Agreement over Europe's performance is not the aim of ECFR's European Foreign Policy Scorecard. The aim is to encourage serious debate about the goals, tools, resources, difficult trade offs and moral dilemmas of Europe's foreign policy – even if that means that readers strongly disagree with our conclusions.
The Maastricht foundation that underpins the € has been shown to be a fair weather construct, unsuited to the economic troubles of the last two years. Now a new storm-proof framework is needed, with Germany sharing economic sovereignty in exchange for other eurozone members buying into a new governance model largely devised in Berlin.
In the past, Germany has been both a model and a partner for Spain. But there have been deep-seated changes in how Berlin views southern Europe, and seen from Spain, it is as if Germany has decided southern Europe is a burden that prevents it from going global and needs to be dumped.
Europe is playing for big stakes at the G20 in Seoul. The summit is not just about opening up to the major emerging economies, but about how the West – including Europe – deal with the challenges of staving off the economic crisis and reconfiguring international institutions.
The New Germany turns twenty this weekend. The country is rightly celebrating unification, and the economic success that has followed. But Berlin seems unable to cope with the new pivotal role in Europe that stems from its success story. Instead of looking for somebody else to write the script for Europe, New Germany needs to take responsibility and help the EU establish a global role.
Das neue Deutschland wächst sichtlich aus dem europäischen Haus heraus. Es profitiert von der EU, will Sie aber nicht führen und sieht sich stattdessen noch in der europäischen Opferrolle. Ist der Preis für Europa wirklich so hoch? Und sind wir nicht der große Nutznießer in der EU?
Tight budgets mean hard choices. For instance, new aircraft carriers would be lovely but they cost a lot. As the UK’s Strategic Defence and Security Review reaches its final stages, Nick Witney argues that perhaps it’s time to start sharing with the French.
The EU’s bank stress tests were flawed. The methodology suffered fundamental problems and was designed to fix the results. As ECFR council member Wolfgang Münchau argues in the Financial Times, if you tried to test the safety of cars using the same method, you would end up in jail.
The Political West (the US, Europe and Japan) are in the doldrums while the BRICs keep growing. A third of world economic growth in the last decade has taken place in BRIC countries. So far, so good for the BRICs. But what next?
Die Machtbalace in den deutsch-franz?sischen Beziehungen hat sich radikal verschoben