Posts Tagged sarkozy
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.
Vacancy: EU President
Posted by Pete Quentin in European Union on 14/01/2008
If fully ratified, the EU’s Lisbon Treaty will create a new role of permanent EU President. Tony Blair’s speech in Paris on 12th January has increased speculation that he aims to become the first full-time EU President, writes Claire Daley.
The possible contenders are currently keeping their cards carefully concealed. However, players are beginning to come to the table. Poker faces at the ready…
Should auld acquaintance be forgot?
Posted by Pete Quentin in European Union on 03/01/2008
New Year celebrations; Auld lang syne, people uniting, setting off fireworks…
Slovenia takes on the EU Presidency for the first half of 2008 and New Year revelries look set to continue, with the diminutive state pledging to encourage supra-national unity to “strengthen the European perspective” and “promote dialogue between cultures, beliefs and traditions”, writes Claire Daley.
‘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.