Wise words…

by Kosmopolit in EU politics

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Jean-Claude Juncker, PM of Luxembourg made a few interesting comments at a conference that took place in Brussels just one day before the European Council: “Politicians give the impression that Europe is being built against their will. Governments always try to explain in their countries that they have won against Europe” And asked about a [...]

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The problems with the Irish referendum: In any representative democracy a document with 271 pages (479 pages in the consolidated version!) of legal text should never be put to a referendum. The method of EU treaty ratification should be the same in every member state. A very weak YES campaign and a quite strong NO [...]

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Blogs are one of the latest additions to the Romanian political landscape. From a totally unknown concept, they have turned overnight in fashionable tools, a “must have” for any politician who wants to be taken seriously. In fact, most of the politicians pay small fortunes to have a blog (although most of them use free [...]

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There is quite some interesting developments going on in the realm of the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP). To start with the basics: The ENP aims at developing a secure and prosperous neighbourhood, in a way a “ring of friends” around the EU.  So, the EU offers a wide range of cooperation possibilities coupled with economic [...]

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Kosmolinks #13

by Kosmopolit in Kosmolinks

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EU Common Agricultural Policy proposals 2008 – Wikileaks “Leak of latest European Commission proposals for reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, known as the ‘health check’. These proposals will form the basis of an internal Commission discussion on 14 and 15 May 2008. The agreed proposals are due out later in the month.” -  Is [...]

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Edward Lucas talks about his new book (The new cold war – How the Kremlin Menaces Both Russia and the West) at Google HQ: Edward Lucas talks about his new book (The new cold war – How the Kremlin Menaces Both Russia and the West) at Google HQ:

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Kosmolinks #12

by Kosmopolit in Kosmolinks

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The “Kosmolinks” are finally back, and with the help of diigo I will try to make it a weekly feature! You can also watch and navigate through a slide show of all live pages of “Kosmolinks”: Just click here to start the “WebSlides”! Medvedev’s Russia A bunch of experts share their views about the new [...]

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“Ministers, over lunch, will discuss the situation in the Western Balkans, notably in the run-up to the Serbian general elections on 11 May.” This is the seemingly unimportant announcement on the GAERC Council Agenda for the April 29th meeting in Luxembourg. But EU Foreign Ministers will have to decide on quite a difficult issue: Should [...]

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The Economist has quite a good commentary about EU enlargement and the limited influence of the EU once a country has joined the club: A common feature in all these tales is the limited leverage of Brussels. It is often said that the EU‘s enlargement policy has been the most potent tool yet devised to [...]

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Dysfunctional Romania

by Kosmopolit in Eastern Europe

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The Financial Times has a very accurate analysis of the state of politics in Romania: One word probably best describes the political process in Romania, little more than a year after the country joined the European Union. It is dysfunctional. A minority government is forced to scrape together a spendthrift budget with the erratic support [...]

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