Hi all,

After a whirlwind week of stories covering the length and breadth of the European continent, (and which I encourage you all to read) I’m taking a day off from news reporting. With 5 stories out there on Greece, Spain, Britain, Poland and Germany I think you all have enough to read.

However, I will be back next week with more coverage. Already I’ve seen a few interesting stories about corruption in Romania, lawyers supporting Britain remaining in Europe and the French Prime Minister warning of the collapse of the EU (which, apparently, hasn’t be said enough in the past few months). Coverage will return to the usual 4 stories next week, including the State of the Union update on Monday. I also have a couple of reports from talks I’ve been to this week, one about Britain remaining in Europe which gave different perspective from the law viewpoint, and the other about the rising tide of ‘illiberalism’ in Eastern Europe. Conveniently, the 2 stories I previously mentioned about British lawyers and Romanian corruption manage to fit neatly with the 2 discussions I’ll be reporting on, so I imagine there’ll be some useful insights there.

The lawyers’ situation is actually one of the more interesting, considering that the first talk I went to had a senior barrister present, who said that lawyers would benefit from the huge amount of legal work created by the ‘mess’ of a Brexit. However it seems that contrary to that sentiment, Lawyers are still intelligent enough to realise more business now will not mean a more beneficial situation overall for the UK later. Perhaps a small glimmer of the idea that not all people in business are blindly motivated by profit; but then maybe I’m reading this too optimistically.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Valls becomes the latest European politician to have voiced concern about the ‘death of Europe’ (que Ukippers cheering). Having not read his statements and just voicing my honest opinion, I think that people are saying this too much. Clearly, the statement has not made any difference seeing as more borders have seen checks reintroduced, ore fences have gone up, last week Denmark announced that it would be taking migrants belongings to pay for there stay in the country (an act of sheer cruelty) and Austria only this week has opted to implement refugee quotas, to limit numbers entering the country. Such a move is under debate currently in the German press and political arenas, and frankly it seems like it would be less and less of a surprise if that’s the path Germany also takes.

Still, there’s nothing like optimism. The Union has faced crises before, and has pulled through every time – not always stronger, but still intact. That’s not the best outcome, but the threat of a collapse of the European project is hopefully enough motivation for everyone involved to find new solutions and preserve what we’ve created, so that a new generation with new ideas and better solutions can come in later and improve on it. Perhaps that won’t happen, but it would be better than remaining stuck in the constant limbo we’re in now, stumbling from crisis to crisis (that’s assuming the older ones have been dealt with *cough* *cough* Greece, sovereign debt).

Until next week, your writer,

Sam Hufton

Sources: FT, POLITICO, EUObserver