When Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president one year ago today, the US media were full of praise for him and expected a big improvement in transatlantic relations.

Sarkozy's pro-American rhetoric was very much appreciated, because it was a big contrast to Gerhard Schroeder's US critical election campaigns. With Schroeder replaced by Angela Merkel and Chirac now replaced by Sarkozy, many Americans were looking forward to a new era in transatlantic relations led by a younger generation of pro-American leaders in Europe.

I did not find this much convincing, but have been very critical of Sarkozy (and to a lesser extent of Merkel). In the last few months, however, President Sarkozy announced some policy changes that indicate more support for US interests, so perhaps I should reconsider my position on Sarko.

Gaelle Fisher has written a very balanced analysis on the question "Has Sarkozy truly improved the state of transatlantic relations and earned his reputation as the most pro-American president France has ever had?" She presents three arguments in favor and three against in a pro & con feature on Atlantic Community: Sarkozy l' Américain? Here is a snippet:

Sarkozy has agreed to increase France’s contribution to the war effort in Afghanistan by adding 1500 to 1700 to the existing French contingent of 1600, sending combat troops to the East, and providing military arsenal. Yet the main new element of French military cooperation with the United States is Sarkozy’s commitment to reintegrating France into NATO’s military wing.

On Sarko’s first anniversary in power, the French are very critical of his domestic policies (and his style), but I wonder what Americans think of his foreign policy. Has he met your expectations? Has he repaired the damage in transatlantic relations as expected by many in the US media?

Tokyo | April 23

BBC - Leaders of Japan and the European Union have called for "highly ambitious and binding" global targets to fight climate change.

Leaders said the G8 summit of rich nations - to be held in Japan in July - must be a real moment of breakthrough on greenhouse gas emissions.

Ever wonder why Europe is so wedded to its EU experiment? And also why it is so reluctant to follow the US in its neo-colonial adventures? Tony Judt provides a little necessary context:

In World War I the US suffered slightly fewer than 120,000 combat deaths. For the UK, France, and Germany the figures are respectively 885,000, 1.4 million, and over 2 million. In World War II, when the US lost about 420,000 armed forces in combat, Japan lost 2.1 million, China 3.8 million, Germany 5.5 million, and the Soviet Union an estimated 10.7 million. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., records the deaths of 58,195 Americans over the course of a war lasting fifteen years: but the French army lost double that number in six weeks of fighting in May–June 1940. In the US Army's costliest engagement of the century—the Ardennes offensive of December 1944–January 1945 (the "Battle of the Bulge")—19,300 American soldiers were killed. In the first twenty-four hours of the Battle of the Somme (July 1, 1916), the British army lost more than 20,000 dead. At the Battle of Stalingrad, the Red Army lost 750,000 men and the Wehrmacht almost as many.

With the exception of the generation of men who fought in World War II, the United States thus has no modern memory of combat or loss remotely comparable to that of the armed forces of other countries. But it is civilian casualties that leave the most enduring mark on national memory and here the contrast is piquant indeed. In World War II alone the British suffered 67,000 civilian dead. In continental Europe, France lost 270,000 civilians. Yugoslavia recorded over half a million civilian deaths, Germany 1.8 million, Poland 5.5 million, and the Soviet Union an estimated 11.4 million. These aggregate figures include some 5.8 million Jewish dead. Further afield, in China, the death count exceeded 16 million. American civilian losses (excluding the merchant navy) in both world wars amounted to less than 2,000 dead.

We don't even begin to comprehend what suffering war causes.

Nicholas Watt | Boston | April 19

The Guardian - PM uses Boston speech to bury Blair's doctrine of liberal interventionism

Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah meet Ted Kennedy during their visit to the John F. Kennedy memorial library in Boston. Photograph: Adam Hunger/Reuters

Europe and the US will face "terrifying risks" if they fail to join forces to fight global terrorism by combating poverty and disease, Gordon Brown warned yesterday in a speech on foreign policy in Boston.

