Jan Philipp Albrecht is overseeing one of the most extensive and complex pieces of legislation to ever hit the European Parliament. Just 30 years old, the German Green MEP is the parliament’s top negotiator on the EU ...

Swedish defence minister Karin Enstrom has said her country is not in Nato partly because the EU treaty contains its own security guarantee. Speaking to EUobserver at the Globsec conference in Bratislava on Saturday (20 ...

The eurozone crisis and its latest Cyprus episode has led to a boost in the value of an Internet-based currency known as bitcoin, with Finns now the largest per capita users. One bitcoin was trading at over €100 on ...

Luxembourg and Malta on Wednesday (27 March) rejected comparisons between their banking sectors and Cyprus. But Deutsche Bank, for one, says they also have reason to worry. The Luxembourg government said in a communique ...

Twelve years ago, Roddy Damalis decided to leave South Africa where he was running two restaurants and return to his home country, Cyprus. The chef set up base in the southern Cypriot town of Limassol, where he opened ...

As anti-money-laundering auditors begin work in Cyprus, some experts, such as the head of European operations for US due-diligence firm Kroll, are questioning the value of the exercise. EU lenders want it to shed light ...

Moldovan PM Vlad Filat says he lost a no-confidence vote last week because he asked the prosecutor general to resign after he tried to cover up an accidental killing on a hunting trip. "There was a direct link [with the ...

This weekend (24 and 25 February) Italians will have their first general elections in almost five years. The last time they went to the polls to choose politicians for the upper and lower houses of parliament was when ...

It was just eight years ago. In 2004, Romano Prodi, an Italian economics professor from Bologna, left one of the most powerful posts in Europe. In his five year term as President of the European Commission, he oversaw ...

Cheap loans from the European Central Bank (ECB) might have calmed the euro crisis, but the fundamental problems are still there: governments have too much debt and no strategy to get out of it, Raimund Roeseler, ...

Nato head Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said that the alliance would only take action against Syria if Turkey is attacked. Speaking to EUobserver in his office in Brussels last week, the secretary general of what calls ...

Kosovo's foreign minister has said that a meeting between the Presidents of Kosovo and Serbia is "de facto recognition" by Serbia of Kosovo's independence. Serbian chief Tomislav Nikolic, an outspoken nationalist, ...

When the UN appointed Romano Prodi as its special envoy to Sahel in October last year, the hot, dusty Republic of Mali in south-west Sahara was rarely in the news. But a severe crisis was already brewing, with thousands ...

A senior French military officer has said France is better off without Nato or EU help to "reconquer" north Mali. Colonel Michel Goya, a serving officer and an expert at the Institut de Recherche Strategique de l'Ecole ...

For those suffering from eurozone crisis syndrome, it is easy to forget that an economic world exists beyond the EU's borders. For all the talk of recession and depression it would be a mistake to think that economies ...

A top counter-terrorism official has said the EU military training mission in Mali will increase the risk of revenge attacks in Europe. Asked by EUobserver on Tuesday (22 January) if France's intervention in Mali could ...

Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic is still promoting the idea of autonomy for ethnic Serbs in Kosovo, but only if Pristina agrees. Speaking to EUobserver in Brussels on Friday (18 January) following the last round of ...

Kosovo leader Hashim Thaci has said Serbia should stop talking about autonomy for north Kosovo and pull out its security forces instead. Speaking to EUobserver in Brussels on Thursday (17 January) ahead of a dinner with ...

Over recent decades, there has been a "paradigm shift" in the way disability rights are treated in the European Union with policy-makers now focussing on how to make society more inclusive of disabled people. "We've ...

Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union is gathering this week (4-6 December) in Hannover for a party congress, but the descendent of CDU founder Konrad Adenauer will not be among them. Stephan Werhahn, Adenauer's 59 ...

The first EU country to get a bailout and to implement harsh austerity measures, Latvia is now the bloc's fastest-growing economy and is poised to join the eurozone in 2014 - proof that spending cuts work, its Prime ...

"I stopped meeting him for lunch because all he did was ask questions and he never said anything about himself," a diplomat on the EU Council's working group for post-Soviet countries once told this website about his ...

EUobserver: In what way does the VSSE co-operate with the EU institutions and Nato? Alain Winants: Belgium hosts the institutions of two major international bodies - the EU and Nato, which is a great privilege but it's ...

Last year Germany went out on a limb by calling for political union in Europe. The idea was met with little enthusiasm elsewhere in the eurozone, but particularly in France. After the election of French President ...

The head of the EU anti-fraud office, Giovanni Kessler, has said he can improve Brussels' reputation so long as the work of his institution is not obstructed. Set up in 1999 after a corruption scandal which led to the ...

The EU should get ready for Palestine's renewed push to upgrade its UN status and stop calling for "illusory" peace talks with Israel, a senior Palestinian politician has said. Palestine grabbed world attention in New ...