The European Council on Foreign Relations

ECFR this week: 27th July

Date: 27th July 2012  |  Author: Andreas Mullerleile,

Categories: ECFR this week ,
Tags: , germany, germany , spain, turkey , turkey, usa, eurocrisis

This week Mark Leonard analyses the state of the transatlantic relationship (‘The end of the affair?’):

'Four years ago Barack Obama gave a landmark speech in front of a crowd of 200,000 in Berlin. They came to see an aspiring American president give flesh to all of Europe's fantasies about American leadership: multiethnic and multilateral; pragmatic and peacefully minded; social democratic in his goals and so eloquent in their expression. Obama promised to purge the sins of George W. Bush and give new impetus to the alliance for a new century. "America has no better partner than Europe" he said.'

But the transatlantic alliance is fading fast. What went wrong?            

Elsewhere:

• Jose Ignacio Torreblanca argues that austerity in Spain is the result of a serious collective failure. But there is also a complex problem linked to the financial sector or as Nacho sums it up: “a financial industry that fears the supervisors; supervisors that fear the parliaments, and parliaments that fear the citizens”
• EU-Turkey: A glimmer of hope? Dimitar Bechev analyses the latest developments in EU - Turkey relations.
• Dimitar also wrote a blog post about the terrorist attack on Israeli tourists in Bourgas.
• Ulrike Guérot and Sebastian Dullien explain Germany’s role in the euro crisis by looking at a concept called ‘ordoliberalism’. The article revisits the main arguments of ECFR’s policy brief ‘The Long Shadow of Ordoliberalism’.
• Nicu Popescu writes about the strange alliance of democrats and nationalists in Putin’s Russia.
• Britain's non-EU exports are now above 50% for the first time in decades: In a 'London view' blog post Nicholas Walton explainswhy this reinforces a central truth about British euroscepticism.

Podcasts:

• After a dramatic couple of weeks in Syria, is the Assad regime facing its end game? Julien Barnes-Dacey assesses the situation on our podcast.
• Our Madrid office published a podcast with an Interview with Manuel Manrique on the role of Spain in North Africa. (in Spanish)
• And on our German podcast Olaf Boehnke explains the challenges of digital diplomacy. (in German)

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