Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, told an Atlantic Council audience earlier today that the global financial crisis has  “re-emphasized the centrality of the U.S. dollar as a currency” and demonstrated once again that “when things go really badly lots of people want go to the U.S. even if U.S. is [...]

Last Spring EU was building enthusiastically its Rule of Law Mission EULEX for Kosovo.  However even today EULEX has not started work, its wish is to do so before end of the year 2008.  Some hundreds EULEX mission members are already in Kosovo wondering what to do and where. Kosovo had made unilateral declaring of  [...]

Since October AEGEE München has started planning for our big event in February. The core team consists of Milan (coordinator), Torsten (Treasurer), Mücahit (Logistics), Osama (Social Programme), Marc and Kate (Incoming) and Marcus and Georg (Fundraising and PR). Next week, this blog will be finalised and the first posts will be online! Original post by [...]

The world is entering into a major recession. Global economic growth will go down to less than 2 percent in 2009, with USA and Europe the most affected regions, and most of the Asian and African countries the least hurt. This recession, which follows the global unleashing of the US banking disaster, will be not [...]

Sir, In your coverage of the EU’s clean vehicle procurement legislation, you note that aim of the policy is “to kick-start a market in technologies that are currently not commercially viable, such as biofuels, hydrogen, natural gas or LPG, electric or hybrid vehicles”. While appreciating the spirit of the sentiment, I would like to draw [...]

After the IMF has formally accepted huge loan requests from Hungary and Ukraine (and also Iceland on the other periphery of the European economic area), Belarus, Bulgaria, Latvia, Romania, Poland, Serbia are in the waiting line -  not to forget our almost forgotten EU-applicant Turkey, too. I think the French presidency should send out another [...]

Oleg Deripaska – the Russian aluminium king, who is supposed to meet the latest British party finance scandalists in Corfu this summer – may shut down Aluminium Plant Podgorica, which gives a half of Montenegro’s export capacity. It’s not only his business. Here is the story from the new Montenegrin Blogactiv blog. I believe in [...]

Friends of Europe’s annual energy summit (held on 30 October) saw tough exchanges between CCS defenders and the renewable energy sector but kept dodging the real question: can we solve the climate/energy crisis without questioning our economic growth and development paradigm? Energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs, as expected, defended his commission resolve not to “deviate” from [...]

How far down can world markets go? A little background reading about falling markets and suggests that average falls are pretty big. Of course, as we all keep reading, the current situation is ‘unprecedented’ and ‘impossible to predict’. That is all well and good, but what about previous down markets, how big were they? According [...]

Yourspace asked MEPs Gary Titley and Emine Bozkurt – chair and deputy chair of the PES Network for Diversity and Integration – about migration. Check out our video interviews and tell us what you think.

Negotiating free trade areas seems to be the latest hobby of trade policy officials. The USA has started the ball rolling under the Bush Administration, irrespective of the ongoing Doha Round. From Chile to Morocco, Singapore, Jordan and Korea, the list is impressive, especially for the major advocate of multilateral trade rules, which until the [...]

Last week top level European politicians have awaken to reality concerning the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina, namely that this artificial creature made by Dayton agreement is starting to collapse. This in spite of hundreds of millions of euros which e.g. EU has thrown away to build some kind […] Original post by AriRusila

One of the goals of this blog is to follow international media and present some of the interesting news and articles related to Montenegro and Western Balkans region.  Since Montenegro currently fears of the possible closedown of its Aluminium Plant Podgorica (known as KAP), I wanted to share with you implications of this possible issue. Aluminium Plant -KAP [...]

Le nouveau site de Daniel Cohn-Bendit pour les européennes vient d’ouvrir (www.europeecologie.fr) et mérite peut-être pas en fait que l’on s’y arrête un moment. D’abord, pourquoi retrouve-t-on une adresse en .FR si nationale, si peu européenne? Pour enterrer l’idée de DCB d’avoir une vraie campagne européenne? Ce site est une production de la Netscouade. Cela [...]

EU diplomacy has shifted into the fifth gear, which is remarkable, given its traditionally slow transmission system.  That is the good news. Along with it, there comes a bad news: it depends on one man and his relative freshness in power. His name is Sarkozy. Sarkozy was fast enough to react to Georgian crisis. He [...]