As we know, on December 16 the leaders of the 27 EU member states, including Malta’s, agreed a draft proposal that will, hopefully, give the basis for a permanent financial stability mechanism to replace the temporary one set up to assist first Greece and then Ireland. We are also aware of where the pressure came…

I have just formed part of a Socialist group delegation to Athens to see the scale of the social and financial crisis in Greece. With the financial markets predicting a possible Greek default even though the government has reluctantly agreed to an IMF advised €50 billion sale of government assets to the private sector, questions…

Imagine you are having a family argument and hear the doorbell ringing. The police have heard loud voices and would like to know what happened, to intervene and also take sides. We would see this as inappropriate. The same argument applies in international relations. No foreign country has the authority or right to interfere in…

The joint parliamentary meeting between the delegation of the European Parliament and the delegation from the African, Caribbean and Pacific parliaments (EU-ACP) is not anything like the grandiose Commonwealth meetings of the respective members’ heads of state. They are more down-to-earth affairs where you are more able to connect with the host country and its…

In the past decade the EU has undergone a massive expansion in its member states – from 18 to 27 countries – taking in much of the eastern bloc as well as the likes of Cyprus and Malta. Now EU enlargement is faced with a bigger challenge, the integration of the western Balkan nations, including…

Already the Conservatives have attempted to portray the result as a triumph for the trade unions and a lurch to the left by Labour. Mr Miliband finds himself being branded as ‘Red Ed’. But for someone who served his political apprenticeship as one of Gordon Brown’s advisers, before being elected as an MP under Tony…

It could have been 40 years to the day. I had just settled down in my new place at Plater College, a Catholic college in Oxford, when during a class by the college principal, Joe Kirwan, on the social teaching of the Church on economic matters I recall being asked point blank: “ Edward, do…

Following the world’s biggest financial crisis and economic recession in recent history, which has seriously tested the very tenets of capitalism and its workings, including the financial foundations on which the market economy is based, one would have thought that the political pendulum in most countries would now move to the left. Well, not if…