Press
Viewpoints: Europe's way forward
30 January 2006
BBC News
Confidence - A lot of the sense of crisis is self-generated. As soon as European leaders start dealing with pressing problems in a visible way, like building up the foreign policy machinery, dealing with migration and terrorism and modernising their economies and welfare states, then citizens will be less sceptical.
Western European politicians should stop exploiting populist fears of low-wage competition
26 January 2006
European Voice
Germany's new Finance Minister, Peer Steinbrück, revived an idea that was first mooted in 2004 by the then chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy: to cut EU regional aid to new member-states that engaged in 'tax dumping'.
At the time, it looked as if these statements were meant...
At the time, it looked as if these statements were meant...
The great firewall of China will fall
26 January 2006
The Daily Telegraph
Google, the popular search engine that floated on the stock market last year, has not abandoned its corporate motto: "Don't be evil".
India tilts to the west as the world's new poles emerge
12 January 2006
The Guardian
Nothing is permanent in history, including America's domination of the global economic and political systems. Assuming China and India keep growing at their current rates, the unipolar world of recent years - topped by the US - will be replaced by a multipolar world within a few decades.
Once its "unipolar...
Once its "unipolar...
"Son problème, c'est l'Allemagne"
10 January 2006
Liberation.fr
Le Britannique Charles Grant, directeur du Centre pour la réforme européenne, à Londres, analyse les chances du président français de sortir l'Europe de sa crise institutionnelle.
Jacques Chirac est-il crédible quand il propose de relancer l'Europe ?
Si cela veut dire relancer la Constitution européenne, il n'est pas crédible. Mais personne ne...
Jacques Chirac est-il crédible quand il propose de relancer l'Europe ?
Si cela veut dire relancer la Constitution européenne, il n'est pas crédible. Mais personne ne...
The geopolitics of 2026
02 January 2006
The Economist
History is traced not is straight lines but in jagged and discontinuous strokes. But what if the future follows a more predictable path?
India joins the west
01 November 2005
Prospect
Last month saw a small geopolitical revolution: India backed the west against Iran.
One of the most significant geopolitical events of the decade has gone almost unnoticed in the west: at September's meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, India joined the US and the EU in backing a resolution condemning...
One of the most significant geopolitical events of the decade has gone almost unnoticed in the west: at September's meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, India joined the US and the EU in backing a resolution condemning...
The real crisis for Europe
10 October 2005
Newsweek
So, is Turkey to start membership talks with the European Union? The reception could hardly be more hostile. As the public sees it, the EU is big enough already. Political leaders from France's Nicolas Sarkozy to Germany's Angela Merkel are opposed.
Slow train from Istanbul
27 September 2005
The Wall Street Journal
The talks on Turkey's accession to the EU are scheduled to start on Monday. But public support for Turkish EU entry continues to fall: less than one-third of voters in the "old" EU support Turkish membership, according to the EU pollster Eurobarometer.
United against Iranian nukes
14 September 2005
International Herald Tribune
Last February, a group of European and American foreign policy experts issued the "Compact Between the United States and Europe," a detailed proposal for trans-Atlantic cooperation on the key foreign policy issues of the day (IHT Feb. 17, 2005).
Turkey offers EU more punch
01 September 2005
European Voice
Rather than undermine the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy, Turkish membership of the Union could boost the bloc's power in trouble spots across the Middle East and Central Asia, argues Charles Grant.
Opponents of Turkish accession to the EU often claim that it would damage the cohesiveness of the EU's...
Opponents of Turkish accession to the EU often claim that it would damage the cohesiveness of the EU's...
A beacon of liberty flickers: Observations on Georgia
18 July 2005
New Statesman
President Bush proclaimed Georgia a "beacon for liberty" when he visited Tbilisi in May. Georgia has certainly made great progress since people power overthrew the corrupt and incompetent regime of Eduard Shevardnadze in 2003. Nevertheless, clouds are dimming the light of that beacon.
There is something amiss, for example, when none...
There is something amiss, for example, when none...
The road obscured
11 July 2005
Financial Times
It is pre-modern, the kind of scene that westerners visit and photograph or encapsulate for later conversation: on Hainan Island, off the Leizhan Peninsula and a 50-minute flight south from Hong Kong, Chinese peasants toil in paddy fields. They wear straw hats and use water buffalo to plough the fields.
Then,...
Then,...
Staring into the abyss
01 July 2005
E!Sharp
Twenty years of progress towards a united Europe have come to an end with the French and Dutch votes against the constitution, with future expansion of the EU likely to be the biggest casualty, argues Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform.
Variable geometry
01 July 2005
Prospect
The end of enlargement would be a tragedy. Perhaps it can be saved by "variable geometry".
The French and Dutch referendums have halted both deepening and widening in the EU. The two ideas have always been intimately linked. The political elites in core countries such as France were reluctant to accept...
The French and Dutch referendums have halted both deepening and widening in the EU. The two ideas have always been intimately linked. The political elites in core countries such as France were reluctant to accept...
Europe - Don't write the obituaries yet. A new France could put Britain on the sidelines
06 June 2005
New Statesman
The gleeful obituaries are piling up, not just for the EU constitution, but for the country that torpedoed it. France is in a mess, we read; its politics are paralysed, its economy is over-regulated and it just can't accommodate itself to globalisation with an Anglo-Saxon face.
But before we gorge on...
But before we gorge on...
Short Cuts: Reputations: Political song and dance
03 June 2005
The Guardian
"People have been texting saying: don't worry, it's all total politics." These words might have soothed a tearful Javine when she failed to rack up more than 18 points for the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest, but they were not much comfort to the beleaguered French and Dutch "yes"...
Europe - Did we make the right choice?
03 June 2005
Yorkshire Post
Though often criticised as being undemocratic, popular referenda have been pivotal in the history of the European Union. Recent events in France and Netherlands aside, perhaps none more so than the 1975 poll confirming Britain's membership of the then European Economic Community.
European democracy: Where now?
02 June 2005
Open democracy
The rejection by French and Dutch voters of the treaty establishing a European constitution has precipitated one of the deepest crises in the European Union's fifty-year history.
The UK should see enlargement as an opportunity to revive the Lisbon process
01 June 2005
Progress online
At the Lisbon summit in 2000, EU leaders signed up to an ambitious economic reform programme: the Lisbon agenda, designed to close the economic gap with the US.