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The article offers information on the corruption allegations against government officials of Malta in the leaked documents of Panama Papers incident including Michelle Muscat, the wife of Malta's prime minister Joseph Muscat. Topics discussed include the claims made by Daphne Caruana Galizia, an anti-government blogger, Leyla Aliyeva, the daughter of the president of Azerbaijan, and the impact of this on Malta's reputation in the European Union.

Relates that Eastern Europeans are looking to membership in the European Union (EU) as a way to end their countries' complicated business regulations. Examples of bureaucratic rigmarole which plagues even simple transactions, such as buying gasoline while on a business trip; The importance of notaries in this environment; Problems with the legislation drafted to fix the problems.

The article focuses on the Golden Resident Permit offered by the Portuguese government in 2013, which is a visa that allows foreign investors to live and travel within the European Union (EU) for a donation - a model that may be used by other EU nations in the future.

At a summit that was starting just as The Economist went to press in June 2004, heads of government of the 25 European Union (EU) countries were planning, after much haggling, to agree upon a new constitution for their Union. When EU leaders deadlocked in December 2003, Elmar Brok, a German who was a leading member of the convention, said that, if the constitution was not agreed on, Europe could slip back into the inter-state rivalries that led to the first world war. A failure to agree will not take Europe back to war, even if it could lead to a split within the EU. Nor would success necessarily mean the emergence of a new superpower called Europe. Point to any apparently significant aspect of the constitution--the Charter of Fundamental Rights or the creation of a European foreign minister--and somebody from Britain's Foreign Office will be at hand to explain that it is not as significant as it sounds. All the main achievements in European integration, from the single market to the abolition of frontier controls to the creation of a single currency, started life as words in a European treaty. Yet, for all that, there is considerable potential for the real world and the constitution to collide. Even if voters do not trash the putative constitution, European leaders might do it for them, by ignoring treaty commitments that prove too politically onerous.

Reports on efforts of Turkey's parliament to pass amendments to its constitution to stabilize the country's democracy and ultimately allow entrance into the European Union. Changes in legal rights of individuals; Law that gives men no higher status than women; Changes in punishments for crimes, including removal of the death penalty in most cases.

Discusses factors which have led to the European Commission's softened rhetoric regarding its economic and social policies. Comments on unemployment within the European Union (EU).

The article offers a look at European banking integration. The European Union began as a dream to dissuade European countries from ever again contemplating war against each other. The vision has always been to create a single economic area with common standards and without barriers. Before the euro, banks easily handled 15 different west European currencies and interest rates, and made good money out of trading cash, securities and derivatives for customers and for their own book. The euro was expected to allow easy comparison of prices across all the countries that used it, and stimulate convergence. This has certainly worked for a range of items, but comparing banking services from country to country is difficult. A paper by the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels, which is partly funded by the European Commission, reinforces the impression that European financial regulation is chaotic.

The article offers world politics news briefs. Topics include ceasefire violations in a war between Israel and Gaza; Ebrahim Raisi and Ali Larijani filed papers to run in presidential election in Iran; and European Union agreed to open its borders to tourists from the rest of the world, so long as they have completed a course of covid vaccination.

This article discusses various aspects of the white paper on European competitiveness recently issued by European Commission President Jacques Delors. At last month's European Union summit, Jacques Delors, president of the European Commission, neatly out-flanked his critics. His white paper contained enough grand ideas to please French and other visionaries and enough stress on labour-market deregulation to silence British and other sceptics. Europe's interest groups are trying to censor the bits they most dislike. One example is the proposal to reduce taxes on employment and to impose them instead on energy use. For the commission, which first sought a tax on energy and carbon-dioxide emissions in June 1992, the idea is economically ingenious and appealingly green.

The article focuses on the probable economic and financial impact that refugees and migrants will have on Germany and the European Union. It states that a recent paper found wages for menial jobs was depressed by just two percent (%) by a 10% rise in the share of migrants working those jobs. It examined the fiscal impact of refugees getting benefits compared to the taxes paid and suggested refugees would increase Germany's gross domestic product to public expenditure of 0.35% in 2016.

