The Lisbon Treaty introduced a major institutional innovation in the field of external relations by creating a common diplomatic service, the European External Action Service (EEAS). During the past 20 months this service has progressively been set up. With some 3,000 officials and an annual budget of around €500 million, it is still small but unique in its talents and language skills. READ MORE

Journalism is not accidentally called the second oldest profession. Introduction to the so called creative work of some representatives of the creative department causes a strong feeling that all the readers are held for rednecks that do not understand anything. With the certain didactic tone of a press gang at times they write about the events, which either they do not understand, or still taking into account their professionalism, they intentionally and most likely not gratuitously distort the truth. READ MORE

The shooting of a Law and Justice (PiS) party functionary together with the stabbing of another in Łódź last month prompted at least one newspaper to raise the spectre of a Polish civil war, an analogy that was already being bandied around in the run-up to the elections. The attacks are the latest and most shocking events in a string of increasingly hysterical clashes between conservative traditionalists and modernising liberals. The seismic shock of the Smolensk disaster in April seems to have jarred opened a vault of dark national feelings that nobody suspected was there. READ MORE

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged countries around the world to make water a priority in their foreign policy and find cooperative solutions to shared water challenges. READ MORE

Both the opposition coalition Georgian Dream and the ruling United National Movement (UNM) of President Mikheil Saakashvili claimed victory in the parliamentary elections held yesterday (1 October). Regardless of the final results, the poll appears to mark the end of the single-party rule in the Western-backed nation. READ MORE