Library blog

Welcome to issue 21 of the Think Tank Review compiled by the EU Council Library. It references papers published in January 2015. In the Regard croisés section, a network of perspectives spanning Germany, Estonia, the UK, France, Poland, Sweden.

The library team found plenty of interesting articles in the latest West European Politics, out in May 2015 but already available online (subscription required). Many of them investigate the impact of the crisis and the ensuing austerity, on Member State societies and politics.

February 7 will mark the fourth National Libraries Day in the United Kingdom. An initiative to raise awareness of the importance of libraries and to encourage people of every age and background to make use of them. Libraries across the country will hold events as diverse as an attempt to break the Guinness World Record of books swapped in eight hours.

The first TTR issue of 2015 has just been released. Strong focus on Member States in the think tank papers selected for this TTR.

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.

Our latest monthly Think Tank Review, issue 18/2014, has been released. In October, EU think tanks were still charting the new institutional landscape.

On 6 November, the European Parliament's committee for Constitutional Affairs held a workshop on the constitutional challenges for the EU in the new term (have a look at the workshop papers here). On the fringe of the workshop, we had a chance to exchange views with prof. Uwe Puetter  of Budapest's Central European University, around his new book The European Council and the Council: 'New Intergovernmentalism and Institutional Change'.