Eu

When an EU country elects a government with nationalist or Eurosceptic policies, the European Parliament calls an urgent investigation into ‘the situation’ in that country. When Victor Orban became Prime Minister of Hungary in 2010 for example, the European Parliament called a debate entitled ‘the situation in Hungary’. Orban’s Fidesz party is known for its conservatism and its regard for national sovereignty. When Orban was democratically elected with a two thirds majority in the Hungarian Parliament, he was elected with a mandate to reform the state institutions, which had become corrupt under communist rule and had been stagnating ever since. When he set about enacting the above, the European Parliament

When the EU is in crisis, the Commission’s answer is, inevitably, more Europe. So, its response to the migrant crisis is to propose an EU border force that could, in extremis, take over the management of Schengen countries’ borders without permission. Now, Britain is not in Schengen so this proposal would not apply here. But it is worth considering just how federalising it is. Under this proposal, the Italians, say, could suddenly find the EU manning its borders. It would be a major erosion of national sovereignty. The Guardian’s Ian Traynor reports that the French and the Germans are backing this idea, which gives it a reasonable chance of success.

What if David Cameron does win his fight – staged or otherwise – with European leaders to block benefits for EU migrants for four years? In terms of his pitch to the British public that voting to stay in the bloc is a good idea, this win would be very handy indeed. But would it actually materially change anything? Today, in an evidence session to the Treasury Select Committee, Office for Budget Responsibility Stephen Nickell rather undermined the importance of this row between leaders when he ended up telling MPs that it wouldn’t make much of a difference to immigration from other EU countries to Britain anyway. He said: ‘I

At the start of this week, everyone was wondering how George Osborne was going to get out of trouble on tax credits, avoid a deeply damaging row over police cuts, all while still keeping to his surplus target. But thanks to the Office for Budget Responsibility upgrading its forecasts, Osborne was able to scrap the tax credit changes, protect the police budget and maintain his plan for a £10 billion surplus by the end of the parliament. But now, an even bigger challenge awaits Osborne: the EU renegotiation. I argue in my Sun column today that it is now the biggest threat to his chances of becoming Prime Minister. Boris

The House of Lords has tonight voted to give 16 and 17 year olds the vote in the EU referendum. This question will now go to the Commons, which can try and overturn it and send the bill back to the Lords—so-called ‘ping pong’. The government has already made clear tonight that it will try and overturn this amendment. But, intriguingly, some Tory MPs have told me that they think the Commons will actually back votes at 16 for the referendum when this comes back down to the Commons. If this does happen, this could delay the referendum as the Electoral Commission argue that extra time will be needed to

Oh dear. David Cameron’s speech to the Confederation of British Industry got off to a shaky start today after he was heckled by Brexit protesters. While the CBI had opted to leave members of the Vote Leave campaign off of the invite list, two protesters managed to sneak in and get their own anti-EU message across. As the Prime Minister gave a speech in which he said that he could work with business leaders to keep ‘Britain in a reformed Europe’ after a successful renegotiation, protesters held up a banner and shouted that the CBI is the ‘voice of Brussels’: Exclusive: watch anti-CBI hecklers interrupt PM speech (& forgive my

David Cameron’s decision to make it clear that he is definitely not ruling out Brexit by saying that ‘people need to understand there are significant downsides’ to being outside the European Union has been greeted with derision in eurosceptic circles. Campaigners argue that the Prime Minister clearly doesn’t think he’ll get much from his renegotiation if he doesn’t think it’s worth continuing to threaten that he could possibly campaign to take Britain out of Europe in order to spook EU leaders into giving him what he wants. But there’s also an interesting internal implication to the Prime Minister’s speech in Reykjavik, which is that effectively ruling out a Brexit makes

European politics hardly needs more excitement, but that’s what in store after the crushing victory for the Law and Justice party (PiS) in Poland’s general election. The party is not just pretty far off the European mainstream; its politics breathe what Adam Michnik, the legendary dissident, has called ‘a combination of an inferiority and superiority complex’. Its redeeming quality now seems to be that it is, nowadays, less nutty. But its politics still have a scent of its past: a social conservatism occasionally lashing modern liberties, a confused and populist economic agenda, and schizophrenia over Germany that swings between pride and feeling of cultural inadequacy. If the party’s rank and