January 19, 2009
On January 16 the euro replaced the koruna as the official currency of Slovakia, bringing to sixteen the number of countries of the eurozone. It was the first country in the former Soviet bloc to adopt the single currency – and just 20 years after the Fall of the Wall. What a great way to […]
Posted by Michael Berendt
December 10, 2008
“The way forward is beginning to emerge”. So said Dick Roche, Ireland’s minister for European affairs, on the eve of the Brussels December summit. It looks like a second Irish referendum for the autumn of 2009.
The Irish Taoiseach Brian Cowen is expected to tell EU colleagues that he will seek a second referendum in the […]
Posted by Michael Berendt
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Defence, Elections, European politics, Finance, Kosovo, Treaty of Lisbon, UK politics |
November 20, 2008
In Britain’s popular culture the marketing restrictions on bendy bananas and curly cucumbers have always been associated with the Bureaucrats of Brussels. Nothing so well underpinned a public perception of meddling officials in a foreign country imposing their will on a hapless populace by setting fruit and veg dimensions by millimetre and by degree. The […]
Posted by Michael Berendt
April 30, 2008
The surge in world food prices, oil prices at well over $110 a barrel and measures to boost the use of biofuels in the US and Europe are putting policy-makers into crisis mode.
It is extraordinary how this situation has taken fire in just a few months and how intertwined the different factors are. A perfect […]
Posted by Michael Berendt
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Agriculture, Biofuel, Climate change, Energy, Environment, UK politics |
It seems so different from the old days, when the Franco–German alliance was the central core of European integration. With new leaders come new perspectives. President Sarkozy used his March visit to London to woo the British, with a speech to the British Parliament where he paid unheard-of tributes to Britain’s qualities and set out […]
Posted by Michael Berendt
Blogging commentary on current events from the perspective of someone who has been closely involved with the policies, the policy-makers and the whole complex network of people who make the process of European integration so exciting and absorbing.
