When examining youth unemployment in the broader context of its contribution to total unemployment in Europe, Daniel Gros finds in this new Commentary that the problem reveals a completely different picture from the one usually presented.  Extreme figures on youth unemployment in the periphery hide the fact that the number of actually unemployed is rather small given that most youth in countries like Spain or Greece are not even looking for a job.

Daniel Gros is Director of CEPS.

Recent opinion polls suggest that most Icelanders are against joining the EU. By the same token, however, a majority of those polled are in favour of continuing accession talks.  These results show that Iceland’s relationship with the EU is a deeply divisive issue within the country. Although no date for the referendum has been set, the new centre-right coalition may thus want to settle this matter as soon as possible.

Ten years have passed since the EU-Western Balkans summit was held in Thessaloniki in June 2003. In this new CEPS Commentary, CEPS Associate Senior Fellow Erwan Fouéré exhorts the EU to mark the occasion by reaffirming with greater determination the European perspective for the countries of the region in the hope of keeping the Balkan ghosts at bay.

Erwan Fouéré is Associate Senior Research Fellow at CEPS.

Against the background of the Boston Marathon bombing as a violent reminder of the lawlessness throughout much of the Northern Caucasus, Michael Emerson calls in this commentary for a fresh direction in the EU’s negotiations with Russia over visa-free travel.

As a result of EEAS-led facilitated dialogue, on April 19th the prime ministers of Serbia and Kosovo reached their first agreement on the principles governing the normalisation of relations. The agreement handed Catherine Ashton a diplomatic victory she badly needed and offered proof of the added value of the European External Action Service (EEAS) as a new EU foreign policy actor.

Steven Blockmans is a CEPS Senior Research Fellow and Head of the EU Foreign Policy unit.

While acknowledging that Cyprus is too small to matter for global financial markets, this Commentary finds that its case could turn out to become a very important precedent for the way European policy-makers deal with future banking problems and the plans for a ‘banking union’.

Daniel Gros is Director of the Centre for European Policy Studies. This Commentary was first published by Project Syndicate on 5 April 2013, and disseminated to newspapers and journals worldwide.

After a week in which Cypriot politicians reassured people that their deposits were safe, followed by the announcement of a bank levy on savings, then a rush to withdraw cash amid general confusion and anxiety, Cypriot Senior Researcher Leonor Coutinho argues that in the case of a banking crisis it is vital for policy-makers to treat communication as an important component of the policy toolkit.

Leonor Coutinho is Senior Researcher at Europrism Research (Cyprus) and a Special Scientist at the University of Cyprus.

In this CEPS Commentary, the former Irish Prime Minister calls the precedents being set in the Cypriot banking case “troubling” and reflective of a lack of clarity and consistency of thought by both the eurozone Finance Ministers and the European Commission. He welcomes the rejection of the deal by the Cypriot Parliament as it now gives eurozone policy-makers a chance to think again about the underlying philosophy of their approach to the financial crisis.

Twenty years after the split of Czechoslovakia, expert analysts from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the UK shed light on the political geography of this part of Central Europe in an extended three-part Commentary. The end points in the Euro-Atlantic integration processes of the successor states may be similar, argue the authors, but the journeys have been very different. Recent experience would suggest that in terms of EU politics, the Slovaks will be rather passive whilst the Czechs might be a little more troublesome.

The assassination of the opposition leader in Tunisia exposed the underlying divisions between members of the ruling classes, between those in and outside of government, between religious groupings and secularists, and between the coastal areas and the hinterland of Tunisia. Since the revolution, tackling social inclusion has become a pressing problem: men versus women, young versus old, opponents versus supporters of the old regime and political forces inside Tunisia versus those in exile.

The experiences of small countries like Greece, the Baltic states and Iceland are often adduced as evidence to justify arguments both for or against austerity. In this Commentary, CEPS Director Daniel Gros observes, however, that the proponents in these disputes usually neglect to mention the key idiosyncratic characteristics and specific starting conditions that can make such direct comparisons meaningless. He points out that Latvia has recovered quickly whereas Greece is still in recession.

Finding that the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) currently lacks a strategic vision that would offer states in the southern Mediterranean substantial returns in exchange for making tough reforms, this CEPS Commentary suggests that this weakness can be overcome through a concrete prospect of regional integration pro-actively driven forward by the European Union. Taking inspiration from current projects such as the Energy Community Treaty, the authors urge the EU to explicitly incorporate “legally binding sectoral multilateralism” into the ENP.

Despite several daunting obstacles, the low expectations and the high level of apprehension that accompanied the start of the Cyprus Presidency, Thomas Linders and Steven Blockmans find in a new CEPS Commentary that the small, remote and politically divided island nevertheless succeeded in scoring a number of positive results, thanks in part to the country’s pragmatic approach to the job and the perpetual motion of the EU legislature. As a corrective instrument to big state politics in the EU, however, the role of the Presidency remains limited.

As David Cameron prepares to deliver his momentous “Europe” speech, Adam Łazowski warns the British Prime Minister that a divorce from the EU will not be easy and that the decision should be based on a very thorough political, economic and legal analysis, as the consequences in all possible respects will be profound.

Adam Łazowski is Reader in Law at the School of Law, University of Westminster.