The credit rating agency Moody’s may cut the AAA-rating of Britain and France, according to the news agency Reuters. Moody’s has downgraded the credit rating of Spain and Portugal, citing growing risks from Europe’s debt crisis.

Moody’s rival agency Standard & Poor’s, has gone even further in downgrading the credit rating of EU member states, mainly in southern Europe.

De rødgrønne partiene er uenige om hvordan regjeringen Stoltenberg skal behandle EU-direktiv 2008/10 av 19 november 2008 om vikararbeid. LO-sekretariatet har vedtatt å fraråde at direktivet blir innarbeidet i norsk lov. Etter det har flere lokallag i Arbeiderpartiet gått imot direktivet, blant annet Arbeiderpartiet i Stavanger, Bergen og Trondheim. Senterpartiet, trolig også Sosialistisk Venstreparti, vil gå imot at direktivet blir norsk lov.

Du finner en link til direktivet her og en link til nettstedet Europalovs omtale av saken her. Arbeiderpartiet redegjør for sitt syn på Vikarbyrådirektivet her.

Utvalget som skulle utrede Norges forhold til EU gjennom avtalen om Europeisk Økonomisk Samarbeid (EØS), har lagt fram sin utredning. Du finner NOU 2012: 2
Utenfor og innenfor – Norges avtaler med EU – her.

One year ago, the Foreign Service of the European Union was created, under the leadership of lady Cathrine Ashton, former EU Commissioner of the United Kingdom.

It’s been a rough year, both for the Union and its foreign service. Read about it on the web pages of Europolicis here.

For the 7th time since Denmark joined the European Union in 1973, the country will lead the Council of Ministers. Denmark joined together with Great Britain and Ireland, while Norway stayed out after a slim majority voted no to the terms of EU membership negotiated by the Labour government of Trygve Bratteli.

The leadership of the EU 27 and the eurozone of 17 nations will be a huge challenge for the newly formed government of Social Democrat Helle Thorning Schmidt, in the most difficult year the European Union has ever faced. Denmark is not a eurozone member, they opted out in a referendum.

“The impossible seems to become a possibility: Great Britain might be the first member to leave the Euroean Union”, writes the German news magazine Der Spiegel.

The renowned German news magazine writes the story of how Britain might leave the EU, after British PM David Cameron was the only one going against a stronger comittment among the EU members, when it comes to budget procedures in the EU member countries. There will therefore not be a Lisbon treaty amendment, but an agreement, probably between the other 26 members of the European Union, though several members, among them Sweden and Denmark will wait to decide, until the agreement is discussed in their respective national parliaments. The agreement intends to fight the economic crises, threathening the survival of the euro currency union among 17 of the 27 EU members.

Transparency International publishes annually a perceived corruption index for the public sector, with zero as completely corrupt and ten as best performer in the fight agains corruption.

The poorest results have been recorded in Bulgaria and Romania, followed by Greece and Italy. Some of the EU candidate countries appear to be less corrupt than these four EU member states.

There’s new talk of a two-speed Europe as the 17 eurozone countries struggle to save their currency. But European integration has for a long time been going at 6-10 different speeds, and there’s no convergence in sight, even in a 20-30 years perspective.

The 17 euro countries have closed ranks to discuss common problems, under the leadership of Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy. As a result, the ten EU-members outside of the eurozone, also meet to coordinate their interests, initiated by Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron. But the outsider group is divided. Most members are obliged to join the euro sooner or later, indeed, some of them are eager to join, while others are quite eurosceptical. Only Denmark and Britain have a contracted right to stay out of the euro forever.