Daniel Möckli: Switzerland pursues an ambitious Middle East policy that differs from US and EU polices in major ways. This has given rise to controversies lately. There are good reasons for the Swiss to pursue a conflict resolution strategy based on mediation and dialog with Iran and [...]

500 million Europeans are taken in hostage by 862,415 Irish (less than 0.2% of the European population) - in the name of democracy. According to the elitist representative democrats this is the direct democrat’s fault, i.e. the “uneducated and unteachable people”. This disrespect makes the current EU-catastrophe even worse.
Because: in a democracy the tool democracy [...]

Since its setting-up eight months ago, Blogactiv has become a central element of the EU blogosphere. A number of Blogactiv blogs are among the most discussed on the EU and the most interesting EU bloggers outsideBlogactiv are all watching what is going on on our platform and leaving comments.
Blogactiv would like to enhance this exchange [...]

Italian Green MEP Monica Frassoni in an interview on the future of nuclear in Europe and in particular on the “nuclear renaissance” in the age of climate change:
In this debate, there is a lot of myth and a lot of lies, and this is a sort of whipped cream coming up. (…) First […]

As fuel prices for coal, natural gas and nuclear continue to rise, the cost of solar power is due to break even with fossil fuels in the US by 2015, according to a study published in June 2008.
The studyPdf external , compiled by clean-tech research and publishing firm Clean Edge and green-economy non-profit Co-op America, [...]

I wanted to start this blog already a while ago because I believe that the EU debates in the member states are worthwhile to be accessible to a wider audience, in Brussels and elsewhere. This English language blog is about the Austria in the EU. My first post provides some background on the radical change [...]

I wanted to start this blog already a while ago because I believe that the EU debates in the member states are worthwhile to be accessible to a wider audience, in Brussels and elsewhere. This English language blog is about the Austria in the EU. My first post provides some background on the radical change [...]

All non-EU states in western Balkans have been sad to have European perspective e.g. that sooner or later BiH, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Macedonia, Albania and even Kosovo - inside or outside Serbia - would be future EU members. I can not avoid some questions, like
Can EU any more absorb new members and simultaneously keep alive [...]

Two years ago Dutch and French voters rejected the European Constitution, which was to have ceded substantial remaining national sovereignty, perhaps irretrievably, to a European superstate. Dutch and French citizenry can be forgiven for thinking their votes were dispositive, that the absorption and destruction of the EU’s 27 member states’ had gone far enough. [...]

The new Russian president Dmitry Medvedev made a big effort at last week’s summit in the Siberian oil town of Khanty-Mansiisk to give new impetus to the EU-Russia dialogue.  The president offered each of his EU guests an album of his own photographs and apparently charmed Messrs Solana, Barroso and Jansa in a way […]
Original [...]

John Wyles, writing this week in the “European Voice” correctly stresses that the Irish vote has not plunged the European Union into crisis, but that its legitimacy needs a “serious repair job”.   
But I disagree that “it would be absurd to ask them to vote a second time when no substantial remodelling of the
Lisbon is [...]

The meeting at FAO a few weeks ago is bringing to the fore a structural weakness of international forums, in the development of long term strategies for food and water security; the neglect or misuse, under pressure of short-term tactical political aims, of institutional, civil society and corporate memory and more specifically its political dimension. [...]

The most difficult outcome of yesterday’s encouraging and constructive China-EU roundtable at the Chinese Mission to the EU, between a Chinese Tibetan delegation and Brussels think tanks, was to understand the Chinese approach to the ongoing talks with the Dalai Lama’s representatives, a further round taking place next week in Beijing.
Most interestingly, the […]
Original post [...]

Very interesting interview of John Bolton, former US Undersecretary of State and Ambassador to the United Nations popped to my eyes today. The highlights of his comments in Interfax interview were e.g. following:
* US recognition of severed Kosovo province was a serious mistake, leading to an escalation of tensions, instead of calming down the situation [...]

On 23 June, the Agriculture Council agreed a common position on new rules for placing pesticides (aka plant protection products) on the market in the EU. View the filmed announcement in Luxembourg.
The Council’s political agreement bans the marketing and use of substances proven to be carcinogenic, mutagenic and toxic for reproduction, amid claims from manufacturers [...]