On January 1, 2010 the presidency in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe will be passed in rotation to Kazakhstan. In this connection during an annual Eurasian media forum, which took place in Moscow recently, there was an opinion expressed that in the close future the emphasis in OSCE activities will shift – instead of the human rights issues the priority will be given to the security issues. It is noticing that though Kazakhstan’s leader Nazarbayev is known for his authoritative methods, his country can’t impose its policy or vision of problems on other OSCE countries, even when Russia and Belarus support Kazakhstan as their Customs Union partner. READ MORE

It is a fact long lamented by those two endangered species, British Germanophiles and German Anglophiles: apart from a few pockets of intense co-operation, such as in justice and home affairs, the potential of a German-British partnership has seldom been exploited in European policy. The political impetus to be generated by the German and UK heads of government moving together in elegant tandem has not been realised. READ MORE