On Thursday 8 January a European Parliament Conference of Presidents took place. It was chaired by the EU High Level Group on Own Resources lead by Mario Monti. The report on EU’s Own Resources that was published last month was presented under the idea of reforming the EU funding system. AEGEE / European Students’ Forum… » read more

Thanks to Leonard Besselink for giving a fast, sensible and innovative approach to get the Union out of the quagmire created by the Court’s Opinion 2/13. He proposes an amending Protocol to the TEU, which will basically amend Article 6(2) of that Treaty by announcing that this accession will happen “notwithstanding” the Opinion of the… » read more

The Court’s Opinion may have shattered expectations. Who had thought that the revised accession agreement that was renegotiated by the EU and its Member States with the State Parties to the ECHR, after an initial rejection in the Council by the UK and France, would be dodged by the Court? After all, on all the… » read more

History suggests that it may even be easier to create an identity for others than to find one for oneself. The ‘Us and Them’ syndrome, where the ‘Them’ are dumped together in a separate communal basket, makes the process a bit easier… The Greeks called all foreigners barbaros because they couldn’t decipher their babbling. The… » read more

Since the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon the passionate desire of the European Ombudsman and European Parliament is to create a regulation for administrative procedures for all European institutions. Unfortunately the legal basis for such a proposal is far from solid. By Pieter van der Ploeg Currently, rules on administrative procedures for… » read more

By Richard Corbett MEP Europe has come a long way since the 1950s. Ideals are important, but our world has changed, and political reality has a habit of bringing them back down to earth with a bump.