Over the last few weeks, various commentators described the multiple events of 12 September (yesterday) as the EU’s D-Day, a make-or-break final assault on the Eurozone crisis. One day on, things do seem to have gone quite well for EU stability: the ECB has announced an unlimited programme to buy bonds of Eurozone states (albeitContinue reading “Victory for Europe? Not yet”
Author Archives: JamesPCross
Pure fantasy or realistic forecast?
The Economist published this week a lengthy and well-reasoned guess at the type of extreme options that some within the German government may — with emphasis on ‘may’ — be considering in response to the Eurozone crisis: namely, to break up the Eurozone by forcing a Greek exit, or even by forcing a multi-state exitContinue reading “Pure fantasy or realistic forecast?”
Ireland and the big game changer
Here is an essay I have done on Ireland for the Heinrich Boell Stiftung in Brussels as part of a commissioned series on the euro crisis. I emphasise how closely Ireland’s decisions on European integration are entangled in its relations ns with the UK, a consideration coming once more into clear focus. Paul Gillespie http://www.boell.eu/downloads/Gillespie_Ireland_and_the_Big_Game_Changer(2).pdfContinue reading “Ireland and the big game changer”
On economic crisis, democracy and European integration
The European media’s obsession with reading tea leaves from Frankfurt and bond yields from Madrid has blinded the public to the more fundamental issues at stake in the current crisis. This essay on the relationship between economic crisis, democracy and European integration by Nobel Prize-winning economist-turned-philosopher Amartya Sen helps to refocus the discussion.
Must the EU choose between effectiveness and legitimacy?
Commentators on European affairs, including myself, have often argued that the EU can and must attend to its democratic deficit at the same time that it seeks a technical solution to the Eurozone crisis. But a recent essay by Princeton political theorist Jan-Werner Mueller finds it “hard to see how proposals for European democracy couldContinue reading “Must the EU choose between effectiveness and legitimacy?”
The Myth of Exceptional Europe: The Failure of EU Foreign Policy
The notion of the European Union being an exceptional international actor is well established in the literature and dates from the very inception of ‘Europe’ as being a continental peace project. In today’s literature, while a number of variations on the theme exist, the dominant model is that of the Union as a ‘normative power’.Continue reading “The Myth of Exceptional Europe: The Failure of EU Foreign Policy”
No more integration without more representation !
Senior EU officials have just released a blueprint for another great leap forward in European integration, to be discussed by all 27 heads of state and government at this week’s summit meeting. Perhaps not surprisingly, this blueprint says little about the EU’s growing democratic deficit. Notwithstanding the urgency of the current crisis, it’s now highContinue reading “No more integration without more representation !”
More Europe?
The so-called European Foreign Ministers Group on the Future of Europe has just released its report. Although the group was launched and chaired by German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle, its report was not entirely a German product. As the Auswaertiges Amt explains, “Alongside Foreign Minister Westerwelle, the Foreign Ministers of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, PortugalContinue reading “More Europe?”
The politics of the Eurozone after the Greek election
I’ve posted some thoughts on this on Crooked Timber, here.
Some political consequences of the referendum
by Agustin Ruiz Robledo, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Granada (Spain) and Visiting Scholar at the UCD School of Law 2011-12 The pace of politics and life in the twenty-first century is so fast that the referendum of May 31 seems to have been held a year ago and is no longerContinue reading “Some political consequences of the referendum”
The Brussels Insider 