Dear Readership,

I would firstly like to apologise for the lack of activity last week, however as we enter May, my attention must be directed elsewhere as the academic year draws to its climax and other projects are also beginning to require more time from me. So unfortunately this will be it for this month. I will be back in June, just in time to cover the last weeks of the referendum, however for now I simply am unable to put time into the website.

We have other news from today however; British Prime Minister Cameron today made a speech about the security and defence aspect of EU membership which has been distinctly lacking in the debate so far; having spoken about the absence of major conflict in Europe since 1945, and invoking the last Balkan War in the 1990s, the Prime Minister made a point of saying that events on the continent have been incredibly important to Britain over the past centuries, from 1588, to 1815, to 1940. “Isolationism does not serve this country well” Prime Minister Cameron said. No doubt this will inflame tensions in the rapidly escalating EU Referendum campaign, which will pick up speed now the local and regional elections are over in Britain. In other news, Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann resigned on Monday after a significant defeat for his party in the first round of the Presidential elections in Austria, which saw the far-right FPÖ come first, and a candidate running on a Green ticket coming second. As a result, the Chancellor faced increasing pressure from within his own social democratic party to cooperate more with the far-right nationalists. The Austrian Chancellor’s resignation will doubtless be seen by centrist politicians across the continent as the first major sign of the casualties to come, should the political and economic situation in Europe remain as it has since 2010. This could be seen as a wake-up call. Or perhaps, the first of many such victories for far-right nationalism.

In lighter news, we saw over the weekend a protest march of 240,000 people in Warsaw, Poland, demonstrating against the authoritarian policies of their PiS government, and in favour of the European Union. In a time when pro-EU sentiment seems to be rolling back across the continent, this, the largest protest of its kind in decades, shows that there is some hope to be had for the steadily fragmenting Union. A recent poll showed that Poles were amongst the most pro-EU of the major European nations (including Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy & Sweden).

Finally, happy Europe Day. On this day in 1950, Robert Schuman, Foreign Minister of the French Fourth Republic and one of the EU founding fathers, made the Schuman Declaration, in which he called for greater cooperation between France and Germany on at first an economic basis (specifically coal and steel), in order to advance the higher objective of European integration. This Declaration kick-started the European Project, of which the Treaty of Paris (1951) was the first step.

“Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity”

Perhaps in this time of great upheaval for this Union of European Nations, we can still salvage some belief that cooperation, in fact, is what our strength derives from. The divisions that are rapidly widening across the continent can only weaken us in the short and long term.

Sources: New Europe, FT, FAZ, Ipsos