Library blog

Our latest monthly Think Tank Review, issue 19/2014, has been released. The November issue opens with papers on democracy and legitimacy in general, on how to improve democratic scrutiny of the eurozone in particular, on the by now classical typology of euroscepticism, and on how the EU communicates with citizens.

On 1st January 2015, Latvia will take over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. It will be Latvia's first presidency, and the first presidency to work from the start with the new Commission, the new President of the European Council, and the new European Parliament.

Since the first of November, there is a new system to determine if a vote in European Council and the Council of the EU will pass or fail under the Qualified Majority Voting rules. In this post we briefly look at some of the academic reactions.

Yesterday, Donald Tusk took over as President of the European Council ftusk-rompuy5rom Herman van Rompuy, himself the first to hold the post established by the Lisbon treaty. Tusk had been elected by the EU Heads of State or Government on 30 August 2014.