Describes the harsh effect the breakup of the Soviet Union and a fall in timber and paper prices is having on Finland's timber-based economy. Disappearance of Soviet export markets; Move to peg the Finnish markka to the ECU; Historical governing problems, including socialist paternalism; Election Finland's non-Socialist government for 25 years; Upcoming referendum on joining the European Community (EC); Debate over whether to join.

The article focuses on the British government's announcement on July 16, 2012 that taxpayer-financed research would be accessible online for free, which prompted the European Union (EU) to do the same. Topics include the annual profits made by academic journal publishers such as Elsevier and the competition between researchers to have papers published, which increases the value of the journals.

This article focuses on relations between Russia and the European Union. Now that the German Question has been solved, the Russian Question beckons. Can Russia, after centuries of autocracy and imperialism, be turned into the sort of nice democratic country that gets along easily with its European neighbours? The answer seems to be: not for a while yet, to judge from a policy paper released last week by the European Commission, the European Union's executive body, which suggests that relations between the Union and Russia are close to a post-Soviet low. Some of these arguments go back years. But they are getting more heated with the approach of the EU's eastward enlargement in May. The EU will embrace ten countries in all, seven of which were subjects or satellites of the Soviet Union. The Commission's latest analysis of Russia marks a sharp change from its starry-eyed optimism of a year ago, when it published a document called "Wider Europe" saying that Russia, and other countries of eastern Europe and the southern Mediterranean, could be turned into a "ring of friends" around the enlarged Union, absorbing the Union's political and economic values and being rewarded with aid and improved market access.

Discusses controversy in Germany over whether to postpone commitment to a European single currency. The significance of the issue to general elections to be held in September 1998; The issuing of a paper against delay by Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union; Focus on those who are proposing delay; The sentiment of the German people.

Discusses the white paper to be put out by the European Union (EU) to define the main bits of the acquis communautaire (the EU's body of laws and regulations) that the East Europeans must adopt to be ready for a single market in labor, goods and capital. Examples of countries that have made compatibility with the laws of the EU a legal requirement; Two areas where East Europeans face particular difficulties in adopting EU legislation.

The article discusses how Great Britain, hoping to rescue the reputation of its European Community presidency, was preparing to take a bundle of papers, meant to satisfy Denmark, to the Edinburgh summit on December 11. The pile of documents included three unilateral declarations by Denmark, two declarations made by the European Council and one "decision" taken by all 12 Community governments. The declarations are meant to reassure the Danes that nothing in the treaty threatens Danish citizenship, social and environmental standards, or sovereignty in judicial and home affairs.

The article discusses relations between the U.S. and Europe. In the author's view the U.S. gives too much attention to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and not enough to the European Union (EU). A paper produced by the combined efforts of several think tanks in the U.S. and Europe says the US needs to develop strategic relations with the EU.

The article focuses on the European Central Bank (ECB). The bank has been less aggressive than the U.S. Federal Reserve Board in its efforts to mitigate the global recession, cutting interest rates but not directly purchasing assets such as commercial paper as the board has done. ECB head Jean-Claude Trichet may propose a limited version of that policy at the bank board's April 2, 2009 meeting.

The article discusses a paper drawn up by a team led by Wim Kok, a former Dutch prime minister. Kok's brief was to produce a progress report on the so-called Lisbon agenda: the ambition to turn the European Union (EU) into "the world's most competitive, knowledge-based economy by 2010", set at an EU summit in Lisbon in 2000. Kok's view of how things are going at the halfway stage is not encouraging. Unemployment remains high, growth is slow, researchers are moving to America, manufacturers to China. There is also the uncertain outlook for Europe's growing number of pensioners. The structural reforms that are seen as crucial to the revitalisation of the European economy are, above all, the responsibility of national governments. Besides the technical complexity of harmonising social-security reforms across the European continent, experience suggests that the EU is ill-suited to imposing reforms. If real reform is to happen in Europe, it will be hard necessity and the power of example that create the pressure for change. Fortunately, both are being provided by the ten countries that joined the EU in May, particularly the eight from central Europe.

