The European Council on Foreign Relations

ECFR This Week: 10th February 2012

Date: 10th February 2012  |  Author: Nicholas Walton,

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This week saw the beginning of the next stage of our ‘Reinvention of Europe’ project – the first of a series of papers examining the debates and dynamics in a particular country. This first paper is “Reinventing Europe: Poland and the euro crisis” by Konstanty Gebert, the head of ECFR’s Warsaw office. We’ve several more national papers in the pipeline, covering a range of countries, from Italy to the Czech Republic and Britain, and we hope they’ll be useful for those seeking to understand the interplay of internal dynamics with a Europe-wide crisis.

Our series of blog posts on the Reinvention of Europe from influential thinkers and academics is also continuing:

• Christopher Bickerton: “Populism, after all, is politics without policies; technocracy is policy without politics.”

• Carlos Gaspar: “In an enlarged ‘Euroland’, Germany’s pre-eminence could be balanced by a Catholic coalition led by France, Italy and Poland.”

Last week’s big publication, ECFR’s Foreign Policy Scorecard 2012, is continuing to attract headlines across Europe. We’re also rolling out a series of events in a wide range of countries – if you’re interested, keep an eye on the Events section of our website for details. I’m also publishing the audio interviews with individual authors (which you can find on the Scorecard’s interactive website) as podcasts – this week the podcast is with Daniele Marchesi, one of the authors of the Middle East/North Africa section.

Elsewhere:

• Following much internal debating over the correct response to the crisis in Syria, Julien Barnes-Dacey wrote this blog post on the logic behind negotiating with Assad’s regime as the best way to avoid more bloodshed.

• Ben Judah contributed this blog post that examines Moscow’s position on Syria.

• Julien also wrote this article on Syria’s neighbour, Jordan, explaining why the Arab Awakening is beginning to affect Amman.

• We also published two podcasts on the Middle East. This one is an interview with Toby Dodge about the situation in Iraq; This one is with HebaMorayef on Egypt.

• Jonas Parello Plesner wrote this piece about the visit of Angela Merkel to China, drawing heavily on the findings of ECFR’s Scorecard.

• It may be cold in the Balkans, but in this blog post Dimitar Bechev looks at how relations between Serbia and Croatia are particularly warm.

• We have a Spanish language podcast with Antonio López-Istúri, talking about the current crisis in Europe and the situation in Hungary.

• Finally, this blog post from Konstanty Gebert looked at the rise of Turkey from the perspective of an event hosted by ECFR’s Warsaw office.

That’s it for this week. You can follow us on twitter @ecfrheadlines or ‘like’ us on Facebook. We also compiled a handy list of individual ECFR experts on twitter which can be found here. Our podcasts can be found on iTunes, and you can subscribe to our free email round up of the best articles on the Middle East and North Africa.

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