Economic and Financial

The article of Pierre Defraigne “Who will pay the bill for the coronavirus” (La Libre Belgique 18/03/20) is, as usual with this eminent specialist of European affairs, both pertinent and coherent insofar as it identifies precisely the major policy areas that must be managed at EU level if the Union wishes to justify its existence and consequently ensure its survival. Nevertheless, I cannot endorse P. Defraigne’s rigorous analysis because it appears to me as a mere (useful) development of the arguments advanced over the last 50 years surrounding the EU project. Indeed, I believe that we have reached a point of rupture in which the accumulation of tensions in several key areas, considered up to now separately, are intermingling,  making…

The EU summit, which has just concluded, will celebrate the “satisfactory progress” made in the Brexit negotiations and leave self-satisfied European leaders to enjoy year end celebrations with the feeling of having accomplished their duty! The cracks in the EU unanimity on the sensitive matters of migration and further deepening Eurozone integration will keep alive the hopes of extreme Brexeteers that the worst consequences of Brexit will be avoided by an eventual collapse of the EU itself. While there will be little respite in Brexit negotiations with the focus on the “transition period” starting early in the new year, other priority preoccupations, in particular reforming the Eurozone, are being pushed back to next June after the hoped for formation of…