The prime minister voiced the hope that a "new dawn of collaborative action" would be ushered in next year with the election of a new US president.

On the final leg of his three-day trip to the US, during which he met George Bush and the three presidential candidates, Brown said that American leadership would always be indispensable.

But he made clear that he hopes for a more consensual style of US leadership when either Barack Obama, John McCain, or Hillary Clinton enters the White House next January. Brown indicated that this would allow Europe and the US to move on from the divisions over Iraq.

Sofia, Bulgaria | April 4

AP - A Bulgarian official revealed Friday that the country's communist-era border troops killed East Germans and others who tried to get to the West by sneaking across this Balkan country's borders during the Cold War.

Ekaterina Boncheva, a member of a panel named by Bulgaria's parliament to investigate secret police files, said they had found documents detailing at least two cases in which citizens of then communist East Germany were killed, one in 1974 and one in 1988.

The archives also showed that 22 Bulgarians were shot while trying to escape to Greece or Turkey between 1964 and 1967, Boncheva said.

Such killings were kept secret during communist times, and no official information had been released in the 18 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall before Friday's announcement.

Seda Sezer | Istanbul | April 3

Bloomberg - The twin spires of Germany's largest Gothic cathedral will soon be joined on the Cologne skyline by the minarets of the country's biggest mosque.

The $23 million Ehrenfeld Central Mosque, scheduled to be completed in about two years, will help bring Islam out of the back streets and reduce the influence of radicals, Mayor Fritz Schramma says. Others see the building as a symbol of Islamic extremism and further evidence that Cologne's 120,000 Muslims, more than half of them Turkish immigrants, refuse to integrate.

Terence Hunt | Bucharest, Romania | April 2

AP - President Bush suffered a painful diplomatic setback Wednesday when NATO allies rebuffed his passionate pleas to put former Soviet republics Ukraine and Georgia on the path toward membership in the Western military alliance.

The decision, to be made final on Thursday, was sure to be cheered by Moscow, which heatedly opposes NATO's eastward expansion.

In another sign of discord, Greece blocked Macedonia's request to join the 26-nation alliance because of a dispute over its name. Only Croatia and Albania will be invited as new members.

It was a sour outcome for Bush at his final NATO summit as he sought to polish his foreign policy legacy. Instead, he wound up sidetracked by opposition and splits among European allies. It was a result that was foreshadowed by public statements from France and Germany but Bush nevertheless put his prestige on the line and even made a stop in Ukraine on Monday to argue his case.

About a month ago, the usually uber-prosaic and generally known for publishing down-to-earth-diplomatic-speak-for-occasionally-boring defense analyses European Institute for Security Studies let itself get carried away to run an ebullient op-ed voicing the hope for 2008 to constitute the year in which Europe finally brakes through all internal confines and enters the world stage as a major player:

"'1973,' declared Henry Kissinger in late April of that year, 'is the year of Europe'-a time, he insisted, for the allies to join in 'a fresh act of creation … equal to that undertaken by the postwar generation of leaders of Europe and America.' Now, in 2008, we are on the eve of a new era that awaits the decisions that will define Europe and its relations with the United States after the departure of George W. Bush, Europe's least-liked postwar US president, and take us beyond the war in Iraq, one of the most divisive issues in Euro-Atlantic relations ever. In this, the thirty-fifth year of "the year of Europe," the time has come for the states of Europe and their union to respond to this long-standing call."

Contrary to the author's understandable hopes for a new U.S. administration, it is not George Bush but Europe itself who will thwart any such ambitious a design at next week's NATO Summit in Bucharest.

Brussels | March 15

Deutsche Welle - EU leaders and government ministers meeting in Brussels for their traditional spring summit on Friday, March 14, focused their discussions on the growing concerns about the world economy and the threat of climate change.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy summed up the fears of many present at the summit by delivering a speech at its close which concentrated on the euro's record-breaking strength.

