Source: European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction
Summary:
In recent years, anxiety in Europe has increased about the impact of record opium harvests in Afghanistan, and a decrease in heroin retail prices. This datasheet provides a condensed review of the key issues about how heroin manufactured from Afghan opium reaches European consumers via the Balkan and northern routes.
An EU policy document reveals a vigorous debate under way among member governments about how far, and how quickly, to restore relations with Moscow after Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August
A key Brussels committee agrees to endorse Baroness Ashton as the UK’s nominee for EU trade commissioner.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Massacre of the Innocents, 1565-7. In Bruegel to Rubens: Masters of Flemish Painting Exhibition Opens at The Royal Collection
The EU has postponed its climate debate until December, but despite the financial crisis is continuing to adhere to its emissions reduction targets. This has annoyed Poland and Italy in particular, which have repeatedly warned that climate protection must not overburden industry. The European press is at odds about what the EU summit has actually achieved for the climate and how the EU should now proceed.
The EU will keep to its targets to tackle climate change despite worries about slowing economies, the French president says.
Whilst there is a unanimous view among the Irish electorate that their ‘no’ vote on the Lisbon Treaty should be respected, it is "necessary to respect the fact that a substantial majority of member states have approved [the text]" too, argues Peadar ó Broin, a researcher at the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA), in a paper for the European Policy Institutes Network (EPIN).
A decision to make the EU flag and motto more prominent and play the EU anthem more often angers some British Euro MPs.
The leaders of Europe’s four largest economies are to discuss a response to the global financial crisis.
Governments moved quickly to rescue failing banks this week but there are still doubts in their ability to mount a co-ordinated response to a new phase in the financial crisis
After the US House of Representatives’ unexpected rejection of a 700 billion dollar bailout plan, Europe is reappraising the balance of power on the international financial market. Until now Europe has been too reliant on American economic competence, commentators say. Talk now focuses on structural change, new regulatory systems and even a UK accession to the Eurozone.
Top officials from Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the EU held emergency meetings over the weekend to prevent bank and insurance giant Fortis from becoming the eurozone’s first major victim of the global financial crisis.
by Charles Grant
Those who never liked ‘Anglo-Saxon’ capitalism are feeling smug. Marxists, fans of ‘Rhineland’ capitalism and those who simply cannot stand American power are crowing. “The US will lose its status as the superpower of the world financial system,” says Peer Steinbruck, Germany’s finance minister. “Self-regulation is finished, laisser faire is finished, the idea of an all powerful market which is always right is finished,” says France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy. The British academic (and sometime fan of Margaret Thatcher) John Gray proclaims that “in a change as far-reaching in its implications as the fall of the Soviet Union, an entire model of the government and the economy has collapsed.”
EU ministers agree on a plan to curb illegal immigration while easing the rules for highly-skilled workers.
LONDON — There is a powerful narrative today about how many young European Muslims are susceptible to terrorism, how Islam leads to radicalization and how Muslims, because of their creed, choose to live in ghettos and therefore create swamps that breed terrorists.
Security guard the Lourdes Sanctuary as Pope Benedict XVI arrives in the Papamobile to celebrate Mass at La Prairie on September 14, 2008 where the pontiff is on a pilgrimage to the shrine where the faithful believe the Virgin Mary appeared to a peasant girl 150 years ago. The 81-year-old Benedict celebrated a Mass for more than 150,000 people on a field in the shadow of the sanctuary built over the cave where Bernadette Soubirous said the Madonna appeared and spoke to her 18 times in 1858.
REUTERS/Regis Duvignau (FRANCE)
Better luck next time, Ukraine.
One of these days the EU powers that be are going to realise that when you’ve got countries torn between a European and non-European identity, to keep on telling them “sorry, you’re not European enough yet” is just going to drive them into the other camp.
How much longer are the likes of Ukraine and Turkey going to put up with these repeated, very public rejections before heading off to the waiting embrace of Moscow or non-secular Islamism?
Growing migration is putting strains on rich and poor economies alike, according to the OECD.