Author Archives: Le Rétif
Eastern Europe and the push for ‘double genocide’ laws
The European commission has rejected calls from eastern Europe to introduce a so-called double genocide law that would criminalise the denial of crimes perpetrated by communist regimes, in the same way many EU countries … Continue reading
EU raids ebook publishers in price fixing investigation
The European commission has launched morning raids on several publishing houses suspected of fixing the prices of ebooks, as a huge battle for the future of the sector is fought within the publishing … Continue reading
Roma campaigners dismiss Brussels’ claim on evictions and expulsions
A year after a succession of countries in Europe began breaking up Roma encampments and expelling hundreds of EU citizens back mainly to Romania, the European commission has claimed it is winning the battle to … Continue reading
EU bans GM-contaminated honey from general sale
The European Union’s highest court on Tuesday ruled that honey which contains trace amounts of pollen from genetically modified (GM) corn must be labelled as GM produce and undergo full … Continue reading
The European roots of Somali piracy
As global powers ratchet up the naval pressure off the coast of Somalia and the European Union this week prepares to play host to a major international conference on the … Continue reading
Ship Ahoy! Lobby firm buys up EU maritime officials
Transparency campaigners are worried that a PR outfit that lobbies the EU on maritime issues has “bought up the top of the EU’s maritime department lock, stock and barrel.” The … Continue reading
Battling the ‘Multilateral Zombie’ – EU climate strategy after Copenhagen
The rough hip-check Europe received in the Danish capital in December, sidelining the bloc during the eleventh-hour huddle between major powers that produced the Copenhagen Accord, has produced a wave … Continue reading
Bosses: want to know who’ll join the union? There’s an app for that!
Imagine an app that would tell bosses which of his workers was most likely to want to join a union. Leigh Phillips writes on the creepier side of new technologies … Continue reading
The ninth art meets the fourth estate
Tracing the emergence of comic-book journalism Traditional print journalism may be in crisis, with once‑mighty, agenda-setting oak trees of national and regional newspapers in fear of felling. But elsewhere, the … Continue reading
The state of democracy in Hungary: ‘The illness has advanced to a new stage’
A gypsy girl of maybe eight, nine years old holds onto her little brother tightly. Looking out over the chicken-wire fence at the end of their mud garden in the … Continue reading
BNP attends international far-right conference in Japan
The British National Party is taking part in a week-long conference in Japan organised by Nippon Issuikai, an extreme-right group that denies Japanese wartime atrocities. Adam Walker, the BNP‘s staff manager, is in … Continue reading
The EU’s ‘very odd’ atheist and freemason summits
In 2010, under pressure to balance the EU’s treaty-required regular consultations with religious leaders with those without faith, Brussels launched an annual summit between the three Roman Catholic presidents of … Continue reading
The EU’s ‘techno party’ is hollowing out democracy
Not everybody’s into techno music. Some folks are a little bit country; others a little bit rock and roll. But under what one Brussels wag recently called the EU’s ‘techno-party’ … Continue reading
‘New system of European governance’ demands deeper austerity
The European taskmaster has cracked the whip. However much austerity has been imposed by EU member states, it is simply not enough. That is the overriding message from the European … Continue reading
Working the night-shift in the German austerity sweatshop – Part IV: The end of the eurozone
But if what needs to happen cannot happen, what does Lord Skidelsky, a 71-year-old economic historian who has been witness to the full fifty years of European integration, think will? … Continue reading
Working the night-shift in the German austerity sweatshop – Part III: Back to the future with the Werner Plan
So how do we get out of this mess? It’s relatively simple, really. All that has to happen is a rebalancing of competitiveness between the core and the periphery. “Of … Continue reading
Working the night-shift in the German austerity sweatshop – Part II: The China of Europe
But how did we get into this mess in the first place? In the 1990s during the run-up to the single currency and throughout the 2000s, all European countries battened … Continue reading
Working the night-shift in the German austerity sweatshop – Part I: Dr Merkel’s fiscal enema
There was a cheeky cartoon that made the Facebook and Twitter rounds a few days ago, posted by one of the Financial Times’ Alphaville bloggers. It went ‘viral,’ as the social-media consultants … Continue reading
The junta of experts tells us: ‘Vote how you like, but policies cannot change’
Europe seems to have slipped almost imperceptibly in the space of only a few months into an electoral interzone, a crack in the pavement of democracy. The formal trappings of … Continue reading
Hurling democracy into the volcano to appease the market gods
Pacific islanders never actually threw virgins into volcanoes to appease angry gods; it was only ever a TV trope of bad American sketch comedy and Saturday-morning cartoons. But you remember … Continue reading
Castro graphic novel review
Another comic to add to the burgeoning genre of what the French call BD reportage, or – less elegant in English – comic-book journalism, Reinhard Kleist’s graphic‑novel biography of Fidel … Continue reading
Maybe the Roma need their own Love Parade to get the EU to notice them
Perhaps we could be accused of an excess of cynicism, but us hacks in the Brussels press corps regularly roll our eyes at the European Commission’s opportunistic penchant for putting … Continue reading
Nobel-Peace-thingie laureate and Israel’s BFF Baron Trimble of Lisnagarvey to monitor Gaza flotilla inquiry
In covering the announcement of plans by the Israeli cabinet to approve the establishment of an “independent public committee” to enquire into the events surrounding the attack on the Gaza … Continue reading
‘Do we really need another layer of democracy in the world?’ Snarf, snarf, guffaw.
One of the things one has to accustom oneself to in the capital of Europe is the thinly concealed contempt for democracy that so many characters have in this town. … Continue reading
That €400 million Europe’s sending to Haiti? A bit bountiful with the truth
Governments have a decidedly crafty habit of announcing, reannouncing and announcing once again the same tranche of funding but in different contexts (and even re-announcing the announcements), making it look … Continue reading
