The British Conservative Party has tabled legislation that would guarantee an EU in/out referendum before the end of 2017. The bill, released on Tuesday (14 May), is expected to be sponsored as a private member's bill ...

Two senior British ministers have said they would vote to leave the EU if there was a referendum now. Speaking on BBC TV on Sunday (12 May), the ruling Conservative Party's education minister Michael Gove said: "My ...

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 ...

David Cameron’s London speech (23 January) is the culmination of a long period of in-decision over the position of the Coalition Government towards Europe. Hemmed-in by an increasingly eurosceptic Conservative party on ...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British PM David Cameron on Thursday (24 January) sought common ground on the future of the European Union, one day after he announced a referendum on Britain's EU membership four ...

Other leaders have reacted coolly to Prime Minister David Cameron's speech on Europe, in a reminder that much of what stands on London's EU wishlist is dependent on the goodwill of other member states. "Of course ...

Downing Street has circulated parts of a speech due to warn of a British EU "exit," after cancelling it because of the Algerian hostage situation. With information trickling out on an Algerian army raid on a militant- ...

To an outsider here in Brussels, Britain’s stance towards Europe is utterly incomprehensible. Like it or not, the EU is the largest market in the world, while the unification process has ensured that, for the first time ...

It feels a little like Christmas with all the feverish expectations and speculations, hopes and requests: On Friday (18 January) David Cameron, the UK’s Prime Minister, is finally going to make his speech about Europe ...

The Obama administration has warned Britain against sidelining itself in the EU as Prime Minister Cameron comes under increasing pressure to hold a membership referendum. "We have a growing relationship with the EU as ...

UK Prime Minister David Cameron has conceded that withdrawal from the EU is "imaginable," in the latest indication that the Conservative leader is preparing the ground for a radical change in the country's EU status. ...

Catalan leader Artur Mas on Wednesday (7 November) challenged the EU's ambivalence on the rise of regionalism in the Union by saying it would be "illogical" not to accept small, rich, pro-EU Catalonia as an automatic ...

Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski has called on Britain to abandon its "false consciousness" of euroscepticism and take the lead in EU decision-making. Speaking at the Global Horizons conference at Blenheim palace ...

The Scottish government is facing renewed pressure to reveal legal advice on whether it would remain in the EU if the country votes to leave the United Kingdom. An urgent hearing of the Court of Session in Edinburgh ...

Last week, Eurogroup leader Jean Claude-Juncker said that a Greek exit from the eurozone could be managed. Why Juncker felt compelled to say this is unclear, especially since there are no indications Greece wants to ...

Almost half of British citizens would vote to leave the EU if there was a referendum, pollsters say. A survey by Canadian firm Angus Reid out on Tuesday (14 August) noted that 46 percent would vote to leave. It also ...

Political instability looks set to continue in Romania despite claims of a referendum victory by President Traian Basescu. The country's Central Electoral Commission announced after polls closed at 11pm local time on ...

Romanian expats in Brussels gathered at the European Commission headquarters on Wednesday to tell Prime Minister Victor Ponta to "stop faking democracy" and to abide by EU law. The 39 year-old premier - who was ...

Under increasing domestic pressure as the eurozone considers major integrative steps, Prime Minister David Cameron has said the UK may have a referendum on the EU, but his couched statement does not go far enough for ...

Despite the many calls in recent months for another great leap forward in European integration, remarkably little attention is being paid to the EU’s growing democratic deficit. As a result, the EU is moving ever closer ...

The expectations attached to the EU’s new participatory democracy tool are high. The European Citizens Initiative (ECI), allowing citizens to influence EU law-making, is seen as the most significant democratic reform in ...

At the outset there was a clear choice for the Irish electorate, when they went to the polls last Thursday for the 9th time on a European issue since 1973. „Yes to Stability“ or „No to Austerity“. And they delivered a ...

Ireland has voted in a favour of the fiscal discipline treaty but the Yes vote is seen as grudging and the country is now expecting EU "solidarity" in return. With all votes counted, 60.3 percent voted in favour of the ...

Another European treaty. Another Irish referendum. Once again the main political parties, somewhat battle weary, join forces to argue Yes. Sinn Fein and Declan Ganley, the maverick federalist, campaign for a No. Most ...

There is no doubt that history was made on Europe Day in 2012. It marked the first time a direct, transnational and digital tool of formal citizen participation came into operation. But the first European Citizens ...

People from all over the world are expected to take to the streets on 12 May to celebrate the first anniversary of the Spanish 'indignado' movement protesting economic austerity measures. Brussels-based 'indignados' ...

As an Irish legislator and citizen I keep asking myself, would it not be absurd if Irish voters were to vote in the 31 May Fiscal Compact Referendum in favour of imposing austerity rules on ourselves in order to get ...

Prime Minister Enda Kenny says voting in favour of the fiscal compact treaty on 31 May will secure Ireland's role in the eurozone and give the country access to the EU's long term bailout fund, the ESM. Others, such as ...

The drafters of the fiscal discipline treaty did everything they could to make sure it would not trigger a referendum in Ireland but a fact beyond their control - that it was a deal outside EU structures - means Irish ...

An independent Scotland would be one of the wealthiest parts of Europe, but it would stay out of the euro, deputy first minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon tells EUobserver during a visit to Brussels this week.

Jean-Claude Piris, the former director general of the EU Council's legal service, who helped pen the Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice, Constitutional Treaty and Lisbon Treaties, referred to the Union's new fiscal compact as ...

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny has said he intends to establish a permanent referendum commission so that the public is fully prepared for a possible poll on the fiscal discipline treaty currently being drawn up by ...

A majority of French people are opposed to the recently agreed EU plans for a fiscal compact treaty, with opposition Socialist presidential candidate Francois Hollande calling for a renegotiation of the text. Some 52 ...

Days away from taking over the EU's rotating presidency that will be responsible in part for steering through a new intergovernmental treaty, the Danish government has become stuck in a quagmire of resistance to the so- ...

On the day Croatia signed the accession treaty to become the 28th member of the European Union in July 2013, incoming foreign affairs and Europe minister Vesna Pusić says tells EUobserver that a referendum on accession ...

Within hours of arriving at a fragile treaty deal for the eurozone and nine other EU states, the agreement delivering deeper integration is already confronting the spectre of multiple referendums and a host of legal ...

Having lost a great deal of support when he decided not to have a promised referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, the British prime minister, David Cameron promised that he would definitely repatriate powers from the EU. And ...

The European Union may be able to winkle out of the fraught process of a full treaty change via a clever legal trick, EU Council President Herman van Rompuy has suggested. According to a two-page report from the Belgian ...

The eurozone crisis is yet again a painful reminder of how challenging it is to reconcile democracy and capitalism when the political institutions are lacking. It is now the self-appointed troika - the IMF, the European ...

With Germany pushing for a change to the EU treaty in order to toughen up economic governance, an EU resolution agreed Monday (14 November) by Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU party gives an idea of Berlin's thinking on ...

The ruling euro-sceptic ODS party in the Czech Republic wants to push for a referendum on the country's future eurozone accession, claiming that the rules have changed since 2003 when Czechs said yes to the EU and the ...

On Monday afternoon (24 October) the House of Commons will be debating the question whether there should be a referendum on Britain’s membership and position in the European Union. Matters to do with the EU have been ...