April 21, 2007
by Nosemonkey
5 Comments
The latest polls (also the last, what with voting about to take place in the first round) putting Sarkozy and Royal just 1% apart – and Le Pen overtaking Bayrou. It’s all still hugely unpredictable, in other words. According to … Continue reading
April 16, 2007
by Nosemonkey
3 Comments
The clock’s ticking, it’s still very tight, and deals are being proposed left, right and centre, important issues are being avoided, and the English language press is struggling to explain it all (and sometimes being deconstructed in the process – … Continue reading
April 11, 2007
by Nosemonkey
2 Comments
First round this weekend, but most people outside la belle France still don’t know much about what’s at stake, or what it all means. The best place to start is probably French Élection 2007′s the French election for dummies and … Continue reading
March 21, 2007
by Nosemonkey
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So, at least, thinks Maurice Faure – France’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs 1956-8, and the last surviving original signatory of the Treaty of Rome. In an interview with Spanish paper El Pais, as the 50th anniversary of the … Continue reading
March 18, 2007
by Nosemonkey
1 Comment
(A quicky, as I’m still insanely busy…) With the overdue exit, stage centre-right, of Chirac it looks like France could have its first change in forever of fundamentally shifting its relations with its fellow EU member states. Pretty much since … Continue reading
March 10, 2007
by Nosemonkey
5 Comments
1) A handy short explanation of why I’ve been writing about the EU constitution here a lot recently. 2) A new bilingual blog aggregator type thing from new(ish) French news channel France 24, designed to provide an insight into the … Continue reading
March 5, 2007
by Nosemonkey
2 Comments
Alternative headline: Contentious issue on which no presidential candidate has any answers is largely ignored in presidential election debates shocker! Yep, it’s not just me who’s noticed the lack of any concrete EU policies from any of the French presidential … Continue reading
March 2, 2007
by Nosemonkey
6 Comments
Centre-right French presidential candidate Nicholas Sarkozy (currently the front-runner) has been doing a bit more to set out his attitude towards the EU. He’s already announced the that he thinks (fairly sensibly) that the existing EU constitution should be heavily … Continue reading
February 23, 2007
by Nosemonkey
1 Comment
If you haven’t been paying attention, left(ish) candidate Segolene Royal has spent much of the last few weeks making something of a tit of herself, with gaffes galore and all kinds of silly little errors that had piled up to … Continue reading
February 22, 2007
by Nosemonkey
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The Times’ Anatole Kaletsky’s normally worth reading, so check out his latest on Germany and the future of the EU – I’m too busy to have had a chance yet, myself. You could probably also do worse than check out … Continue reading
February 13, 2007
by Nosemonkey
1 Comment
OK, so what have I missed while I’ve been busy? The Centre For European Reform blog has been discussing the failure of the EU constitution and the need for a new kind of “pro-Europeanism”, in relation to that “Europe’s Story” … Continue reading
January 19, 2007
by Nosemonkey
4 Comments
Despite some people making useful suggestions, elsewhere in the EU it seems all but impossible to shake of the spectre of that damned [tag]EU constitution[/tag]. Current European Union president Angela Merkel keeps on bringing the bloody thing up, repeating the … Continue reading
January 15, 2007
by Nosemonkey
3 Comments
…France? Is it April Fools Day already? “Formerly secret documents unearthed from the National Archives have showed Britain and France considered a ‘union’ in the 1950s.” Not only that, but this supposedly happened – after an approach by the then … Continue reading
January 13, 2007
by Nosemonkey
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The Economist’s Edward Lucas’s [tag]central Europe[/tag]an diary is well worth a read: “it is odd that Poland gets so much mockery. There is a kind of snobbish disdain for Europe’s east rooted very deeply in the British psyche. Before writing … Continue reading