Congratulations to Buzek! (Don’t bother applying, Frattini.)
There are two ways of looking at the imminent appointment of Jerzy Buzek, a former Polish prime minister, as the next president of the European Parliament. The first way is to applaud Europe’s...
View ArticleUK Tories ever more marginalised in European Parliament
If it were not funny, it would be tragic. The UK Conservative party’s decision to quit the European People’s Party (EPP), the main centre-right political group in the European Parliament, is...
View ArticleSkewed views on how World War Two started
Predictably, the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the second world war provoked a few rhetorical skirmishes this week between Russia, Poland and Poland’s western allies. It reminded me of an...
View ArticlePunish Czechs over Lisbon treaty? Remember the Haider affair…
With Czech President Vaclav Klaus the chief remaining obstacle to final ratification of the European Union’s Lisbon treaty, there has been a fair amount of loose talk about how the Czech Republic could...
View ArticleKlaus’s Sudeten German protest is last throw of dice on Lisbon
It was inevitable, I think, that Czech President Vaclav Klaus would take his last stand against the European Union’s Lisbon treaty on the Sudeten German issue. This has been one of the most highly...
View ArticleSecularism and Christianity contest the European soul
If you search for information about Garwolin on the internet, you will find that it is a simple but attractive little town in eastern Poland, about 50km east of Warsaw. Yet 25 years ago, when I lived...
View ArticleSarkozy’s lecture to the Visegrad Four will fall on deaf ears
There are all sorts of threats to the European Union’s unity, but something tells me that the biggest threat isn’t the Visegrad group. This appears to be a view not shared by President Nicolas Sarkozy...
View ArticleMurdered Polish priest’s beatification recalls grim early 1980s
A Polish priest who was murdered in 1984 by secret policemen working for the then ruling communist authorities was beatified last weekend by the Vatican, a step that puts him on course for eventual...
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[UPDATED] A sign the big summit could fall short?
Juncker, left, heads Eurogroup of 17 euro finance ministers. Rostowski, right, the Ecofin of all 27. UPDATE 2: The Polish presidency has just made the official announcement. They say the cancellation...
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Carbon emissions and the Polish Puzzle
The Belchatow power station in central Poland, one of the largest coal-burning plants in the world While Brussels winds down for the summer and preoccupies itself with finding new commissioners, there...
View ArticleEU population forecasts
The demographic forecasts contained in a new report from Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical agency, are worth a good look. Everyone knows the EU’s rapidly ageing population and shrinking...
View ArticleBuy Brown and Sarkozy. Sell Poland
Surprises galore at the European Union summit that opened in Brussels on Wednesday. The heroes of the hour are turning out to be Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy. Angela Merkel and Silvio Berlusconi...
View ArticleLithuania, precariously poised between east and west
I am in snowy Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania and a city that reminds me of a communist-era joke that I first heard in Poland in 1980. A Frenchman visits Warsaw, so the story went, and is so shocked...
View ArticleLisbon treaty at the mercy of US and Russian missile plans
Almost 20 years after the end of the Cold War, it is sobering to see how military and security policy decisions taken in Washington and Moscow can still shape the fate of Europe. Take the European...
View ArticleAttractions and dangers of swapping the zloty for the euro
When I lived in Poland in the mid-1980s, I was once given a one-zloty coin for Christmas. This was no ordinary one-zloty coin, however. It was stamped on one side with an image of the Lenin shipyard in...
View ArticleCheap soundbites don’t help you understand central and eastern Europe
At long last, the message is getting across that, as far as the financial crisis is concerned, it makes no sense to view the ex-communist countries of central and eastern Europe as one homogenous bloc....
View ArticleThe Tories and their future European bedfellows
Among the various headaches keeping European Union leaders awake at night is the prospect of a thumping Conservative victory in the UK’s next general election, which must be held by June 2010. The fear...
View ArticlePro-EU Tories snipe at Cameron and his “PiS poor policies”
The closer the European Parliament elections, the sneakier the stratagems of British centre-right politicians and activists in Brussels. As David Cameron made clear on May 18 when he launched the...
View ArticleWinners and losers in the 2009 European Parliament elections
Who were the biggest winners and biggest losers of the European Parliament elections? Top of the winners’ list are surely Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France....
View ArticleProud Poland embraces an irresistible EU future
Mikolaj Dowgielewicz is truly a new Pole. Not yet even 37 years old, he is a minister (for European Union affairs) in Poland’s centre-right government, speaks fluent English and French, was educated...
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