1. The lost lorry
How do you solve the following problem? A large lorry from a Member State of the EU arrives by ship at a port in Cyprus with goods for delivery. All the custom documents are in order according to EU legislation. Unfortunately the goods were intended for the Cypriot Greek south of the [...]

Intensive talks on the unity of Cyprus are underway again. At the eastern end of the Mediterranean, the island of Cyprus presents an enigma to other Europeans. Firstly it is a witness against today’s politicians in Brussels and elsewhere. Why could they too not make war ‘not only unthinkable but materially impossible’ — as Robert [...]

The European Commission has published a Press Memo called: Explaining the Treaty of Lisbon. Read it carefully as if you were enjoying a cup of tea — but treat it as if someone might have put lumps of poison in it. Remember these are the people who for several decades hid and denied the [...]

Subject: Europe’s foundational Declaration of Inter-Dependence
Communicating Europe with “old documents”
Dear President Barroso and Commissioners,
Congratulations on your new positions. During the coming months, the 60th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration to take place on 9 May 2010 must be planned. I hope that the entire Commission will give great thought to the preparations for this major [...]

The Europeans and especially their leaders are behaving like a blind man in a coal cellar. They have lost their way and lost their vision.
What is the most important of the documents signed by the Founding Fathers of Europe? Even if people knew what it was, they would be hard pressed to find a copy. [...]

In 1989 leaders of the European Community were shocked and worried about what they considered the dangerous consequences of the fall of the Berlin Wall. German unity was inevitable.
Some tried to block it. Others warned of a German Reich. Germany had been at the origin of three wars in a century: the Franco-Prussian war and [...]

The Lisbon Treaty is taking Europe into the 21st century. Don’t believe me. That is what the Europa.eu site declares. Europa is the European information site that still has not had the courage in all its existence to publish the full text of the Schuman Declaration at the origin of the European Community.
Europa.eu is [...]

Although many politicians lust after the job, the choice of Commission President is far too important to be left to party politicians. They are scarcely qualified. The job description says that Commissioners — all of them — should be independent. Party politicians obviously aren’t independent as they are proposed by and are therefore the tools [...]

Is the EU a democracy? It is a damning commentary on the democratic ethics of the 27 governments of the EU that they choose the President of the European Commission in secret, without any recourse to democracy. The press is shut out. Rumours fly around. Candidates for the Commission sometimes mysteriously appear. Yet no advertisement [...]

A Council protocol will aim to completely reverse the basic rule of European democracy defended passionately and with courage over decades by such European democrats as Robert Schuman, Paul-Henri Spaak and Joseph Luns. Many Commissioners in the past also fought an unequal battle to maintain democratic values against the return to raw, bare-knuckle, power politics. [...]