BOOK
Daniel Benjamin, May 01, 2009
In Europe 2030 a group of distinguished authors look ahead and deliver their predictions on what Europe will look like twenty years from now. With great insight and drawing on deep reservoirs of experience, they illuminate the European Union's current strengths and weaknesses by imagining its future development. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Federiga Bindi, June 16, 2008, The Brookings Institution
Following the rejection of the Lisbon Treaty by Irish voters, Federiga Bindi believes the process should continue on as planned rather than sacking or changing the treaty. Bindi remarks that membership in the European Union is not obligatory and notes Ireland can still co-exist happily without destroying hopes for further integration across the continent. Read More
PAST EVENT
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
3:30 PM to 5:00 PM
Washington, DC
The Center on the United States and Europe hosted Simon Hix to discuss his new book What's Wrong with the European Union and How to Fix It. Visiting Fellow Federiga Bindi moderated the event. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Federiga Bindi, March 26, 2008, ISA 2008 Conference
Since the SEA and the complexion of the Single Market, the increasing flow of EU directives – with its inherent characteristics of supremacy over national law and of direct effect characterizing de facto most of the EU legislation, including most directives - made member states realize the usefulness of being proactive negotiators in EU law making. Consequently, all member States elaborated procedures and established ad hoc coordinating bodies to deal at best with the formative phase of EC law – i.e. that phase in which the national administrations (in primis the governments and its bureaucracies, but also the Parliaments and the parties in them and, where relevant, also regional authorities) determine their “national position” to be negotiated with their European partners. Read More
PAST EVENT
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
12:00 AM to
Washington, DC
The failed terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow have once again brought Britain's Muslims back into the spotlight, and sparked renewed feelings of unease and suspicion, despite the alleged perpetrators having come from abroad. In this tense environment, there is an evermore urgent need for counterterrorism authorities to engage with the mainstream British Muslim community, while correctly identifying those that pose a threat to public order. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Philip H. Gordon, June 27, 2007, Online NewsHour
Interview with Philip H. Gordon, PBS (6/27/07) Read More
PAST EVENT
Monday, April 30, 2007
12:00 AM to
Washington, DC
At its most recent annual conference, the Brookings Center on the United States and Europe focused on three issues: the French elections which brought Nicolas Sarkozy to power, NATO’s difficult mission in Afghanistan, and the implications of Europe’s changing demographics. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Ettore Greco, August 01, 2006, The Brookings Institution
Ettore Greco, U.S.-Europe Analysis Series (August 2006) Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Andrus Alber, Dimitris Kourkoumelis, Franz Stadler, Nicolas de Boisgrollier and Robert Micallef, June 01, 2006, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs
Article by Nicolas de Boisgrolllier with others, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs (Summer 2006) Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Alan Berube, April 01, 2006, The Brookings Institution
Alan Berube examines American and British policies addressing the ?neighborhood effects? of concentrated poverty as part of Going Places: Neighborhood, Ethnicity, and Social Change, a new volume published by the Institute of Public Policy Rese Read More
PAST EVENT
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
12:00 AM to
Washington, DC
The violence that followed the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed in several European newspapers has raised questions about European models of social integration and underscored that their debates at home can have dramatic implications abroad. The story has also raised questions about freedom of the press and self-censorship in the media. In a world threatened by a clash of civilizations, does freedom of the press include the right to offend the most sacred beliefs of others? In a time of fundamentalist terrorism, can we allow violence and the threat of violence to determine the content of our speech? Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Gilles Andréani, February 01, 2006, The Brookings Institution
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. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Tony Judt, February 01, 2006, The Brookings Institution
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. Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Jean-Michel Rousseau, February 01, 2006, The Brookings Institution
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 Read More
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
Jonathan Laurence, February 01, 2006, The Brookings Institution
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. Read More