A l'européenne

There has been more coverage recently of course on the question of Turkey joining the EU. Blair, along with Schröder, played a big part in the talks last Friday, according to the FT. Straw or MacShane appear often enough, putting the case for. One curious aspect is the deafening silence of the British Conservatives. The BBC have to get a couple of politicians from elsewhere in  Europe, with an Austrian or Italian putting the case against.  

An e-mail on BBC WS on Wednesday, I think, said that it was important for Turkey to join, to show it was possible to bring about democracy in the European, peaceful, way as opposed to the American way, by force. The listener was from Montpellier and the point made was similar to Bernard Guetta's - see, from 13 (not 12) Dec

mais les Français sont aussi massivement hostiles à l’adhésion turque qu’ils l’étaient à l’intervention en Irak alors que nous pouvons là réussir par la paix ce que les Américains échouent à faire par la guerre : ancrer l’Islam à la démocratie.

Mmm, maybe.

Update: from the little I heard of Today in Parliament last night, the Tories, like the LibDems, are in favour.

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Another linguistic exploration: Fromageux.

Donc ici pour les capitalistes, et là pour les prolétaires, (via Emmanuel), Paul de Degrauwe's  articles in the Financial Times.