“It was an outrage, an obscenity. The severed hand on the metal door, the swamp of blood and mud across the road, the human brains inside a garage, the incinerated, skeletal remains of an Iraqi mother and her three small children in their still-smouldering car. Two missiles from an American jet killed them all –… Read more »

Edmond Grace: Over the past year you have spent some considerable time in Ukraine as EU observer to the Timoshenko case. How is the EU seen in that country? Pat Cox: For many Ukrainians, especially the young, their idea of Europe is of modernisation, values, the rule of law – especially the fight against corruption – and… Read more »

Jean Merckaert and Solange de Coussemaker: You are aware that Italy, Spain and Portugal made the choice for Europe in order to distance themselves from their fascist past. Fifty years on, we are witnessing a strong rise of extremists in advance of elections. Has Europe lost its soul? James K. Galbraith: This is a real danger. The… Read more »

For many people, particularly those struggling to make ends meet, the European Parliament elections can seem very remote from the reality of their lives. It is tempting to either ignore the elections entirely or use them to make a statement about national politics or the personality of candidates. This would be a mistake. Over the… Read more »

Introduction Asylum and migration has been at the forefront of European Union policymaking for many years, but especially so during the last decade. The gradual enlargement of the Union and the disappearance of internal borders has obliged national governments and EU institutions to fundamentally re-think how refugees and migrants are welcomed into European society. Indeed,… Read more »

Three core insights came together for Fr Pedro Arrupe SJ when he launched Jesuit Refugee Service 30 years ago this week. The first compelling factor was his compassion for the refugees in their suffering. He wrote to the Society on 14 November 1980 ‘…last year, struck and shocked by the plight of thousands of boat people and refugees, I felt it my duty…,’.

It may seem strange, as Ireland prepares for its second vote on the Lisbon Treaty on October 2, 2009, to focus on the vision of Europe of the current pope. After all, are his views not essentially religious and are Ireland’s concerns with Lisbon not, in the main, economic, social and political? At first glance,… Read more »

The title proposed to me implies a double focus: actually, a double double focus. If the rest of this edition of Working Notes offers perspectives on Europe, my task is to discuss perspectives from Europe. Two doublets are implicit in the title: ‘The view’: but whose view? The view of the political establishment in Brussels?… Read more »

Euro barometer surveys consistently show that Irish people have a positive attitude towards the European Union. Research on how people voted in the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty found that this positive attitude was the strongest single factor affecting people’s voting decisions.1 It also found that a low level of knowledge of what was in… Read more »

The Irish electorate has voted in favour of many European treaties since the original treaty of accession in 1971. Until the Nice Treaty any deal struck by Irish negotiators with their European partners included generous financial incentives. These incentives are indisputable and easily grasped. They have been our point of entry into Europe up till now and no other vision has been offered by our political leaders, who now have left it too late to redeem their failure of leadership. They have appealed too often and too eagerly to narrow self-interest and, as a result, they have lost the ability to inspire any generous sentiment.