The article discusses the bridge-construction industry in Europe and the role of the European Union. Europe has recently been building spectacular bridges as eagerly as America once did: Britain's second Severn bridge was completed in 1996; Portugal's second Tagus one in 1998; Denmark's island-hopping Storebaelt East bridge in 1998, with a 1.6km main span, at the time the longest ever; the Oresund bridge joining Denmark and Sweden in 2000. More are to come: recently aired, a new down-river Thames crossing; and, on paper since 2002, the mother of all bridges, a 3.3km suspension bridge which, from 2011--supposedly--will join Sicily to the Italian mainland. All this bridge-building is good news for the contractors. France has two of Europe's big four construction firms: Vinci, lead partner in the new Greek bridge (as earlier in the Tagus one), and Bouygues. With Skanska, leader of the Oresund consortium, and Germany's Hochtief, these are a formidable quartet. By turnover, reckons International Construction magazine, Vinci and Skanska lead the world, and all four are in the top eight, with three firms from Japan (ever addicted to costly public works) and, perhaps surprisingly, only Bechtel from America. European Union finance is one reason for this unlikely European leadership. EU funds go into many construction projects in poorer regions, even in rich countries. Under EU rules, all public-works contracts must be open to all EU firms equally. Yet visible prestige symbols such as giant bridges usually go to local firms or locally led consortia. That was true of the two French projects cited above. It will probably be true of the bridge to Sicily. Outside contractors can and do compete in EU countries. Bechtel is involved both in the Channel link and in London's Underground. Spending a fortune on such giant projects may be great for the construction industry. Whether it is a good use of taxpayers' money is less clear.

The planned constitution for the European Union is stoking their fears of a nascent European superstate. But the prospect that many of the 25 countries involved in the negotiations will hold referendums on the constitution also presents those opposed to the Brussels mantra of "ever closer union" with a rare opportunity to halt the federalist steamroller. Referendums are ideal for the agitators known as Eurosceptics in Britain, Eurorealists in Scandinavia and Souverainistes in France. In elections, Europe is rarely a salient enough issue to sway voters. But in a referendum in which voters are asked directly about a European issue the sceptics have a chance of mobilising the "silent majority" that they believe shares their views. Referendums also allow the sceptics to paper over ideological divisions.

Sometimes it can seem hopeless. How do you mould a single European people out of the lumpen masses scattered across the continent? European Union (EU) citizens are stubborn homebodies: only 1.6% of them live permanently in an EU country other than their own. They still insist on speaking different languages, they read different papers, worship at the shrines of different celebrities, chortle at different television programs. But there is one big exception. Every Tuesday and Wednesday, much of Europe's male population tunes in to watch the Champions League, the pan-European football championship embracing the best teams from all over Europe. Over the past decade European football teams have turned into a living, breathing embodiment of European integration. The cosmopolitan nature of the Champions League undoubtedly blurs the edges of both playing styles and fan loyalties across Europe .But the fact that teams are now so genuinely European does not seem to have disturbed the way the European press writes about them.

States that on paper, the Treaty of Maastricht gave the European Parliament a lot more power than was widely realized at the time. Details of the new rules; Blocking efforts to open up Europe's non-life insurance market; Christian Democrats agreeing to change; Reactions from France and Luxembourg; Other complaints.

Considers the expansion of the European Union (EU) into Eastern Europe as of April 1997. The EU's current preoccupation with solving the economic and monetary complications it already has; The significance of a paper by economists Richard Baldwin, Joseph Francois, and Richard Portes; List of possible benefits for both factions; Statistical analysis.