Europe has got what it hoped for from the US presidential elections.  The new president starts with a fund of goodwill from this side of the Atlantic.  With his new appointments and rhetoric on the crisis he has made a magnificent start  well before he takes over [26.11.08].

*****

As much as anything it is language that divides the UK  from the continent and joins us to America and the Commonwealth. To make it worse, the government has abandoned compulsory foreign language teaching in schools and now we see the results - a huge drop in those taking French and German at GCSE. A few years ago the EU proposed 'Mother tongue plus two' as the right formula, knowing that one of the 'two' would be English. We didn't follow as usual, having this blinkered attitude that if 'they' speak our language we don't need to learn theirs. I think it puts us at a serious disadvantage in any negotiations with business people on the continent. Feeling at a disadvantage in this way, how many UK firms don't even try to do business with the eurozone and miss out on the opportunities for growth and profit?

*****

Sarkozy and the EU had a triumph in  settling the Georgia crisis.  His immediate trip to Moscow was exactly the response that was needed.  The fact that it also succeeded in defusing the situation was a bonus.  It left the Americans wrong-footed, hawkish but impotent.  The UK and the Poles, as usual, were out of step with majority EU sentiment, too ready to back the States.  Cameron, in particular, showed an impulsive streak, dashing off to Tbilisi before the facts were known.