Section: European Voice (EU)
Energy companies warn of cutting ties with Russia
The European Union will continue to rely heavily on imports of Russian gas even if it takes measures to diversify sources of supplies. This was the view of a number of major European energy companies speaking at the European Energy 2014 conference jointly organised by European Voice and The Economist on 8 October. The EU has drawn up a series of...
Oettinger to present energy security stress test results
Günther Oettinger, the European commissioner for energy (pictured), will today (16 October) present the results of stress tests conducted by the European Commission on how European Union member states would cope with an interruption of gas supplies from Russia. Preliminary results, shared with energy ministers last week, showed that the EU could...
Grzegorz Schetyna – surprise replacement
Grzegorz Schetyna told journalists on 10 September: “This is a bad moment to change Poland’s foreign minister.” Less than two weeks later, he took over the position from Radek Sikorski, who had held the job since 2007. The crisis in Ukraine was just one reason why Schetyna’s return to government – part of a cabinet reshuffle following...
Juncker’s flawed second attempt
Jean-Claude Juncker’s revised proposal for the college of European commissioners is short-sighted and self-serving. It is an understandable response to the rejection of Alenka Bratušek and makes sense when judged from within Brussels in the light of the short-term imperative to get a college approved on 22 October so that it can start work...
Kazakhstan upgrades ties with EU
The European Union and Kazakhstan yesterday (9 October) announced that they have completed negotiations on a partnership and co-operation agreement, bringing three years of fitful talks to a close. José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, hailed the new agreement – an expansion of an existing deal – not just for its benefits...
Putin heads for EU-Asia meeting
The crisis in Ukraine is likely to intrude significantly into an effort next week by the European Union to deepen its relations with Asia, as Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to attend the two-day Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit in Milan. The arrival of Putin, whose country is now subject to extensive EU sanctions because of its...
The ebb-tide of central European Atlanticism
Friendly criticism sometimes works. Unfriendly criticism usually doesn’t. That is the problem with which the United States is grappling as it tries to stem the decline of Atlanticism in large parts of central and eastern Europe. In Washington, DC, last week, Victoria Nuland, the senior State Department official dealing with the continent,...
Juncker faces local and global difficulties
Adversity is wonderful for concentrating the mind, so Jean-Claude Juncker, the incoming president of the European Commission, should be concentrating very hard just now. Juncker faces two kinds of adversity: parochial and global. The global context will be painfully outlined in the coming days during the annual meetings of the International...
Russia and US politics unsettle TTIP talks
European Union and United States trade negotiators met last week near Washington, DC, for a week of talks heavily influenced by the approach of mid-term elections in the US and amid increasing pressures from the EU to re-shape the negotiations. The chief negotiators on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – Ignacio Garcia...
Mogherini takes the helm
Federica Mogherini’s hearing before the European Parliament was never going to be a dramatic event. The question was what type of event it would be. Swiftly, it became more apparent what the evening could become. The future chief of the European Union’s foreign policy arrived in a crowd of journalists and set about gladhanding with...