Speaking after new figures were released at the close of Asian trading which showed the single currency hitting a new high over $1.56, Sarkozy told the summit that the heads of state and government had every reason to be concerned about market instability.

March 9

Deutsche Welle - Germany's recent economic upswing is bypassing the middle classes, according to an economic research institute. Globalization and greater flexibility in the labor market are widening the gap between rich and poor. Germany's poor aren't just getting poorer, their numbers are rising too. Joachim Frick from the DIW Research Institute blamed the Hartz IV social benefit cutbacks and other social reforms introduced under former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder as the main culprit. "Long-term unemployment and more flexible and temporary working patterns have had an negative effect on the middle classes," said Frick.

March 7

Vote will test the New Spain
This week's election campaign has been consumed with issues that were virtually non-existent in previous Spanish elections. Almost three million immigrants have arrived from South America, Eastern Europe and Morocco since Mr. Zapatero was elected, and their role in Spanish society, as well as religious battles over his changes to abortion, divorce, marriage and homosexuality laws, have taken over Spanish politics.

Despite the continued presence of Spain's regional struggles, this election has largely become a contest over the role played by the New Spaniards, who have brought great economic success and a far higher standard of living to the country, but whose presence has thrown Spain's identity into question.

Killing halts Spanish election campaign
Spain's main political parties cancelled their closing campaign rallies, two days before an election, after a former councillor from the governing Socialist Party was shot dead in the Basque Country.

The government blamed ETA separatists for the killing of Isaias Carrasco, who was shot several times in front of his wife and young daughter outside his house in the town of Mondragon/

Update: Spain's ruling Socialists win second term in general elections
Spain's ruling Socialists won a second term in general elections Sunday after a campaign that focused on the slowing economy and soaring immigration was marred by the murder of a former politician in the Basque region.

Want to add your voice to an online petition to stop a murderous, lying meglomaniac? Tony "45 minutes to doom" Blair has already had far too much time on the world stage. The idea that Blair could become President of the EU is spine chilling. Stop Blair.

Lord only knows if your mailbox will be stuffed with spam adverts for Earl Gray Tea and woolen knickers after signing the above - but even that will be worth the aggravation if a signature can help insure that this callous contributor to the US "War on Terror" has no further voice in international affai

Ian Traynor | Brussels | February 11

The Guardian - EU officials furious as Washington says it wants extra data on all air passengers

The US administration is pressing the 27 governments of the European Union to sign up for a range of new security measures for transatlantic travel, including allowing armed guards on all flights from Europe to America by US airlines.

The demand to put armed air marshals on to the flights is part of a travel clampdown by the Bush administration that officials in Brussels described as "blackmail" and "troublesome", and could see US visas being introduced for west Europeans and Britons travelling to the US if their governments balk at the American requirements.

According to a US document being circulated for signature in European capitals, EU states would also need to supply personal data on all air passengers overflying but not landing in the US in order to gain or retain visa-free travel to America, senior EU officials said.

And within months the US department of homeland security is to impose a new permit system for Europeans flying to the US, compelling all travellers to apply online for permission to enter the country before booking or buying a ticket, a procedure that will take several days.

Brdo Pri Kranju, Slovenia | January 26

AP - The European Union's top justice official proposed Friday to replicate U.S. border security measures in Europe with plans to fingerprint and electronically record the entry and exit of all visitors to the 27-nation bloc.

The measures would ensure more secure borders and prevent visitors from illegally entering Europe, or overstaying the three-month stay given to tourists and EU visa holders, Franco Frattini said.

"The electronic register should include viable biometric identifiers," Frattini told reporters during two-day talks of EU justice and interior ministers. He said visitors overstaying their welcome were "the No. 1" cause of illegal immigration.

Vienna | January 26

BBC - Far-right political leaders from four EU nations have unveiled plans to form a pan-European "patriotic" party.

