Just as the mechanisms that made democracy function in city states were not adequate for governing nation states, representative democracies today are showing themselves incapable of managing, effectively and democratically, the system that is emerging in Europe.

In a summary of the first chapter of his new book, The fragmentation of European power, José Ignacio Torreblanca describes how the optimism with which Europe entered the new millenium has so quickly turned to gloom, and asks whether the new reality is here to stay.

Europe is cracking along key fault lines: its values, the euro, foreign policy and leadership. If there is no radical change, the integration process could collapse, leaving the future of Europe as an economically and politically relevant entity up in the air.

The White House isn't happy about answering uncomfortable questions over Bin Laden's death: in the logic of war, the details of his demise don't matter. But in the logic of justice they are important.

Morocco's heterogenerous protest movement wants “liberty, democracy and equality,” but that doesn't mean the end of the monarchy. The king's role in constitutional reform is problematic, but could also be part of the solution.

France didn't see what was coming in Tunisia, nor did the US in Egypt. Spain is in danger of making the same mistake with Morocco, where a protest planned for 20th February seems to have much in common with the popular movements that brought such dramatic change to those countries.

EU member states worry too much about speaking with one voice. But endless unified expressions of 'interest and concern' about the situation in Tunisia and Egypt show that the problem is that others aren't listening because we often have little to say.

It is easy to resign oneself to the idea that 'Chinese democracy' is an oxymoron. Yet the potential implications of democratisation in China are so huge that the possiblity of it happening is worth imagining. Lu Xiaobo allows us to do so, if only for a few hours.

Germany was a model for the post-Franco rebuilding of Spanish democracy, and for a time was perhaps Spain's most important ever partner. The switch to rivalry in recent years, and Spain's failure to support Germany while it struggled with the financial implications of reunification, has meant that Madrid's erstwhile allies in Berlin are distant at this hour of crisis.

In the past, Germany has been both a model and a partner for Spain. But there have been deep-seated changes in how Berlin views southern Europe, and seen from Spain, it is as if Germany has decided southern Europe is a burden that prevents it from going global and needs to be dumped.

At first glance the recent Franco-British treaty on defence looks like a model of pragmatism, tinged by a British desire to keep greater pan-EU defence cooperation at bay. But like so many European agreements over the last decades, this aspiration to preserve sovereignty may not prevent the treaty contributing to exactly that higher level of cooperation.

Spain has a new minister of foreign affairs - Trinidad Jimenez. So what are the priorities? Firstly, to restore international confidence in Spain, but then to think of the long term challenges in a world that is changing quickly.

Europe's pathetic reaction to Liu Xiaobo's Nobel peace prize showed an urge by EU leaders to not only render themselves internationally irrelevant, but also a determination to cover the EU itself in ridicule. Europe must decide whether it wants to play a role in the new world order, or bend like reeds in whichever direction the wind is blowing.

Waging even one war and winning it is complicated enough. Not to mention waging three different wars and winning them. This is what faces the international forces in Afghanistan. (In English and Spanish)

The EU is finally looking for coherent ways to organise itself as a powerful actor on the world stage. This is necessary in a multi-polar world of rising powers - but Europe needs to remember that dealing with its challenges at home is a prerequisite for being taken seriously abroad.