so-called ‘bailout programme’ and to propose a referendum on the latest offer that Greece had been made, he employed a tactic that is common in negotiations in the European Union (EU): using difficulties with domestic ratification of EU agreements to extract concessions. […]

There’s of course nothing wrong with the commemoration of historical battles. Quite the contrary: each time I took students to the D-Day landing beaches in Normandy, they got a better idea of why European integration might actually be a good idea. And most of the four-year-long commemorative flow on World War I is produced, if […]

On 6 March 2015, the Finnish Parliament passed the Finnish Climate Change Act (FCCA), the first of its kind in Finland. Pro-environmental organisations and political parties generally heralded the act as a symbolic success, as it enshrines the goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. However, the act has also been described […]