Latest Blog Posts

By Scott James The Economist’s front cover this week set me thinking about the prospects for the euro’s survival. There has been much coverage in the press over recent weeks about the impending collapse (or at least the shrinkage) of the eurozone as a consequence of the sovereign debt crises afflicting several member states, the […]

Teaching is getting more important and EU scholars need to think how to adapt to a new generation of students that not only grew up with the internet but also tend to organise their lives using various social networks. However, it seems that many academics are slow to embrace social media as a teaching tool. […]

By Egle Dagilyte Some Comments on C-515/08 Santos Palhota and Others On 7 October 2010 the ECJ delivered a judgment that was built around the issues discussed in the very well-known posting of workers cases of Laval and Rüffert and Commission v Luxembourg. The facts of the case tell the story of a Portuguese company Termiso […]

By Pablo Calderon Martinez The French public’s uproar and subsequent social mobilization that followed Sarkozy’s proposal to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 and last September’s general strike in Spain are evidence of far more than the deep-rooted French tradition of influencing governments by taking to the streets, or the Spanish dissatisfaction with […]

By Claudia Hillebrand One of the topics discussed earlier this week at the JHA Council were EU-wide measures to fight cyber crime. The European Commission presented a legislative proposal to the Council with the aim of revamping the EU’s anti-cyber crime toolbox, in particular concerning large-scale cyber attacks. This is a timely topic, as there […]

By Scott James The recent demonstrations in Brussels have perhaps brought home to many of us the scale of the challenge facing Europe, and the Eurozone in particular, in its efforts to learn and adapt to the global financial crisis. A recent postgraduate workshop at King’s College London on the subject of ‘Rethinking Europe after […]

By Claudia Hillebrand Since March 2010, the first meetings of the somewhat mysterious Standing Committee on operational cooperation on internal security (COSI) have taken place. This body, set up within the Council by a Council decision of 25 February 2010, is a crucial product of the changing EU working structures concerning matters of Justice and […]

I cannot help feeling that it is not only Angela Merkel, the Greek state, and Eurostat who have plenty of egg on their faces after the events of the last year. But also European Studies as a discipline with public responsibility has some hard questions to answer about why it has on the whole failed […]

By Claudia Hillebrand On Monday night, a contested transatlantic counter-terrorism agreement jumped another hurdle. In an extraordinary meeting in Strasbourg, the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE Committee) accepted a recommendation suggesting that the plenum of the European Parliament (EP) should approve the revised EU-US Agreement on SWIFT bank data […]

By Scott James Now that the sense of anti-climax surrounding the appointment of Herman van Rompuy as the new President of the European Council has subsided, it is worthwhile casting a critical eye over the likely role and powers of the new permanent president. Putting contingent factors (such as personality and leadership style) to one […]