EU policy makers need a political reality check
The European Commission?s budget monitoring proposals are sensible, but to succeed they must be firmly rooted in the democratic procedures of member states
Commentary
What is a Cleggservative foreign policy?
Forget reputations. Britain’s new coalition government of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats will temper its foreign policy approach with a healthy dose of pragmatism
A blow to European exceptionalism
The Euro crisis shows again that the EU needs international institutions like the IMF. This is giving observers from the developing world grim satisfaction that Europe is not as exceptional as it might like to think
Europe without Europeans
Of all the problems facing Europe, one seems very difficult to solve: demographic forecasts, added to political ones, point to a Europe without Europeans
The Polish-Russian rapprochement gathers steam
The tragic plane crash in Smolensk has brought Russia and Poland closer together. Emotions aside, what do they both want to gain from the rapprochement?
Wollen wir unseren alten Kaiser wiederhaben?
Deutsche Sehns?chte nach normalisiertem Umgang mit dem eigenem Nationalgef?hl sind t?richt und gef?hrlich
Holes in the cheese
Nuclear crises require a lot of unlikely events to occur at once, like all the holes in slices of Gruy?re cheese lining up. But as the nuclear ambitions of the Iranian president remind us, that is not a reason to ignore the perils of atomic weapons
What are the Ukrainians playing at?
Eggs, smoke bombs and the Black Sea Fleet. Ukraine is back to playing the game it knows best: the balancing act between East and West
World War II finally ends
The tragedy of the Polish air crash has formed a new bond between Poland and Russia. But will they be able to do in the east what France and Germany have done in the west?
The IKEA guide to Lisbon
Implementing the Lisbon Treaty is the bureaucratic equivalent of putting together an IKEA flat-pack table. First step: read the instructions