2009
May 20, 2009
Justin Vaisse assesses the risks of seeing the European Union or the Eurozone break up because of the economic crisis. Far from this outcome, Vaisse surveys the reasons why Europe will resist and predicts that it will eventually bounce back to become a stronger union
April 23, 2009
To explore the strategies by which Europe can increase its commitment in Iraq and make a constructive difference, the Center on the U.S. and Europe and the Heinrich Böll Foundation convened a workshop in April 2009. In this paper, Justin Vaisse and Sebastian Gräfe summarize the consolidated advice advocated by the workshop participants.
March 16, 2009
Abdullah Akyüz examines the political economy of Turkey from the domestic crisis of 2001 to the global crisis of 2008 and speculates about the current crisis as well as its implications for the Turkish economy.
February 19, 2009
The past eight years witnessed a sharp evolution of the Turkey-US relationship, but a change in rhetoric substance was ushered in with the second Bush administration that eventually came to the rescue. Sinan Ülgen argues the election of Barack Obama provides an opportunity for Ankara and Washington to put behind their differences decisively and to concentrate on advancing a more ambitious transatlantic agenda.
2008
September 2008
Justin Vaisse presents the basic facts and issues concerning Muslims in Europe, from a political and sociological perspective, and offers elements of comparison with the United States.
August 15, 2008
Kristin Lord examines public opinion relevant to the transatlantic relationship; transatlantic opinion regarding terrorism, climate change, and international trade; and public diplomacy and how it might advance the transatlantic agenda.
2006
August 2006
Gianfranco Pasquino, U.S.-Europe Analysis Series (August 2006)
August 2006
Ettore Greco, U.S.-Europe Analysis Series (August 2006)
April 2006
Nevertheless, there are some worrying economic and social issues. The French welfare system no longer seems sustainable in the face of demographic pressure, mounting debt, and persistent unemployment. The riots in the poorer suburbs of Paris in November 2005 gave some hint of how disenfranchised one growing segment of the population has become. At the same time, even fairly modest reforms, such as the proposed CPE (Contrat Première Embauche or First Employment Contract) intended to reduce youth unemployment, provoked massive demonstrations and nationwide strikes. Such measures are often withdrawn or scaled back under pressure. What former Prime Minister Edouard Balladur said about his would-be youth labor law in 1994 could have been said by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin in April 2006 about his own attempt: "I would like to see an end to the sort of hypocrisy that consists in lamenting youth unemployment while criticizing every single measure we are trying to take." Finding a way to move past this societal blockage will be one of the key issues in the 2007 presidential elections in France.
April 2006
It is a truism that if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no-one. Europe's controversial Services Directive has arguably fallen into this trap. When it was passed on February 16, 2006 by the European Parliament, angry trade unionists gathered at the doors of the Parliament, protesting that the parliament had gone too far. Frustrated supporters of liberalization, for their part, dismissed it as a watered-down version of the original proposal that would do little to advance the goal of a single market for services in Europe.
April 2006
In its not-so-long history, the European Union (EU) has known many anni horribiles marked by major events that brought about more or less prolonged crises. But the year 2005 will no doubt be recalled as one of the worst. The rejection of the constitutional treaty, which was signed in fall 2004, in referendums in France and in the Netherlands not only derailed a reform process that the European leaders had presented as crucial for the future of the EU, but also gave rise to a wider identity crisis over the meaning and purpose of the European Union.
March 2006
On April 9-10 Italian voters will go to the polls to elect their national parliament. It will be a critical election for two reasons. First, if Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his coalition Casa delle Liberta' get a second mandate, they will attempt to complete their very controversial blueprint for reforming the judiciary, revising the Constitution and implementing major changes in the tax system. Second, the victory of Berlusconi and his coalition will also mean that they will have enough votes to elect the new President of the Republic. The 1999 election of the outgoing President, eighty-six year-old Carlo Azeglio Ciampi was supported by Berlusconi, but since then Ciampi has often clashed with the Centre-Right government. Several important bills approved by the Casa delle Liberta' have been returned by the President to Parliament as unconstitutional. The President has also tried—to no avail—to influence the drafting of important laws concerning the conflicts of interests between Berlusconi's business empire and his political role and regulation of the mass media system. While Berlusconi claims to be in accord with the President, the Prime Minister has regularly persisted in the promoting the laws in question with only minor cosmetic adjustments. No doubt, however, that he has resented the not-so-veiled criticisms coming from the Presidency. Hence, the election of the next President will also be a significant event in the Italian electoral season.
