The European Council on Foreign Relations

ECFR This Week: 24th February 2012

Date: 24th February 2012  |  Author: Nicholas Walton,

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This week saw the publication of a paper that seeks to explain the tough German negotiating position over the euro crisis. ‘The long shadow of ordoliberalism: Germany’s approach to the euro crisis’, by Sebastian Dullien and Ulrike Guérot, argues that Mrs Merkel’s tough line is not about punishing economic wrongdoing. They argue that it is based upon a consistent approach to economics with broad support within Germany, and that this is unlikely to change under pressure from those anxious about austerity. Click here for a summary of the paper, and click here for the PDF.

Although ECFR’s policy staff spent the week in a policy retreat, discussing the big issues facing Europe (here’s a group photo of most of us looking slightly tired), we published a few other bits and pieces over the last week:

• Ulrike also wrote a blog post that looks into the question of identity in plotting a route out of the crisis. She suggests that it is vital that English becomes the European lingua franca.
   
• We published two more blog posts from leading academics and thinkers in our series on ‘Reinventing Europe’. The first was from Claus Offe (“Europe is not just needed as a defensive mechanism to prevent the weak being overpowered by the strong, who first administer an austerity cure without then providing the requisite support for recovery”).
   
• The second Reinvention blog post was from Mario Teló (“what is abusively decried by populist voices as a ‘German Europe’ might in fact look a lot like the broadly endorsed ‘EU2020 strategy’”).
   
• Jana Kobzova wrote this blog post examining the idea that ‘New Europe’ is breaking up, in response to this piece from Dimitar Bechev that talked of such a break up being slow but possibly inevitable.
   
• This article by ECFR Scorecard lead author Justin Vaïsse argues that ‘the sick man of Europe is Europe’.
   
• We also published the final two podcast interviews with Scorecard authors. In this podcast I talk to Jonas Parello-Plesner about Europe’s relations withChina, and in this one I talk to Nicu Popescu about our performance regarding Russia.
   
• Nicu also wrote this piece on Russian nationalism, ahead of the forthcoming presidential elections. Our Wider Europe programme is planning on publishing a policy brief next week on Vladimir Putin’s growing weakness, previewing the elections.
   
• Thomas König, the new coordinator of our China programme, wrote this blog post explaining why the fall of ‘princeling’ Bo Xilai has profound implications for China’s future economic trajectory. Read this edition of China Analysis for more on the debate over the Chongqing model versus the Guangdong model.
   
• Finally, our Madrid office put out this podcast with Teresa Ribera, former Spanish secretary of state for climate change.

That’s it for now. If you’re interested in the Middle East and North Africa, remember that our MENA programme puts out a weekly email round up of the best analysis that they’ve been reading. We’re also on Twitter (our Madrid, Paris, Rome and Warsaw offices and quite a few of our staff have their own accounts) and on Facebook.