Archive for juillet, 2014

A Return to Pragmatism in UK – EU Relations?

jeudi, juillet 17th, 2014

Here’s an article by Thomas Fillis and published on-line in European Public Affairs:
A Return to Pragmatism? Lord Hill announced as UK Commissioner Designate

« British Prime Minister David Cameron has just announced Jonathan Hopkin Hill, Baron Hill of Oareford (ergo Lord Hill) as the British Commissioner designate. This nomination may prove to be the most important in UK-EU relations, and indeed in the history of the College of Commissioners, given the ever-more precarious position of the UK within the European Union. The choice will speak volumes about Cameron?s strategic calculations, as regards his proposed ?renegotiation? (a concept as abstract as the constantly mooted, but never defined, ?reform? of the EU) and the negotiating tactics he will use. »

Secularism in France is challenged as Islamophobia!

lundi, juillet 7th, 2014

Since 1905 France?s Roman Catholic Church has been subject to the discipline of French republican secularism, but now as those same constraints are increasingly applied to thrusting Islam, an ?Islamophobe? uproar is astir.

It was in 2004 after 15 years of pushing by the Left, that France outlawed religious manifestations of any kind ? Kippahs, large Catholic/Orthodox crosses, religious Bandanas, Sikh dastaars, hijabs, niqabs, khimars burqas ? in the public space.

Writing in Marianne, a leading left-wing weekly, Eric Conan says:

?supporters of secularism, forgetting the struggle in 1905 to impose the concept against a then powerful and even militant Catholic Church, are surprised and alarmed to find that their calls for secularism to be respected and reinvigorated in France are more and more labelled ?Islamophobic?. »

Read more here on French News On-Line