The European Council on Foreign Relations

ECFR this week: 25th May 2012

Date: 25th May 2012 | Author: Andreas Mullerleile, Nicholas Walton,

Categories: ECFR this week ,
Tags: , egypt, eurocrisis, italy, lebanon, azerbaijan

This week we published the latest in our series of papers looking at the internal dynamics of European countries as they faced the economic crisis. This time the spotlight was on Italy – according to the authors Marco de Andreis and Silvia Francescon a ‘country in receivership’. We’ve several other papers due to be published in this series very soon, and have already examined both the situation in Poland and the Czech Republic.

This week’s Eurovision Song Contest has put Azerbaijan’s authoritarian government and its human rights record under international spotlight. But attention should also focus on Europe’s relations with Azerbaijan, which remain guided by narrow energy interests. In a new ECFR policy memo Jana Kobzova and Leila Alieva argue that the EU must now change its approach as the Baku government is more vulnerable than it appears.

Our Middle East/North Africa programme has also been very busy:

Elijah Zarwan has been in Egypt in the run up to the elections – here’s a commentary piece that we have from him on our website, and here is a podcast recorded that we recorded with him earlier today on the line from Cairo.

Julien Barnes-Dacey is also conducting research on location in Beirut – here’s a blog post that he sent about the impact of the turmoil in Syria on neighbouring Lebanon, and here’s a podcast that we recorded this morning down the line to Beirut.

Richard Gowan argues that it is not yet time for Kofi Annan to give up in Syria.

The MENA programme also has a new twitter account - @ECFRmena If you’re interested in the Middle East and North Africa, remember that our MENA programme puts out a weekly email round up of the best analysis that they’ve been reading (subscribe here).

Elsewhere:

ECFR’s debate on the eurocrisis and how Europe can be reinvented also continued on our blog: Christine Ockrent thinks it is time to embrace concrete European projects and Ivan Krastev looks whether the collapse of the Soviet empire can teach Europe a lesson.

Dimitar Bechev analyses the outcomes of the Serbian election in a piece for EUobserver - a post-election update to the article that Dimitar Bechev wrote about Serbia last week here.

Hans Kundnani writes about an ECFR event with Joe Nye (aka “Mr Soft Power”) who is concerned about Europe’s decline.

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1 comments

realtors in bradenton florida 21st November 2012 at 07:11pm

I like the way you described the topic with such clarity. This is something I have been thinking about for a long time and you really captured the essence of the subject.

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