The European Council on Foreign Relations

And the winner is … Azerbaijan

Date: 22nd May 2013 | Author: Dimitar Bechev,

No, it is not Eurovision but energy in South Eastern Europe I am talking about. There is a reason why a statue of the late leader Heydar Aliev adorns a square in downtown Belgrade. Balkan governments are all busy courting Baku eager to fuel their crisis-ridden economies with Azeri gas. On average, local energy firms pay more for Gazprom deliveries than their counterparts in the West, with Macedonia reportedly holding the European record.

But quite understandably for Baku, fast-growing Turkey, whose energy needs are rising, remains a top priority in the wider region, and not the tiny and struggling Western Balkan economies. Earlier this week, SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company, closed a deal for building a $4.3bn refinery close to Izmir, Turkeys’ third largest city. SOCAR Turkey (the local subsidiary set up in 2008) says that once constructed the STAR refinery

Economic reform in Egypt takes another hit

Date: 21st May 2013 | Author: Farah Halime,

Categories: Middle East and North Africa,

A few weeks ago, an important player backed out of Egypt’s negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Hany Kadry Dimian, former deputy finance minister and the IMF’s “go-to” man during the talks, left the ministry at the end of April, a warning sign for international policy makers and Egyptian officials who insist that they are on the cusp of signing an IMF loan worth $4.8 billion.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Abdallah Shehata replaced Dimian, who had served as the deputy since 2007, weathering a storm of five different finance ministers in the two years since the revolution. Dimian also represented Egypt in his government’s dialogue with the European Union over the economy and co-ordinated the EU-Egypt Neighbourhood Policy Action Plan.

At the outset, his departure was seen as part of a wider cabinet re-shuffle that resulted in the appointment of nine new ministers

Signs of straits in Algeria

Date: 21st May 2013 | Author: Susi Dennison ,

Categories: Middle East and North Africa,

At the end of April as Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was flown to France for treatment, in my blog post "The perils of gerontocracy", I warned that these are testing times for the Algerian regime. It does not currently appear to have any alternatives to the current president to act as the public face of the different interest groups that hold up the Algerian regime – known as le pouvoir.

Over the weekend, the government laid bare just how nervous it is about this in a thinly veiled attempt to silence speculation about the health of Bouteflika. On Saturday, the Ministry of Communications pressured Hicham Aboud, editor of My Journal and Djaridati newspapers, to remove an article that suggested (on the basis of what he reported as reliable medical sources) that Bouteflika had fallen into a coma. Aboud has refused to do so and has instead notified the international press

Time to get real about the European dream - and the American one

Date: 16th May 2013 | Author: Michael E. Smith,

Categories: Scorecard,

As part of our Scorecard debate here is a new guest blog post - this time we hear from Prof. Michael E. Smith (University of Aberdeen). You can also follow him on twitter @ProfMESmith.

May 9 was Europe Day - for the EU. The Council of Europe, however, set May 5 as its Europe Day. Europeans, it seems, can't even agree on when to celebrate their unity. Worse, the EU in particular is having yet another identity crisis involving self-doubt and internal recriminations. This time, however, it seems different; a recent poll by the Pew Research Centre warns that support for the EU has fallen from 60% to 45%. Perhaps most EU citizens realise that things are more serious this time, because the stakes are higher. The creation of the euro zone has locked a subset of EU countries into an uneasy, and unbalanced, relationship with each other, while simultaneously causing some non-euro EU

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US - Turkey relations: a bitter honeymoon

Date: 16th May 2013 | Author: Dimitar Bechev,

Categories: Europe and the world,

Today relations between the US and Turkey are in a much better shape than a few years ago. Israel's decision to apologise to the Turks over the 2010 Gaza flotilla incident and offer financial compensation, reached after heavy American lobbying, has given the Obama administration a sigh of relief. Now that the US is seeking to extricate itself from the Middle East and pivot to East Asia, two critical allies are willing to re-engage. Today's visit of Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Washington DC must be seen in this context. The Turkish leader is received with top honours by Obama and Biden, and is given plenty of time and attention. The fact is that he and the US president have managed to build a strong relationship which also survived the dark days when there was a lot of talk about Ankara’s turn to the East - towards Iran, Hamas and the like. The sheer number of meetings between

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