The heads of far-right parties from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria and France said their aim was to defend Europe against "Islamisation" and immigrants.

At a news conference in Vienna, they said they expected to launch the party by 15 November.

The move comes several months after the collapse of a far-right bloc in the European Parliament.

The Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty (ITS) bloc disbanded itself in November after a row between its Italian and Romanian members over race.

Stephanie van den Berg | The Hague | January 20

AFP - The plans by far-right MP Geert Wilders to make a film that he says will show the Koran is "an inspiration for murder" has caused unease in the Netherlands which fears violent repercussions.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has said that Wilders' plans and the international attention they are getting is causing the government headaches.

"We have seen other crises but this is a substantial one," he told Dutch public television.

Wilders, the head of the far-right Freedom Party, announced in November that he planned to release a 10-minute film this month that will show his view that Islam's holy book, the Koran, "is an inspiration for intolerance, murder and terror".

Stephen Castle | Brussels | January 13

IHT - The European Commission has shelved plans to change rules that would allow it to retaliate against countries when goods are sold at below the cost of production in a move that illustrates deep divisions in Europe over how to deal with China's booming exports.

Acknowledging that he has no chance of getting agreement from the 27 EU countries, the EU trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, said that the proposals would now be delayed.

But the decision also underlined the differences in European capitals over how to deal with the surge of Chinese exports, and with the job losses caused by the outsourcing of production by European countries to Asia.

The commission's retreat was seen as a victory for countries including France and Italy that have sought to give European industry greater protection against Chinese imports.

"There is no consensus at present," Mandelson said Sunday, "but the problems of taking decisions in some trade defense cases will continue to arise in the absence of reform."


more

Susie Mesure | Paris | January 13

Independent - Tony Blair fuelled speculation he might run to become the first full-time European Union president yesterday after a speech in Paris.

Mr Blair said EU countries could achieve more by acting together: "Terrorism, security, immigration, organised crime, energy, the environment, science, biotechnology and higher education: in all these areas, and others, we are much stronger and able to deliver what our citizens expect from us as individual nations if we are part of a strong and united Europe."

He was speaking at the invitation of the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, at a conference of the country's centre-right ruling UMP party.

Jeffrey White | Prague, Czech Republic | Dec 21

CSM - As nine Eastern and Central European countries join Schengen today, they are under pressure to toughen long-abused visa policies.

Seven years ago, Robert Hanawalt ditched a sales career in Washington to move to Prague, where he quickly realized that he could live indefinitely without official paperwork.

He taught English illegally for four years on 90-day tourist visas. The trick? Quick trips over the border, which reset the clock with a fresh passport stamp.

"I did that," Mr. Hanawalt says. "But after the first few times I thought, 'Why even bother? Nobody is checking these things.' "

But as nine countries, including the Czech Republic, join the European Union's borderless Schengen zone Friday, Brussels is now ordering member states to get tough on visa policy.

That could spell trouble for an unlikely class of illegal immigrants: American expats. Attracted by English teaching jobs, the low cost of living, and societies just waking up to the possibilities of Western tourism, thousands are estimated to be living and working illegally in central and eastern Europe.

James M. Gomez and Andrea Dudikova | Prague | December 18

Bloomberg - Along a tree-lined road in eastern Lithuania, once part of the Soviet Union, Giedrius Matkevicius was on the prowl for invaders from neighboring Belarus, another ex-Soviet state.

``Our job has become more important, more significant, now that we have to guard the external border of the EU,'' the 36- year-old customs officer said as he monitored a bank of computers in a cement and sheet-metal complex at the frontier. Nearby, a female colleague in an olive-green uniform scanned live images of snowy fields, truck inspections and passing cars.

