Cameron meets Sarkozy to sign France-Britain nuclear deal
Britain and France are to sign a civil nuclear energy deal on Friday, as UK Prime Minister David Cameron meets President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris. The British government claims the deal will create thousands of jobs. READ MORE
Erdogan should resign over Armenia row
Erdogan should have followed a rational and strategic approach regarding the French bill on Armenian genocide. Instead, he acts like a small kid in the sandbox, writes Michael Kambeck from European Friends of Armenia. READ MORE
The New Power Alliance: Russia, Germany and France
Moscow is flush with cash from energy sales and arms producers in France, Italy and Germany are happy to take large chunks of it. They are busily selling Russia advanced weapons, sensitive dual-use systems and military supplies. All this indicatesunprecedented Russian openness about (and need to) buy advanced weapons systems. Moreover, Moscow-based experts say privately that the Kremlin hopes the arms deals help revive the Russian-French-German axis that began to emerge in 2003 in opposition to the US-Iraq war. READ MORE
Giscard: Europe needs a people’s congress
EU leaders are too focused on the short term of upcoming elections and lack a strategic vision to give new impetus to European integration and better connect with citizens, said Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. READ MORE
Surprise Turn Against Qaddafi is Russia's Latest Westward Step
Russia, a quasi-democracy and an imperial power that never quite gave up all of its colonial holdings, has dedicated much of its post-Soviet foreign policy to resisting everything that the NATO intervention in Libya stands for. It shrugs at human rights violators, abhors military intervention, enshrines the sovereign right of states to do whatever they want internally without fear of outside meddling, and above all objects to the West imposing its ideology on others. NATO itself, after all, is a military alliance constructed in opposition to the Soviet Union. But Russian President Dmitri Medvedev took a surprising break from Russian foreign policy precedent on Friday when, in the middle of a G8 summit in France, he declared that Libyan leader Muammar "Qaddafi has forfeited legitimacy" and that Russia plans "to help him go." READ MORE
The euro crisis shows starkly that power in the European Union has shifted from France to Germany
When the financial crisis erupted in September 2008 President Nicolas Sarkozy was quick to seize the European lead. He summoned Britain’s Gordon Brown to emergency talks in Paris. He urged Europeans to stimulate their economies. He taunted Germany’s Angela Merkel for hesitating over a stimulus plan, declaring that “France is working on it; Germany is thinking about it.” The French counted at least as much as the Germans—indeed, they were setting the pace (in part fortuitously, as France held the European Union presidency at the time). READ MORE
A place for Russia in the Weimar Triangle
The Weimer Triangle is just one of the many prisms through which the EU looks at Russia. After a long break, the heads of state of Poland, Germany and France came together for a meeting of the Weimar Triangle on February 7. Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski started the summit off with a bang by inviting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to attend the summit, and all future summits, as a guest. READ MORE
Polish Minister: Europe Is Much More Than Just France, Germany And The UK
The EU needs more unity and less controversy and is not just about what France, Germany or the UK wants, Polish State Secretary for European Affairs Mikołaj Dowgielewicz told EurActiv.fr in an interview. He discussed the plans of the Polish EU Presidency, which will begin in July 2011. READ MORE
Anti-Missile Shield Against Nameless States
NATO Summit in Lisbon and other significant events with the participation of Russia and 20 states, cooperating with NATO, should become historic ones. The new adopted NATO doctrine is called to define the strategy of the Alliance within the following 10 years. READ MORE
Nuclear Deal With Iran All for Show
The Obama administration is preparing the ground for tougher sanctions on Iran by pushing to revive last year's ill-fated fuel swap deal. The renewed proposal to swap Iran's low enriched uranium for research reactor fuel is not a serious attempt at engagement, as the Unites States knows it will likely fail. Instead, it is intended to depict the United States as a reasonable negotiating partner, and Iran as a duplicitous state bent on obtaining the bomb at all costs. This could increase support for harsher international sanctions that are more strictly implemented. READ MORE
