New commission has learnt nothing from manifest anger in recent elections. By Lynn Boylan So it’s business as usual at the European Commission. At best. Anyone hoping that the European elections would change the eurobureaucrats will be deeply disappointed. Last month Jean-Claude Juncker, the new EU Commission President, having vowed contrition after his role in […]
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By Anthony Coughlan. The EU establishes a post-war arena where European Nation State interests continue to work themselves out. Take Germany for instance. That great realist Germany’s own Otto Von Bismarck once said: “I have always found the word ‘Europe’ on the lips of those powers that wanted something from others which they dared not […]
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By Niall Crowley. Sandro Gozi, Secretary of State for European Policies in Italy, caught the spirit of it. On behalf of the Italian Presidency of the European Council he spoke of a lost decade where the main reason for establishing the European Union: the advancing of fundamental values such as equality and human rights, was […]
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By Peter Emerson. Nineteen eighty-five: Mikhail Gorbachev; the start of the end of Soviet communism. Those were exciting times. The collapse of the Berlin wall, the first Russian elections, the quests for Georgian/Lithuanian independence, and so on. Life was changing, fast. And even those who opposed such changes, like those of the Albanian regime, with […]
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Book review Don’t Mention the Wars: a Journey through European Stereotypes Tony Connelly New Island Press €19.99. By Ronán Lynch. In late October, a Ryanair flight from Kraków to Dublin was delayed by fog, prompting an adventurous Irishman booked on the flight to take to social media to complain. After taking his […]
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By Mark McGovern After the terrorist attacks that killed 12 people at Charlie Hebdo’s offices, and four innocent people in a kosher supermarket in early January, it suddenly seemed that everyone was Charlie: all the world’s leaders were Charlie, Enda Kenny was Charlie, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Queen Elizabeth II were Charlie. All […]
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By Frank Connolly. The High Court is about to adjudicate on the constitutionality of the direct-provision system for refugees. This is a story illustrating who the system affects, and how. Ramesh (not his real name) was a respected journalist and talented, acclaimed, poet in Sri Lanka when he was arrested in 2008 on suspicion of […]
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