Latest Blog Posts

For all the UK’s five decades in the EU, most Britons were happy for us to stay in. They didn’t want us to leave. The issue was settled in the 1975 referendum when, by a massive 2-to-1 landslide, the electorate voted to remain in the European Community. In the years that followed, calls to leave […]

The unveiling of the Windsor Framework this week was important in many ways. Not only did it provide a set of solutions to the most pushing and tricky problems facing the Northern Ireland Protocol, but it also marked a return to more conventional modes of British diplomacy towards the EU. To watch Rishi Sunak and […]

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Dr Daniele Saracino, from the Department of Government at the University of Essex, in Britain.

For our weekly "Ideas on Europe" editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Dario Mazzola, from the University of Bergen, in Norway.

Rather than rake over the current indulge-fest that is the will-they-won’t-they of the Sunak deal with the EU over the Northern Ireland Protocol (although you can read my thoughts elsewhere, here and here), I notice it’s the time of the month to check back in on retained EU law (REUL). Long-standing readers will know that […]

After the EU referendum, suspicions grew about the role of Russia in clinching the narrow ‘win’ for Brexit. Evidence was mounting that there had been deep involvement and interference by Russian ‘agents’ whose aim was to destabilise the EU by enabling Britain’s departure from it. It was no secret that Russia’s Prime Minister/President, Vladimir Putin, […]

The content of this post was presented at the launch workshop of the EUFutures Research Network held at City, University of London on 4 November 2022. This is an amended version of a post originally commissioned by City, University of London, published here. When the UK went to the polls on 23 June 2016 and […]

The following piece is written by Ambassador Erwan Fouéré – Associate Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Over the past months, Ireland has been marking the centenary of landmark events in the nation’s struggle for independence and the turbulence surrounding the civil war. It has been suggested by some commentators that not […]

I am participating in the University of Tartu Course “Digitaalse sisuloome alused” (Foundations of digital content creation) from 2 January to 26 February 2023. The participating students received the task to post a link to a website with their uploaded content. I was thinking of posting the link to my blog on Ideas of Europe […]

Last week’s third anniversary of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU also means it’s the third anniversary of the Trade & Cooperation Agreement (TCA). The TCA is the oddly overlooked counterpart of the Withdrawal Agreement (with its troublesome Protocol), oddly because it is the much more substantial treaty, structuring the full breadth of current relations […]