Europe Archive

At the end of November, the European Union approved the launch of free trade talks with Morocco as part of an effort to upgrade existing agreements with southern Mediterranean countries. In an email interview, Susi Dennison, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, discussed the EU’s economic relationship with its southern neighbors. WPR: What is driving the EU to seek upgraded free trade agreements with Morocco, Jordan, Tunisia and Egypt? Susi Dennison: After the revolutions in North Africa in early 2011, and the ensuing criticism of the EU’s failure to challenge the previous autocratic regimes, the EU […]

Managing defeat well is one of the greatest skills a diplomat can have. Historians have a special admiration for statesmen who have extracted their countries from failed wars. These diplomatic heroes include Talleyrand, who brilliantly defended French interests after the fall of Napoleon, and Henry Kissinger, who devised America’s exit from Vietnam. As Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, reflects on the challenges ahead in 2013, he may wonder if he will be able to manage the consequences of a lost war. For Lavrov, that lost war is the Syrian conflict. Although it has now claimed more than 40,000 lives, the […]

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deferral in late-October of a planned visit to India, now scheduled to take place in late-December, encapsulates a bilateral relationship buffeted by shifting global geo-economics but still lucrative for both parties. The postponement reflects the fact that euphemisms such as “strategic partnership” do not automatically translate into preferential treatment in commercial matters in a world increasingly driven by interests over ideology and history. A number of unresolved issues had built up on both sides that precluded the possibility of a successful summit meeting. Topping the list is New Delhi’s decision to bring any additional Russian-built reactors […]

Speaking last Thursday in Dublin to a group of human rights activists on the sidelines of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) conference, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton effectively sounded the death-knell for the reset in U.S.-Russia relations. Commenting on Russian proposals for creating a Eurasian Union comprising Russia and other former Soviet republics, Clinton bluntly described the plan as a “move to re-Sovietize the region” and said that the United States is “trying to figure out effective ways to slow down or prevent it.” Given that the proposal to develop the Eurasian Union was at the […]

The British government withheld a $34 million aid payment to Rwanda at the end of November, citing charges in a U.N. report that Rwanda is backing rebels in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo. In an email interview, Pamela Abbott, the acting director of research at the Institute of Policy Analysis and Research in Rwanda, reviewed the state of development aid to Rwanda. WPR: Who are Rwanda’s main aid partners, and how steady has this been over the years? Pamela Abbott: Rwanda’s main aid partners are the World Bank, the U.S., the Global Fund, the European Union, the U.K., Belgium, […]

The U.S. presidential election campaign, particularly as it entered its final months, sucked up much of the oxygen in the news universe, meaning that a number of small international developments that might have otherwise drawn greater attention escaped notice. Under normal circumstances, the issues that had been overlooked would have gotten a closer look once the election was decided. But because of the breathless coverage of the David Petraeus scandal last month, since replaced by the 24/7 focus on whether the United States is about to plunge over the fiscal cliff, that has not happened. But one development in particular […]

Israel is not backing down from a settlement expansion plan, announced following the United Nations vote providing Palestine with nonvoting observer-state status, despite a loud protest over the plan from five European Union countries. On Monday, the U.K., France, Sweden, Denmark and Spain all summoned Israel’s ambassadors to their countries in protest of Israel’s decision to construct 3,000 new housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and to begin planning for a long-frozen development project in a particularly sensitive area of the West Bank known as E1.* Sharon Pardo, Jean Monnet Chair in European Studies and a senior […]

Editor’s note: Richard Gowan will be writing the Continentalist column for the month of December. Is France the most influential nation at the United Nations today? To anybody who doesn’t follow events at the U.N. closely, this may sound silly. The United States still has more political and financial clout than any other member of the organization, even if it has to endure frequent criticism from poorer countries. Russia has used its status as a permanent member of the Security Council as a blunt instrument to protect Syria from U.N. sanctions for more than a year. China has become an […]

Editor’s note: Catherine Cheney reported on German policymaking as part of the German-American Fulbright Commission’s Berlin Capital Program, which is funded by the German Foreign Office. BERLIN — The Betreuungsgeld, a policy that will provide a monthly allowance to parents who keep their toddlers out of public daycare programs, is at the center of an emotional debate on family politics in Germany. Approved last month and scheduled to go into effect next year, the subsidy is an attempt to make it easier for parents, in most cases women, to care for children ages one to three on their own. Critics […]