European Institute

“This Blessed Plot” Shines Light on Brexit

By Michael D. Mosettig, former Foreign Editor of PBS News Hour

When Britain’s premier political commentator Hugo Young published “This Blessed Plot” in 1998, it was well received as a magisterial history of the United Kingdom’s rocky post-World War II relationships with the European unification movement and its progeny.[1]

Little did anyone imagine 20 years later, this same book would be a road map to the two-year-plus, non-stop mess, now careening to chaos, called Brexit.

If Brexit Now Fails, The West Will Gain

By Robert E. Hunter

The massive defeat for Brexit in the British Parliament by more than 200 votes means that the whole issue gets sent back to the drawing board. There are only 73 days before the magic moment when, on March 29, the UK is scheduled to depart from the European Union. But even that is no longer certain.

With the clock ticking, debate now continues in haste, with a wide range of alternatives to be considered.

Italy’s 2019 Budget Worries the EU and Global Markets

By J. Paul Horne, The European Institute at the University of Maryland

Rarely does Italian fiscal policy seriously worry foreign investors accustomed to successive crises, but the 2019 budget proposed by Rome’s new coalition government of the League (“Lega”) of right-wing parties and the populist Five Star Movement (5SM) is triggering bad reactions in bond and equity markets, even fears of a renewed Euro debt crisis. The sharp sell-off in European and U.S. equities during the week of October 8 was attributed in part to when Italy appeared to thumb its nose at basic EU austerity measures.