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• The Political Implications of the Economic Crisis for the European Union

  Wed, 20 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

  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

• What Europe Can Do for Iraq: A Blueprint for Action

  Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

  
  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.

• Political Economy of Turkey: In Search of Stability Amid Domestic and Global Crises

  Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

  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.

• In Search of Lost Time: Turkey-U.S. Relations after Bush

  Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

  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.

• Muslims in Europe: A Short Introduction

  Mon, 08 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

  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.

• Public Diplomacy and the New Transatlantic Agenda

  Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

  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.

• Italy's European Vocation: The Foreign Policy of the New Prodi Government

  Tue, 01 Aug 2006 00:00:00 GMT

  Ettore Greco, U.S.-Europe Analysis Series (August 2006)

• Italy's Government on the Verge of Breakdown

  Tue, 01 Aug 2006 00:00:00 GMT

  Gianfranco Pasquino, U.S.-Europe Analysis Series (August 2006)

• And Yet It Moves: The European Constitutional Debate One Year Later

  Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 GMT

  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.

• The European Services Directive

  Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 GMT

  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.

• The Challenge of Reforming France

  Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 GMT

  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.

• The Long Road to the Italian National Elections

  Wed, 01 Mar 2006 00:00:00 GMT

  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.

• The Future of Decadent Europe

  Wed, 01 Feb 2006 00:00:00 GMT

  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.

• Decadent Europe Revisited

  Wed, 01 Feb 2006 00:00:00 GMT

  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.

• Reform in Germany: Prospects for the New Government

  Wed, 01 Feb 2006 00:00:00 GMT

  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

• Knocking on Europe's Door: Islam in Italy

  Wed, 01 Feb 2006 00:00:00 GMT

  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.

• Dominique de Villepin: The New Man on The Right

  Tue, 01 Nov 2005 00:00:00 GMT

  Nicolas de Boisgrollier, U.S.-Europe Analysis Series (November 2005)

• France and Hizbullah: The End of the Affair

  Tue, 01 Nov 2005 00:00:00 GMT

  Olivier Guitta, U.S.-Europe Analysis Series (November 2005)

• The Rebirth of Vision: A Dynamic Compromise for Europe

  Tue, 01 Nov 2005 00:00:00 GMT

  Pierre Hassner, U.S. Europe Analysis Series (November 2005)

• Sisyphus Revisited: Options for the EU's Constitutional Future

  Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 GMT

  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.

• How to Build a European Community

  Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 GMT

  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.

• Beyond Co-Dependency: European Reliance on Russian Energy

  Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 GMT

  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.

• The French Political Landscape After the ""Non""

  Wed, 01 Jun 2005 00:00:00 GMT

  U.S. Europe Analysis Series, Nicolas de Boisgrollier (6/1/05)

• The United States and Europe at the NPT Review Conference

  Sun, 01 May 2005 00:00:00 GMT

  Michael A. Levi, U.S.-Europe Analysis Series (May 2005)

• The Rise of Europe's Defense Industry

  Sun, 01 May 2005 00:00:00 GMT

  Seth G. Jones, U.S. Europe Analysis Paper (May 2005)

• Will the EU Constitution Survive a Referendum in France?

  Tue, 01 Mar 2005 00:00:00 GMT

  Analysis by Nicolas de Boisgrollier (March 2005)

• Friendly Fire: Italy, America and the War in Iraq

  Tue, 01 Mar 2005 00:00:00 GMT

  Analysis by Jonathan Laurence (March 2005)

• Raymond Aron on the Use of Force and Legitimacy

  Tue, 01 Feb 2005 00:00:00 GMT

  Analysis by Pierre Hassner (February 2005)

• Force, Legitimacy, and Order

  Tue, 01 Feb 2005 00:00:00 GMT

  Analysis by Stanley Hoffmann (February 2005)

• U.S.-French Crises in Historical Perspective: An Aronian View

  Tue, 01 Feb 2005 00:00:00 GMT

  Analysis by Jean-Claude Casanova (February 2005)

• Anti-Americanism and Ambivalence in the New Germany

  Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMT

  Analysis by Michael Werz (January 2005)

• France and the Darfur Crisis

  Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:00:00 GMT

  Analysis by Michael Shurkin (January 2005)

• The Constitutional Enlargement of Europe

  Mon, 01 Nov 2004 00:00:00 GMT

  Analysis by Pascale Andr�ani (November 2004)

• Ratifying the EU Constitution: Referendums and their Implications

  Mon, 01 Nov 2004 00:00:00 GMT

  Analysis by Carlos Closa (November 2004)

• NATO's Next Century

  Wed, 01 Sep 2004 00:00:00 GMT

  Analysis by Robert Hunter (September 2004)

• Fleeting Equality: The Relative Size of the U.S. and EU Economies to 2020

  Wed, 01 Sep 2004 00:00:00 GMT

  Analysis by Adam S. Posen (September 2004)

• Turkey's European Quest: The EU's Decision on Turkish Accession

  Wed, 01 Sep 2004 00:00:00 GMT

  Analysis by Philip Gordon and Omer Taspinar (September 2004)

• France and Europe: An Ambivalent Relationship

  Wed, 01 Sep 2004 00:00:00 GMT

  Analysis by Maxime Lefebvre (September 2004)

• Binging on Expansion: Lessons From the Enlargements of the European Union

  Tue, 01 Jun 2004 00:00:00 GMT

  Analysis by

• The European Paradox: Widening and Deepening in the European Union

  Tue, 01 Jun 2004 00:00:00 GMT

  Analysis by Ulrike Gu�rot (June 2004)

• Muslim and Jews in France: Communal Conflict in a Secular State

  Mon, 01 Mar 2004 00:00:00 GMT

  Analysis by B�n�dicte Suzan and Jean-Marc Dreyfus (March 2004)

• The Transatlantic Allergy: Partnership or Strategic Counterweight?

  Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 GMT

  U.S.-France Analysis by Jean Dufourcq (January 2004)