EU Election --Something Good Out of Something Bad (5/27)

By Jacqueline Grapin, Founder and Co-Chair of The European Institute 

The arrival of the Front National (FN) led by Marine Le Pen in first place (24.9 %) among the choices of the French electorate in the European elections is not an earthquake, but it is disturbing. 

Is France, the country of human rights and universalism, properly represented by a neo-fascist movement, particularly as it coincides with the arrival of a populist wave of Eurosceptic parties in the European parliament? The truth is that the vote is mostly a protest against the inability of the socialist and the conservative governing parties to provide the solutions to existing socio-economic challenges, and a revolt against the inability of the European Union to properly protect its citizens against immigration and wild international trade movements.

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Ukraine Crisis Moves OSCE Out of Shadows (5/19)

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

For two decades its 2,800 employees have toiled in relative obscurity, working on projects from democracy building to press freedom in the outer reaches of Europe and Central Asia. Now, thanks to the Ukraine crisis, the  Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) with a budget of 144.8 million Euros finds itself playing a key role in trying to defuse Europe's most dangerous confrontation since the end of the Cold War.

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Ukraine Has Forced Russia to Regard the EU as Strategic Rival (5/2)

By Mike Mosettig, former Foreign Editor of PBS News Hour

In the U.S. press there has been an undertone of commentary that missteps by the European Union helped provoke the Ukraine crisis that has now engulfed the trans-Atlantic alliance. The gist of the criticism is that the EU leadership, handling accession negotiations with Ukraine, failed to foresee how its accession offer would provoke an aggressive Russian response.

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EU High Court Ruling for Privacy Sends Shock Waves through Internet (5/14)

By James D. Spellman, Principal, Strategic Communications, LLC

Europe’s highest court has strengthened privacy safeguards by requiring Google to remove when requested Web links for individuals, setting a precedent that gives credence to the “right to be forgotten” on the internet, a right the European Commission wants to introduce explicitly into law.[1]

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