Asking this question, I am using the language of the Turkish chief negotiator Egemen Bagiş. He says that his country’s negotiating process should be ’sustainable’ and advocates benchmarks, allowing chapters to be opened, negotiated and the closed, insted of either being blocked once opened, or prevented from opening.
However I am not sure whether he sees [...]

The Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin has punished Bulgaria for not being as pro-Russian as he wants, by excluding it from the South Stream gas pipeline and by abandoning the project of an oil pipeline from the Bulgarian Black Sea city of Varna to to Greek port Alexandroupolis.
Indeed, Russia has had a consistent policy of [...]

I don’t believe that ‘Europe’ comes from the name of a Phoenician princess, abducted by Zeus, who assumed the form of a bull. Sculptures inspired by this legend, in front of EU institutions in Brussels and Strasbourg, fail to impress me.
Instead, I know that Europa was a dioecesis of the Thracian province of the Roman [...]