Candidates for President of the European Council
The European Council elects its President by a qualified majority for a term of two and a half years, renewable once. This means that Herman Van Rompuy, the current incumbent,…
Tag Archives: Angela Merkel
Cameron tantric speech won’t keep his backbenchers and Angela Merkel happy. Who will he try to please?
So David Cameron’s long-trailed EU speech is due to be held on 15th January. I cannot remember any speech by a UK Prime Minister being trailed so far in advance,…
A simplified conversation between David Cameron, and Merkel and Sarkozy
Take a deep breath. Step aside from your preconceptions about the UK and the EU, and your views on David Cameron, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sakozy. I’m trying to do…
The complicated balance between listening and leading, and how it applies to politics in Europe
Look across Europe, and think of the calibre of its leaders. Merkel, Sarkozy, Cameron. Zapatero, Berlusconi, Tusk. Reinfeldt, Løkke, Pahor. Brussels with Barroso and Van Rompuy. This is not a…
Ashton: you are the weakest link. Goodbye.
Foreign Ministers of EU countries are meeting today in Brussels, while at the same time protests against Hosni Mubarak in Egypt enter their 7th day. On his way to the…
The EU is a man sat in Princeton, NJ
This blog entry is a partial response to the Presseurop / The Guardian My Europe series The man in question is Princeton Professor Andrew Moravcsik, mastermind of the theory of liberal…
State of Tory eurosceptic debate
There’s an interesting piece at Centre Right on Conservative Home that looks at Cameron’s posturing on the EU budget last week (making a similar point to mine about his ‘win’)…
The EU’s merry budget dance
The British press has been making a big thing of negotiations on the 2011 EU budget for the past couple of days. David Cameron was apparently telephoning EU leaders yesterday,…