February 2006
Foreign commentators and the international press have been skeptical about Germany's new "grand coalition" government, seeing the September election result as a "vote against reforms" and the expression of an apparently innate German desire to stick to the status quo. According to The Economist, "this hung vote looks like being a setback for the reform process in Germany."1 Le Figaro fears that "after the vote, Germany may become ungovernable."2 On the other side of the Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times opined that the "[r]esults boost alternative factions and weaken the push for reform."3 While it is true that the elections did not bring about a clear winner and made forming a traditional coalition government difficult, the new government will by no means be a weak one. Indeed, for the time being at least, the reforms in Germany are likely to benefit from the current power configuration in the Bundestag
February 2006
Shortly after the July 7, 2005 bombings in London, Italian interior minister Giuseppe Pisanu warned his compatriots that "terrorism is knocking at Italy's door." Pisanu's remark seemed prescient when one of the failed copycat bombers fled London two weeks later and sought refuge with a brother-in-law in Rome. (It did not comfort the authorities that the terrorist had attended grade school in Italy and spoke passable Italian.) In fall 2005, Italian news media reported that the Jordanian insurgent leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had sent "an agent" to Italy to prepare attacks, at the same time reporting that hundreds of undocumented immigrants continued to arrive on the shores of Southern Italy. Combined with the riots in neighboring France, these developments have led the Italian government to move forward on an ambitious program creating new structures to include "moderate Muslims" in the apparatus of Italian state-society relations.
February 2006
The conventional wisdom holds that Europe today is economically or socially dysfunctional. In this view, Europe, with its long vacations and generous pensions, is in many ways a better place to live than the United States, but that can not last. Even if the European social model is desirable, it is unrealistic and sooner or later, doomed. This assertion of Europe's doom derives from the association of technological change and globalization with inevitability or necessity. The protected economies of Europe that we have grown so used to will no longer be possible—like it or not this change is going to be upon us. We can see the future because we can see the shape of the economic present.
February 2006
The current deadlock in the European Union's constitutional process has provoked yet another period of deep euro-pessimism. It is worth noting that the concept of Europe has lived through similar periods in the past and survived them all, often growing stronger in the process. We need only re-read Raymond Aron's Plaidoyer pour l'Europe décadente (In Defense of Decadent Europe) published in 1976 to recall the dismal intellectual and strategic atmosphere of that moment: the stagflation, the appeal of Eurocommunism, and the apparent strategic ascendancy of the Soviet Union.
2005
November 2005
Pierre Hassner, U.S. Europe Analysis Series (November 2005)
November 2005
Olivier Guitta, U.S.-Europe Analysis Series (November 2005)
November 2005
Nicolas de Boisgrollier, U.S.-Europe Analysis Series (November 2005)
July 2005
At a June 2005 meeting in Berlin on Russia's relations with Germany and Europe, Russian politician, Dmitry Rogozin, complained that Europe had developed a peculiar "oil phobia" about Russia. By this he meant that Europe perceives Russia's growing share of its energy imports as dangerous. And, in fact, Europe has both an oil and a gas "phobia" about Russia, as Russia is also the largest single supplier of gas to European markets.
July 2005
If the EU is not to deteriorate into little more than a free trade zone, serious community building measures are essential. These measures would aim ultimately at transferring more of the kind of commitment, loyalty and sense of identity citizens now attach to their nation, to the European community.
July 2005
The rejection of the draft Constitutional Treaty in referendums in France and the Netherlands triggered a political crisis in the European Union. The crisis was quickly followed by the decisions of the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic to defer their referendums. The European Council reacted with a very mild Declaration calling for a period of reflection during which a broad debate could take place and for the alteration of the ratification timetable if member states so decided. Several member states (Denmark, Ireland, Portugal and Poland) decided to suspend planned referendums; only Luxembourg stuck to its original timetable, ratifying the Constitution by referendum on July 10, 2005. Clearly, the process of ratifying the Constitutional Treaty has broken down.
June 2005
U.S. Europe Analysis Series, Nicolas de Boisgrollier (6/1/05)
May 2005
Seth G. Jones, U.S. Europe Analysis Paper (May 2005)
May 2005
Michael A. Levi, U.S.-Europe Analysis Series (May 2005)
March 2005
Analysis by Jonathan Laurence (March 2005)
March 2005
Analysis by Nicolas de Boisgrollier (March 2005)
February 2005
Analysis by Jean-Claude Casanova (February 2005)
February 2005
Analysis by Stanley Hoffmann (February 2005)
February 2005
Analysis by Pierre Hassner (February 2005)
January 2005
Analysis by Michael Shurkin (January 2005)
January 2005
Analysis by Michael Werz (January 2005)
2004
November 2004
Analysis by Carlos Closa (November 2004)
November 2004
Analysis by Pascale Andr�ani (November 2004)
September 2004
Analysis by Philip Gordon and Omer Taspinar (September 2004)
September 2004
Analysis by Maxime Lefebvre (September 2004)
September 2004
Analysis by Robert Hunter (September 2004)
September 2004
Analysis by Adam S. Posen (September 2004)
June 2004
Analysis by Ulrike Gu�rot (June 2004)
March 2004
Analysis by B�n�dicte Suzan and Jean-Marc Dreyfus (March 2004)
Jan-04
U.S.-France Analysis by Jean Dufourcq (January 2004)