EU legitimacyEU's Rubik's cubeGermany & the EU
  • Can national parliaments make the EU more legitimate?
    Insight by Charles Grant, 10 June 2013
    Can national parliaments make the EU more legitimate?
  • The EU's Rubik's cube: Who will lead after 2014?
    Insight by Hugo Brady, 03 April 2013
    The EU's Rubik's cube: Who will lead after 2014?
  • Germany’s plans for treaty change – and what they mean for Britain
    Insight by Charles Grant, 28 March 2013
    Germany & Treaty change
  • The treaties need radical reform
    Bulletin article by Charles Grant, 01 December 1999

    Inter-governmental conferences (IGCs) are insufferably tedious and complex affairs. Each drawn-out negotiation helps to reinforce the popular impression that the EU is irrelevant to ordinary peoples' lives.
  • Commissioning reform
    Bulletin article by Ben Hall, 01 October 1999

    For most ordinary members of the public the European Commission is the European Union. The fall of the Santer Commission amidst allegations of corruption and mismanagement plunged the EU into crisis.
  • A golden opportunity for reform
    Bulletin article by Charles Grant, 02 August 1999

    It is easy to forget that the Eurosceptical mood of many EU countries is a recent phenomenon. In the late 1980s, when the EU's prime task was the creation of a single market, its popularity grew in every member-state.
  • Europe's emerging political union
    Bulletin article by Charles Grant, 01 April 1999

    As many Darwinians believe that evolution has progressed not steadily, but through occasional, sudden spurts. The European Union may be evolving in a similar way.
  • The EU budget: An agenda for reform
    Working paper by John Peet, Kitty Ussher, 05 February 1999

    The nastiest arguments in the European Union, as in any family, are the ones about money. Communautaire sentiment soon evaporates when prime ministers start to haggle over the budget.
  • Europe's uncertain identity
    Essay by Gilles Andréani, 05 February 1999

    The launch of the euro is a success of historic proportions. It is also the ultimate vindication of the method first sketched out nearly fifty years ago in the Schuman memorandum.
  • Give on the rebate to gain elsewhere
    Bulletin article by Kitty Ussher, 01 February 1999

    At their special summit in March, EU leaders are due to settle the Union's finances for the next seven years. The British government is adamant: the budget rebate won by Mrs Thatcher in 1984 is not up for negotiation.
  • Elect the Commission
    Bulletin article by Charles Grant, 01 October 1998

    The European Commission enjoys little legitimacy in the eyes of most Europeans. So long as it is run by appointed politicians it will continue to be seen as a remote and overbearing bureaucracy.