Research

W.B. Yeats lamented a Europe where, in politics at least, “the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity”. As Tony Blair bows out as UK prime minister, British pro-Europeans will identify with his sentiments.

The Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) is an organisation of increasing strategic importance. It brings together Russia, China and four Central Asian states.

The European Union, together with its member-states, is the world's largest source of development aid. Yet the Union under-performs as a donor: its various governments and the Commission seldom co-ordinate their efforts, and often fail to think strategically.

The Arab Reform Initiative held its annual conference in Amman, Jordan, on 18th April. Founded in 2005, ARI is a consortium of a dozen research centres that advocate peaceful and gradual political, economic and social reform in the region. A few non-Arab think-tanks are also involved, including the Centre for European Reform, but it is very much led and managed by Arab research centres. The CER is part of ARI because it believes that ARI offers an excellent opportunity to encourage reform in a region that is deeply suspicious of outside influence.

Taiwanese domestic politics is nasty and messy. The two main political forces – the KMT, which believes in ‘one China’, and the DPP, which leans towards an independent Taiwan – hate each other with venom that is unmatched in most other functioning democracies.

British politicians are too complacent about Germany’s plan to salvage large parts of the EU constitutional treaty. They assume that other countries will reject the German presidency’s scheme, so sparing Britain from isolation. Indeed, there is now a consensus that stretches from UK treasury officials to Conservative leaders to The...

A marriage of convenience is probably too charitable a description of the relationship between Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yushchenko, and its prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich.

Given how much respect and esteem most Europeans feel for the EU today, one can easily forget that when it celebrated its 50th birthday, in 2007, it was widely disliked and mistrusted.

The Lisbon agenda embodies a paradox. Progress made by the member-states has been slow and patchy. The German presidency in the first half of 2007 is playing down Lisbon, fearing that the process has been discredited by the EU’s failure to meet its targets. Commentators often cite Lisbon as an example of the mismatch between the EU’s grand ambitions and lack of delivery.Aurore Wanlin was a research fellow at the CER (2004-2007).