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In 1999, I visited the Baltic State of Latvia in the north-east part of Europe. It was eight years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which Latvia was forced to join in the 1940’s. And it was five years before Latvia chose to join the European Union. 

I did write a good – to my mind – book review more than a year ago but no-one has been interested in publishing this review, although the review was written under an agreement. Deep in my heart I still hope that one day this review will be published, therefore I am giving only a shortened idea of it […]

Why national symbols have a bright future ahead of them. Even more so today than thirty or forty years ago.

In an article for the Yorkshire Post this weekend, American expert in ‘Anglo-American relations’, Dr Ted R Bromund, argued the UKIP case for Britain to leave the European Union.   Dr Bromund, a senior research fellow at The Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom in Washington DC, wrote that on a recent visit, London didn’t seem so […]

Leaders of the European Union should revive Winston Churchill’s post-war vision for a kind of  ‘United States of Europe’, urged  EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso this weekend. ‘We need to show the same political courage and vision of Winston Churchill,’ said Mr Barroso.  ‘He was a man of foresight with an acute sense of history, often […]

125 years ago, on 9 November 1888, Jean Monnet was born in Cognac. A good reason to post an exceptional ‘European Throw-In’ that, for once, has nothing to do with football, but a lot with Europe.

The idea to promote familiarity, mutual trust, a collective European identity and support for European integration by giving citizens the possibility to interact across borders is at the heart of a wide array of EU policies, such as the Erasmus student exchange or town twinning projects. This idea goes back to Karl W. Deutsch’s transactionalist […]

These days, French football is not so much about goalscoring, match results and league tables. Much of the football talk is dominated by the exceptional tax of 75% on incomes above 1 million that the Hollande government is decided to impose on all companies operating in France over a period of two years. Needless to […]

Anonymous eurosceptics seem to be everywhere, posting en masse in the readers columns of our national newspapers. And whenever I post a pro-EU comment – always under my real name – they’re there at the ready, trying hard to discredit me and calling me ‘dishonest’. Of course, they mostly never seem brave enough to post […]

By Ben Jones Last Wednesday Baroness Ashton, the EU High Representative, launched her report on the Common Security and Defence Policy. The paper is intended to inform a discussion that EU leaders will hold at their upcoming December European Council summit. While the eurosceptics will doubtless recoil at the EU’s having any role in such matters, […]