The new Turkish ambassador to Canada says his country’s interest in gaining admittance to the European Union has waned among members of the public but it shouldn’t. He said Turkey is Western in view and the EU is the “personification of that.”

Summits were more fun in those days. When Ferdinand III, the Habsburg monarch of the Holy Roman Empire, arrived in Regensburg, the Brussels of its time, in late 1652, he brought 60 musicians and three dwarves. There were sleigh rides, fireworks and the first Italian opera ever performed in Germanic lands. Aside from that, the Reichstag (imperial diet) was much like today’s European Council, the gathering for leaders of the member states.

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the EU did not go unnoticed in Washington, serving as a springboard for several debates on the EU and US’ role in promoting peace and security in the world. "We will need to be more capable of adding to soft power bits of hard power," said EU Ambassador to the US Joao Vale de Almeida, on 7 December, sharing a platform at the Brookings Institution.

Contrary to popular belief, Angela Merkel does not hold all the aces in her game of high stakes poker with Enda Kenny and the Irish taxpayer. For unless she plays her cards most carefully, Ms Merkel in the longer term could back herself into a corner, and her options might suddenly become very limited indeed.

The Nobel committee's decision ignores EU-member's actions beyond Europe and the many more worthy candidates across the world... Look to some EU-member countries' contribution to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Africa, and the story may be a little different.

Representatives from several Euro-Mediterranean countries, including France, Iran, Israel, Morocco, Romania and Tunisia attended the launch on Tuesday of the 18th MedFilm Festival at a press conference at the Casa del Cinema.

"The decision by the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award the European Union (EU) with the 2012 Peace Prize has come as a surprise to many. Defending its decision, the Committee in Oslo heralded over half a century of European stabilisation: ‘The union and its forerunners have for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe’.