The EU’s ban on discarding caught fish in February 2013 has received widespread applause. Why?

The EU’s crisis has as much to do with leadership and solidarity as resolving fiscal and debt problems. It is time to dispense with caricatures and write the next chapter in the EU’s ongoing history. And for that, clear and transparent data will be needed.

The euro area has been at the centre of the global financial storms for two years. Some serious observers have begun to question whether the euro area will survive these currents. The recently published OECD Economic Survey of the Euro Area shows how Europe’s bold experiment in economic integration can be made to work. 

The new euro architecture that is to come into effect from July still suffers from shortcomings, and problem countries have yet to prove that they can survive within the euro says Thomas Mayer. It would be premature to sound the all clear on the euro crisis. 

Young, skilled, well-educated, well-travelled and yet jobless: these are the characteristics of the so-called “lost generation”. The challenges young people in Europe face today are many, and vary from region to region and from person to person. Many are facing high levels of unemployment; some need to fight for their basic freedoms; others for their right to build up representative youth structures, or face different types of discrimination. There are plenty of indignados out there! 

Can cutting down on sugar subsidies lead to healthier trade competition and trimmer prices? The 2005 European Union market reforms aim to thin EU farmers’ sugar subsidies and cut out obsolete sugar mills. Sugar Policy Reform in the European Union and in World Sugar Markets maps out how this might work.

European leaders should shift their focus from austerity to growth, not least to fight unemployment, says the ETUC, which urges a Social Progress Protocol to be attached to the European treaties. 

The crisis-induced trend towards inward-looking policies poses great dangers for Europe. 

How can the euro crisis unfold? For David McWilliams, Irish economist and best-selling author, the answer is probably a two-speed arrangement between core and periphery. 

Investment in Europe’s roads, railways and inland waterways has taken an upswing in recent years, particularly in eastern countries, says the International Transport Forum.

The gap in productivity and economic performance between the US and Europe has been a source of much debate in recent years, but many experts seem agreed on one point: that a lack of progress on reform in labour and product markets has not helped the European cause.

One of the main challenges for the future will undoubtedly be the migration of a highly skilled workforce from Asia (see for instance, “Globalisation and Labour Markets: Policy Issues Arising from the Emergence of China and India”, OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Paper No 63, November 2007, www.oecd.org/migration).

The world economy faces challenges from the new powerhouses of China and India (see Nos 263 and 264/265, 2007). In order to compete, there is a case for closer co-operation between developed countries and, in particular, tighter integration in Europe.

Destination Europe is a slightly misleading title since its subject, the political development of Europe from 1945 to 2003, is a journey with a point of origin when Europe, which a generation earlier dominated the world, lay in ruins with no destination.