Sharon Pardo highlights a number of important ways in which the EU can support the Middle East peace process, not least by encouraging internal Palestinian reconciliation. But if the EU wants to play a larger role in the peace process it also needs to improve its image in Israel.
You might call it the Obama paradox: Atlanticists on both sides of the ocean were certain that this president, inaugurated two years ago, would renew the transatlantic alliance.
At a bilateral summit in London on November 2 last year, Britain and France embarked on what their leaders described as a "new chapter" in defence co-operation.
Pour Charles Grant, du Centre for European Reform, à Londres, "l'Allemagne est le grand problème" de la politique européenne de sécurité, car soit elle reste soit neutre, soit elle défend ses propres intérêts.
The missing bit of the narrative is the role played by allies of the UK. The latter-day Bluchers vital to the defeat of a Tobin tax were German industrialists, according to Simon Tilford of the Centre for European Reform.
"However the Germans vote on 22 September, Berlin's attitude to the EU is not going to change much," Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, wrote this week. Most analysts agree.
"It could potentially be very significant," said Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform in London. "Political instability in Italy is more of a concern than in Spain, Portugal or Greece."
The vote in Parliament "could turn out to be the signal for a strategic shift in favor of insularity," said Ian Bond, a foreign policy specialist at the CER. British lawmakers risked "sending the message that in the future the UK will be content to stay on the sidelines, regardless of what is happening in distant lands."
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Europe's world, 01 April 2011
Stopping the transatlantic rift, by Tomas ValasekInternational Herald Tribune, 26 January 2011
E!Sharp, 03 January 2011