While Germany and France were celebrating 50 years of European successes, David Cameron outlined a much more pessimistic vision of the future of the Union, further underlining, if proof were needed, fundamentally different approaches to the European project. Can these two perspectives ever be reconciled?

Is the crucial change in the UK's position in the EU, that demands a referendum, really the need to extend UK doctors' working hours? And what of the EU – has it got a better story to tell?

By choosing to put party politics before national and European interests, David Cameron has above all shot himself in the foot.

The run-up to the next national elections in Italy (to be held on 24/25 February) is marked by two trends that have already troubled the country's political life in the past years: fragmentation and political instability.

The harmonisation of national economies inside the eurozone is essentially a clash of time horizons – the future might be bright, but the transformation process in hard-hit countries is painful, and unfair. What lessons should we draw from the historical example of German reunification?

This month's Europe at a glance, a collection of visual thoughts on Europe and where it is heading - if anywhere.

On December 6, 2012, the Leader of France’s Left Front addressed a packed audience in the European Institute of University College, London on a progressive alternative to the human crises caused by today’s social relations, banking chicanery, political power and, against the background of another failed Kyoto, the far greater challenge of an adequate response to climate change.