Britain not SwissSaving the euroGermany’s own goal
  • Britain should not go Swiss
    Insight by John Springford, 10 July 2012
    Britain should not go Swiss
  • Needed: A Franco-German concordat
    Insight by Charles Grant, 27 June 2012
    Franco-German discord
  • Germany's own goal: Why Berlin's sense of invulnerability will be its undoing
    Insight by Simon Tilford, 22 June 2012
    Germany’s own goal
  • The real crisis for Europe
    Opinion piece by Charles Grant
    Newsweek, 10 October 2005

    So, is Turkey to start membership talks with the European Union? The reception could hardly be more hostile. As the public sees it, the EU is big enough already. Political leaders from France's Nicolas Sarkozy to Germany's Angela Merkel are opposed.
  • Germany's foreign policy: What lessons can be learned from the Schröder years?
    Essay by Charles Grant, 02 September 2005

    The German general election on September 18th 2005 is of massive interest to people all over the world. Because Germany is a large and influential EU member, its foreign policy matters not only to other European countries, but also those further afield, such as the Americans, the Russians and the Chinese.
  • Liberal versus social Europe
    Bulletin article by Katinka Barysch, 01 August 2005

    Europe is in the grip of a fundamental debate about its economic future, or at least that is what some politicians and many journalists would have us believe.
  • Europe’s social dilemma
    Bulletin article by Alasdair Murray, 01 August 2005

    Of all the items on the agenda of the British EU presidency, perhaps the least expected is a debate on ‘social Europe’. Tired of being crudely caricatured as ‘neoliberal’, Tony Blair has invited EU leaders to an informal summit in October to discuss the future of Europe’s social model.
  • Europe - Don't write the obituaries yet. A new France could put Britain on the sidelines
    Opinion piece by Mark Leonard
    New Statesman, 06 June 2005

    The gleeful obituaries are piling up, not just for the EU constitution, but for the country that torpedoed it. France is in a mess, we read; its politics are paralysed, its economy is over-regulated and it just can't accommodate itself to globalisation with an Anglo-Saxon face.
  • Europe - Did we make the right choice?
    Opinion piece by Hugo Brady
    Yorkshire Post, 03 June 2005

    Though often criticised as being undemocratic, popular referenda have been pivotal in the history of the European Union. Recent events in France and Netherlands aside, perhaps none more so than the 1975 poll confirming Britain's membership of the then European Economic Community.
  • Short Cuts: Reputations: Political song and dance
    Opinion piece by Mark Leonard
    The Guardian, 03 June 2005

    "People have been texting saying: don't worry, it's all total politics." These words might have soothed a tearful Javine when she failed to rack up more than 18 points for the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest, but they were not much comfort to the beleaguered French and Dutch "yes" campaigns left reeling by the results of Europe's most popular kitsch-fest.
  • European democracy: Where now?
    Opinion piece by Aurore Wanlin
    Open democracy, 02 June 2005

    The rejection by French and Dutch voters of the treaty establishing a European constitution has precipitated one of the deepest crises in the European Union's fifty-year history.