European Union

Over the past two months a string of remarkable opinion polls have appeared across Europe that point to big opportunities — and big challenges — for the left. In Greece the radical left party Syriza, which came close to winning the 2012 general elections, has moved to being 5 to 10 percent ahead of the ruling conservative New Democracy party. Some polls in the Irish Republic have seen Sinn Fein nose ahead of both the ruling Fine Gael party and the once dominant party of Irish capitalism, Fianna Fail.

In January 2013 Prime Minister David Cameron made a speech on Britain’s membership of the European Union (EU) in which he promised to renegotiate the “terms of the relationship” and put the result to a referendum in 2017.

Cameron was seeking to stem the growing support for Ukip, undercut the Eurosceptic wing of his own Tory party, defer the EU question until after the May 2015 general election, and simultaneously blame Britain’s economic troubles on the Eurozone debt crisis.

Russia, the US and the European powers are facing their greatest clash since the Cold War. Following the overthrow of Ukrainian president Yanukovich, the new pro-Western government in Kiev turned to seal a partnership with the EU and Russia annexed Crimea, home to the Russian Black Sea fleet and its route to the Mediterranean.

Tensions are spreading to other "buffer" states on Russia's southern borders. Barack Obama has called on EU leaders to increase their military spending.

Twenty years ago Bosnia was at the bloody heart of the Yugoslav civil wars. The war ended when the country was divided along "ethnic" lines by the Dayton Accord, leaving two eparate entities and one mixed "district".

Bosnia has since become a plaything of the West, with the US and the EU acting with the IMF and World Bank to impose austerity in return for increased and unsustainable levels of debt repayments.

The recent protests in Ukraine began on 21 November in the run up to the European Union (EU) summit in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, at the end of November. They followed a government announcement that it was ending preparations for signing an association agreement with the EU.

The first protests in the capital Kiev's Independence Square, organised by the three main opposition parties in parliament (apart from the pro-Russian Communist Party), were only hundreds strong.

We have had an ugly month of May, drenched by a double wave of racism. On 3 May the racist Ukip sailed in on a high spring tide, its 25 percent share of the vote in the county council elections making it the new third party in British politics. The party's triumph followed a campaign based on anti-immigrant scaremongering.

The vilification of Greek resistance to austerity has been a recurrent feature of media coverage of the eurozone crisis. Sadly most of the leading left wing parties across Europe have also been unable to provide a convincing answer to these attacks. The general response of much of the European left has been to replace the right wing paradigm of the "lazy Greek versus the disciplined German" with another simplification: that of right wing nationalism against the eurozone versus left wing, pro-EU internationalism. They fear leaving the eurozone would be a concession to nationalism.

In this case it's an acronym coined by "economic analysts" to describe the European countries that have been hardest hit by the recession: Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain.

Now, I happen to be Irish, but I'm not particularly nationally-minded, so on one level it doesn't bother me all that much. However, when you consider who these "economic analysts" are, and what their role has been in the crisis affecting Greece, it's a different story.

Irish voters delivered a major blow to the plans of Europe's rulers and the Irish political establishment by voting against the Lisbon Reform Treaty on 12 June. Supporters of Lisbon have been quick to try and frighten the Irish public with the consequences of their No vote - a continuation of the strategy of the Yes side during the campaign.

Europe In Crisis' has been a regular fallback for headline writers over the decades. But now, after the referendums in France and the Netherlands, the European Union really is in crisis. Various factors have gone into the making of this crisis, some of which have been in the foreground of the debate on the proposed European Constitution - for example, the implications for the EU of enlargement to incorporate East and Central Europe.

Revolt against the elites