Eu

Jean-Claude Juncker clearly appreciated that high-five David Cameron gave him in Brussels recently: he’s appointed Lord Hill to a sizeable economic portfolio as the UK’s European Commissioner. The full list of jobs, published here, is being billed as a ‘strong and experienced team standing for change’, and Hill, who Juncker reportedly had to google, takes the Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union portfolio. This means that has oversight of a key interest: regulations affecting the City. David Cameron is a little more worried about another Union today, but this appointment is a boost to his plans to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the European Union. It shows that he did

Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, has been appointed the new European Council President. Tonight, Tusk has had warm words about how imperative it is that Britain’s concerns about the EU are addressed. As Open Europe reports, he called the possibility of an EU without Britain a “black scenario.”   Tusk’s appointment is a mixed blessing for David Cameron. On the one hand, Tusk comes from a non-Eurozone country meaning that he’ll be sympathetic to Britain’s desire for single market protections for the Eurozone outs. The Ukraine crisis has also reminded the Poles of how important Britain is in terms of stiffening the EU approach towards Russia; meaning that Tusk

Much has been made of the news that Boris Johnson intends to return to parliament at next year’s general election. The announcement, made in the Q&A session after his speech about London, Britain and the European Union, has got Westminster all hot and bothered. But another of Boris’s answers in that session also deserves to be highlighted. Gerard Lyons’s report for the mayor sets out 8 key points of European reform, ranging from changing the relationship between the Eurozone and non-eurozone countries, to the completion of the single market, to halting unnecessary regulations. But Boris went much further than this when responding to a question from Peter Wilding, director of

I know some readers have tired of Scotland’s independence debate. That is understandable, even forgivable. It has, after all, been rumbling along for 40 years. There may only be six weeks of campaigning left but these arguments won’t go away. You’ll be hearing them again and again for the next few years at least. This is true even if Scotland does vote Yes next month. Because the argument about Scotland’s place within the Union is really not very different from the argument about Britain’s place within the European Union. Of course the similarities are not absolute but they are significant enough to be striking. And just as Scottish nationalists have

The Sunday Telegraph has news that Boris Johnson will give a speech next week in which he will throw his weight behind a report, published by Volterra, calling for Britain to renegotiate its membership of the EU. The Telegraph reports: ‘The capital’s gross domestic product (GDP), currently £350 bn — or just over a fifth of the UK economy — would grow to £640 bn by 2034 if Britain stayed in a reformed EU and adopted policies encouraging more trade with the world’s fastest-growing markets, the report will say.  But if the UK left the EU, while pursuing its own trade-friendly policies regardless, the London economy would still grow to £615 bn over

I have described David Cameron’s posturing on immigration today as vacuous and cynical, for that is exactly what it is. Cynical because once again he seems determined to fool the British people into believing that we can seriously have our own immigration policy whilst remaining inside the EU. We can’t. Vacuous because his policy solution seems to consist of tinkering around the edges of the problem instead of dealing with it head on. Under his government, net migration levels per annum remain in the hundreds of thousands, with citizens from twenty-seven other nations allowed to come and go as they please. What Britain really needs is a tough, solid, Australian-style immigration system.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind was right: there was no agreement in Europe on serious against Russia. The FT’s Peter Spiegel tweets the news that many have been expecting: The #EU ambassadors meeting finally breaks. No decision on “phase three” sanctions, but meeting again tomorrow. And maybe Mon. And Tues. — Peter Spiegel (@SpiegelPeter) July 24, 2014   The EU’s account of the meeting refers, comically, to an ‘exchange of views’ on the ‘preparatory work’ on tier three sanctions. There was some agreement on the extended list of ‘Putin cronies’. Zero Hedge has a summary of the discussion, drawn from a variety of sources. The headlines are that the number of listed ‘cronies’ is expected to be increased to