The president of the European Commission has stepped into the row about an independent Scotland's place in the European Union (EU) by saying all new s...

It is not a good time to be young. Our youth are bearing the brunt of the economic depression and its self-defeating solution of austerity and cuts.

With full tanks, all systems checked and automatic launch sequence ignited, the European Parliament is ready for lift-off. MEPs achieved much in the first part of 2012 that will make a noticeable difference to the everyday life of ordinary citizens, such as lower roaming charges and killing off the controversial anti-counterfeiting agreement. However, there is much to be done in the months to come.

Portugal may well be the country where the eurozone's solidarity is put to the test. Patience with the Greek government's foot-dragging is wearing thin, but Portugal has done all that has been asked of it.

In Europe there is a country failing to hold fair, free and open elections. In Europe there is a country which tortures political prisoners. In Europe there is a country with a dictator.

It was great while it lasted. For two weeks the London Olympics provided welcome respite from the economic gloom, political travails and banking scandals that have become a depressingly regular part of the news agenda since the Great Recession of 2008-09.

The Bank of England revised down its growth forecast for 2012 to virtually zero last week, reinforcing the raft of weak economic data released recently. The UK economy has now contracted in 5 out of the last 7 quarters and net growth since the end of the recession in 2009 has been negligible.

The repression of genuine accounting with an individual or a nation's failures and violations of democratic values and human rights leads not only to a failure to acknowledge and wrestle with historical truth.

Water way to make a point. Fisheries minister Richard Benyon went swimming with sharks in a bid to make waves against loopholes in the European "fi...

Colonisation and its impact on the colonised is rarely a topic of sustained public conversation in Britain. It is not even a tangential topic. It is simply ignored, elided with very infrequent and brief exceptions such as the one prompted now by the case of Kenyan survivors of torture and other human rights abuses of British rule in Kenya.

Almost everyone I speak to in fund management or banking thinks some sort of collapse or seismic change of the Eurozone is likely. Only one thing is certain: no-one really knows where this will all end up.

Despite the economic downturn in the region, the political consequences and the incidence of social unrest in eastern Europe has been remarkably limited so far.

As London literally warms up for the greatest show on earth, Governor Mitt Romney will meet Prime Minister David Cameron amidst last minute preparations for the Olympics Romney himself led ten short years ago.

One hundred years after the first international drug control treaty was signed the failure of the "war on drugs" is indisputable. In Europe two distinct trends are emerging around how countries are choosing to tackle drug policy; a punitive, criminalization approach--which is failing dramatically and expensively--or one based on scientific evidence and harm reduction--which is bearing fruits.

In an attempt to down-scale the horrific, unacceptable act of genocide committed by Serbian Troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where more than 8000 Muslim men and boys were massacred some 17 years ago, Serbia's new President Tomislav Nikolic, said last month that the killings in Srebrenica constituted "grave war crimes" but not genocide.

France's new president, François Hollande, has a strong political mandate, but very little room for manoeuvre.

British anti-European hackles have been raised by the President of the EU Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, expressing surprise that "some people" would appear to want a diminished role for UK in Europe like that of Norway or Switzerland.

Being part of the EU is central to how we in the UK create jobs, expand trade and protect our interests around the world. It allows us to be in a single market of some 500 million people, with a combined GDP of £11trillion (Euros), in which we can trade, travel and work freely.