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Football has always been a major producer of stereotypes. The invention of ‘national playing styles’ at the beginning of 20th century drew, inevitably, massively on extra-sportive stereotypes accumulated over the centuries and safely stored in national narratives of perception and self-perception. The fact that for over a century, football discourse has been produced (and endlessly […]

The Press Complaints Commission has upheld three of my complaints against the Daily Mail. The commission ruled that the newspaper breached The Editors’ Code of Practice on accuracy with its story about buses and planes from Romania and Bulgaria to the UK being full-up and sold-out. On New Year’s Eve last year, the Daily Mail […]

Last weekend, the European Council (the heads of state or government of European Union [EU] member states) appointed Italian foreign minister, Federica Mogherini, as the next High Representative (HR) of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. The holder of this post is responsible for ‘conducting the EU’s foreign policy. As was the case […]

20 years ago, on the 1st of September 1994, two German MPs from the CDU led by Helmut Kohl published a position paper, which bore the innocuous title ‘Reflexions on European Politics’ and which became quickly named the ‘Schäuble-Lamers Paper’ after its authors. The propositions and recommendations formulated in this rather dense document of a […]

As the deadline under the new ‘put up or shut up’ rules of the UK Takeover Panel came to a close on Monday 26 May, Pfizer admitted defeat in its bid to buy AstraZeneca. Pfizer’s withdrawal brought to a close four months of wooing that, had it been successful, would have been the largest foreign […]

Since the elections for the European Parliament in May, public debate on European Union (EU) politics has gradually become dominated by the so-called ‘Juncker question’: the issue of the appointment of the next President of the Commission and more specifically British Prime Minister David Cameron’s opposition to the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker, the candidate of […]

Over the last two decades, the world has witnessed the economic resurgence of Asia and the region is now a top priority in all global players’ agenda. In 2011, the US made official their strategic pivot to the Asia-Pacific, and decided to strengthen their trade relationships and their diplomatic presence with a heightened security presence. […]

Whilst most of Europe is analysing the latest EP election results and journalists are calling academics for an expert assessment, this blog post will take a slightly different perspective and instead focus on how we – academics/researchers – engage the public in a dialogue about for example the EU. Research dissemination has become a central […]

The owls at the European Parliamentary Research Service have recently compiled an excellent list of ‘100 Books on Europe to be Remembered’. The list includes a summary of each book, a biography of the author and in some cases, access to the full text. You’ll see many familiar names there, including a number of current […]

Watched by approximately 180 million viewers, the (Men’s) Champions League final on Saturday will be once again the annual sports event most followed across the continent and worldwide. It is ‘coronation day’ for the new European football monarch and it seems therefore perfectly appropriate that the ‘anointment’, as each single Champions League evening for over […]