Posts Tagged Foreign Policy
Taking the EEAS for a spin…
Posted by Natalie Hamill in European Union on 09/03/2011
It has recently emerged that the EU’s foreign policy arm is to get a PR facelift. Catherine Ashton, the designated architect and builder of the EU’s External Action Service (EEAS), is to use £8.5 million to sharpen its image.
Dictators and Democracy
Posted by Natalie Hamill in European Union on 24/02/2011
Last week’s EU blog considered the limitations of the EU’s European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in light of the recent Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. As events in North Africa have continued to deteriorate, it seems appropriate to consider the EU’s response to Libya’s revolutionary efforts. Whereas Tunisia was the benchmark of stability in the South Mediterranean, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya has never harboured sincere commitment to democratic reform. This begs the question: why has the EU compromised a catalogue of its most fundamental values – democracy, the rule of law, human rights protection – to pander to a volatile dictator?
If you cannot convince them, confuse them
Posted by David Conway in European Union on 20/08/2008
Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France and current holder of the EU Presidency, is finally in the press for the right reasons. He was credited with ‘brokering’ a ceasefire between Russia and Georgia last week; a ceasefire which Russia seems to have no intention of honouring. Nevertheless, Sarkozy seems keen to capitalise on his role in the Georgia-Russia negotiations in order to push on with the agenda of the French Presidency of the EU, writes Laura Kelleher.
Political Games
Posted by Pete Quentin in European Union on 31/03/2008
The EU’s leg of the Olympic relay race has begun and a couple of mistimed exchanges when passing the baton (buck) of foreign policy has already left it without a hope of winning gold, writes Claire Daley.
As the Olympic torch shuffles its way across the continents, a parallel relay race is taking place within the EU. Actually with more characteristics of a giant game of ‘hot potato’, member states are passing the buck on an apparently “apolitical issue” – China’s handling of protesters in Tibet.
‘Outie’ or ‘Innie’? The EU belly button
Posted by Pete Quentin in European Union on 15/11/2007
Apparently David Miliband was felt today by the ‘hand of history’, when delivering a speech to the College of Europe in Bruges. You would have thought that hand belonged to Baroness Thatcher given her famous speech of September 1988 at that location, when she laid out the fundamentals of British euroscepticism.
Instead it seems it was Miliband’s “personal history”, of a family history embroiled in continental strife, which directed his proclamation that the EU should not become a superpower but a global “role model” (yet more school boy language from the Foreign Secretary, who only recently childishly described the world as “rather a scary place”). This is skewed on a number of levels but more importantly acts as an opportunity to raise the points made by Thatcher in 1988 and their continued relevance to Britain’s place in Europe today.