The European Council on Foreign Relations

ECFR this week: 30th March 2012

Date: 30th March 2012  |  Author: Nicholas Walton,

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As the people of Burma ready themselves for a historic election on 1st April, which will probably see Aung San Suu Kyi elected to parliament, we published a timely policy memo explaining how the EU can ensure that Burma’s reforms are more than skin deep. In ‘How the EU can support reform in Burma’, Jonas Parello-Plesner cautions against raising sanctions too quickly. Instead, he argues that Europe should tie the raising of sanctions to real signs of progress, use development aid to consolidate reforms, and create an environment for foreign businesses to invest in Burma in a sustainable and considerate way.

This last week also saw the second in our series of papers examining national debates over Europe, as part of our ‘Reinventing Europe’ project. Petr Drulak looks at the case of the Czech Republic, and argues that its truculence on EU issues is a logical response to its situation, largely because it is small, Central European and post-communist. Click here for the 'first paper' in the series, examining the Polish position in the EU.

We also published two more podcasts/blog posts in our series examining how other global powers view Europe (click here for the first in the series, looking at the view from China):

• Rajendra K Jain looks at the Indian view of Europe: "Unlike in the past, India is determined to play an active interest in the framing of new rules so that they reflect and protect the needs and aspirations of one sixth of humanity."

• Atila Eralp deals with the Turkish view: "Has Turkey’s relationship with the EU departed from being seen as a normative goal or strategic vision, into a framework for a useful but ‘just another’ partnership in international relations?"

Elsewhere:

• Rabbi Michael Melchior, the former Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, explains why solutions in the Middle East must involve reaching out to hardliners, in this audio podcast.

• For German speakers, Armin von Bogdandy talks about ‘more Europe’ in this ECFR Deutsch podcast.

• Our exhaustive tour of Europe to promote and discuss ECFR’s Foreign Policy Scorecard 2012finally came to an end this week. Hans Kundnani wrote this blog post on the event that was held in Madrid, and Andreas Mullerleile wrote this one about the event held in Brussels.Thanks to all that came along to the events held across Europe (and beyond) over the last month.

• Finally, for those who have been following this week’s BRICS summit in New Delhi, this article by Parag Khanna examines the differences between the world’s rapidly rising powers and finds a startling lack of common purpose.