Where only tall pines once separated the countries, a 679- kilometer (422-mile) fence now reminds 9.7 million Belarusians that they are outsiders in a European Union that includes western neighbors Lithuania, Latvia and Poland. The line becomes even more pronounced on Dec. 21, when those three and five other ex-communist nations join a club within the EU club: the so- called Schengen Zone, where citizens and tourists travel without passports.

December 6

SpiegelOnline - German Chancellor Angela Merkel is traveling to Paris Thursday evening to meet with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, a day after she slammed his plans for a Mediterranean Union.

Speaking at a conference in Berlin Wednesday, Merkel attacked Sarkozy's vision for an association of Mediterranean nations as being "very dangerous." The German chancellor used unusually harsh language to warn the French president against splitting the very core of the European Union with his vision of a Paris-led alternative union -- and one from which Germany would be excluded.

Merkel said she was highly skeptical of Sarkozy's plans and insisted that any cooperation with the EU's neighbors must include all EU member states. Otherwise, she warned, Germany could, for example, form an Eastern European Union with Ukraine and other countries. These types of developments would threaten the cohesion and unity of the EU, she said. She warned that allowing a separate association with access to the EU coffers could lead to a "corrosion of the EU in its core area" and release "explosive forces in the EU that I would not like to see."

Eric Koo Peng Kuan | Austin | December 6

Arabesques Review - special to The Agonist

In late April 2006, in the capital city of Bulgaria, the USA proposed extending the membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to also invite selected nations in the Asia Pacific region, such as Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea, into the alliance. The US proposal, however, has met with considerable reluctance, if not outright opposition, from NATO’s European member nations.1

What really truly matters is whether the proposed potential members in Asia Pacific are willing to join NATO, given its current peacekeeping commitments in Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan. Since these commitments will require the devoting of financial resources and the deployment of troops overseas, it will be hard to convince some nations, such as Japan or South Korea, who may see no necessity to involve themselves in conflicts far from their own borders.

James Kanter | Paris | Nov 21

IHT - European Union environment officials have determined that two kinds of genetically modified corn could harm butterflies, modify food chains and disturb life in rivers and streams, and they have proposed a ban on the sale of the seeds, which are made by DuPont Pioneer, Dow Agrosciences and Syngenta.

The preliminary decisions, seen by the International Herald Tribune, are circulating within the European Commission, the EU executive, which has the final say. Some officials there are skeptical about a ban that would upset the powerful biotechnology industry and could exacerbate tensions with important EU trading partners like the United States.

In the decision concerning corn seeds produced by Dow and Pioneer, Dimas calls "potential damage on the environment irreversible." In the decision on Syngenta's corn, Dimas says that "the level of risk generated by the cultivation of this product for the environment is unacceptable."

When asked by The Financial Times to comment on the Bush administration's recent 24/7 no-holds-barred saber rattling, Admiral William Fallon, head of CENTCOM, made clear that an attack on Iran was not "in the offing."

"Getting Iranian behavior to change and finding ways to get them to come to their senses and do that is the real objective. Attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice in my book … None of this is helped by the continuing stories that just keep going around and around and around that any day now there will be another war which is just not where we want to go … It astounds me that so many pundits and others are spending so much time yakking about this topic."

Molly Moore | Paris | Nov 13

WaPo - The methods for blacklisting terrorism suspects used by the United Nations and the European Union are "totally arbitrary" and "violate the fundamental principles of human rights and rule of law," a European human rights panel said Monday.

The Council of Europe's legal committee urged an overhaul of international regulations so that individuals and groups being blacklisted -- which imposes a freeze on assets and a ban on traveling -- would have access to evidence against them, rights to a fair trial or impartial review within a reasonable time and compensation for wrongful designation as a terrorist.

"The fight against terrorism is a need that nobody can put into question," said the panel, which is part of the 47-nation council, Europe's leading human rights watchdog organization. "But we consider it unacceptable to forego, in the name of this fight, the fundamental principles of a democratic society."

** Provisional draft report on UN Security Council and European Union blacklists