Library blog

The Library and Research team recently attended "Politicians in a communication storm", a conference held at the European Parliament.

Welcome to issue 40 of the Think Tank Review compiled by the EU Council Library. This issue is symbolic as it represents almost 4 years of our labour-intensive, but also rewarding, monthly activity of selecting papers on European political and economic issues, EU policies and foreign affairs. We remain just as motivated and enthusiastic as we were in February 2013 when we launched this project and hope to continue to meet the information needs of readers.

At an event organised by Bruegel,  the European Commission Vice-President for Financial Services, Valdis Dombrovskis, set out his approach to regulating Europe's banking sector. The discussion included Guntram Wolff, Director of Bruegel, and Reza Moghadam, Vice-Chairman of Global Capital Markets at Morgan Stanley, as well as experts and audience members.

For the first time since its accession in 2004, Malta will assume the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU on 1 January 2017. Ian Borg, Parliamentary Secretary for the EU presidency, presented Malta's priorities at a breakfast briefing attended by the Library and Research team.

We would like to present to our readers the book 'Memórias da Adesão - À mesa das negociações'. It is the result of the research project entitled 'Memórias da Adesão de Portugal à CEE' ('Memories of the accession of Portugal to the EEC'), which consisted of collecting stories and testimonies from some of the main participants in the negotiations on Portugal's accession to the European Communities (EC).

We would like to present to our readers the book 'Foreign Fighters under International Law and Beyond', edited by Andrea de Guttry, Francesca Capone and Christophe Paulussen, with a Foreword by Gilles de Kerchove, EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator.

The Library and Research team attended the debate 'Brexit and the future of EU-Japan relations' which brought together numerous academics visiting from Japan as well as their European counterparts and consisted in a series of roundtables and public panel discussions around the topics of EU-Japan cooperation and Belgo-Japanese diplomatic relations.

The Library team attended the 'Europe today and tomorrow: preparing for the next 25 years' conference organised by the College of Europe's Department of European Political and Administrative Studies.

The European Policy Centre celebrated its 20th anniversary with an incredible line-up of speakers invited to join the celebrations including the presidents of the European Council, of the European Commission and of the European Parliament, as well as high-level policy-makers.

Polls are tightening as the race to become the 45th President of the United States enters its last week, with Donald Trump attempting to capitalise on the latest email scandal around Hillary Clinton.

Everyone has a book club these days: Emma Watson, Marc Zuckerberg, your neighbour. Maybe you too are already in on the book club life and are searching for your next irresistible read. We have come up with some great picks that will fire up the discussion in your group.