Latest Blog Posts

A chill wind is blowing through Russia’s relations with the USA (again), with references aplenty to Cold War thinking. Listen to most mainstream media coverage (and Twitter) and you would think that President Obama’s decision today to cancel his one to one with President Putin was all about Russia’s decision to offer Snowden asylum. That […]

By sheer coincidence, I was in a position to talk to some UKIP activists yesterday, as the Godfrey Bloom ‘bongo-bongo’ story developed.  I mention this, because a consistent issue for the party (and others) is the charge of media bias (or here, for (lots) more). ‘Let’s get it straight from the horse’s mouth’, was my thinking […]

The summertime is a cruel one for politicians: everyone is focused on their holidays, rather than social justice or market liberalisation. The main political institutions are on a break and the media starts to develop an interest in esoterica. Even the politicians themselves feel that a pause is in order. However, for some that is […]

Should the EU introduce common standards for the regularisation of irregular migrants even though the principle is often contested?

At a debate about the future of the European Union, Jon Danzig asked leading Conservative Eurosceptic, Bill Cash, MP,  if Britain would have more influence in the world if we left the EU.  (Shot on my Samsung smart phone – 2 minutes 47 seconds) Other articles by Jon Danzig: What Nigel Farage told British expats in Spain […]

It is sometimes instructive to look back on one’s work, to see how any predictions worked out. This time last year, I was writing about the announcement of the Review of Competences and wondering about where it would lead. The first batch of reports has now been released and it’s fair to say that much […]

One of the panels at the Council for European Studies conference in Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago focused on local and regional authority engagement with EU cohesion policy, and what the impact of the current financial crisis  and austerity has been.   It was noted that the European Commission often prides itself on the […]

Students from across Europe gathered in Loughborough on 8-9 July for the 14th Annual Student Forum conference. In this post Kathryn Simpson, University of Kent, reports on the last session of the conference, a roundtable on 'Britain and the EU'.

It’s not often that I nap in the afternoon, but I managed it last Friday. Partly it was the muggy weather, but mainly it was listening to the second reading of the European Union (Referendum) Bill in the Commons. While I wait for you to recover from your shock, I’ll just explain a bit why. […]

Students from across Europe gathered in Loughborough on 8-9 July for the 14th Annual Student Forum conference. In this post Grant Stirling, University of Edinburgh, reports from a key note by Professor Helen Drake, on the role of UACES and similar organisations in European Integration.