EU News Sources

To broadly follow developments in the EU you can probably go by the Europe section of the major newspapers, or news organisations.

The International Herald Tribune has a decent Europe section, as does the BBC. An added benefit of the BBC site is that you can access the Euroblog from Mark Mardell, the BBC's Europe editor.

In terms of slant, you need to keep in mind that the IHT is written by Americans and the BBC is, as it says, British. The political viewpoint of the BBC is quite centrist for most Europeans, whereas the IHT leans right on issues of trade and armed force. Many conservatives in England and the US will disagree vehemently with that analysis, but I think it holds for most Europeans.

Euronews, the European version of CNN, is a very good channel, but has a very poor online news service. If you receive it, watch it now and again, but don't read the website. If you don't receive it, call your cable company, but don't read the website.

If you want to go beyond the broad outlines and into the day-to-day functioning of the EU, you can use a number of specialised internet sources. There are three broadly similar sources that offer the daily EU news you'd also read on the BBC, plus some extra news. These are the EUObserver, EUBusiness and EUpolitix.

In my experience, the EUobserver is the best of these three, and you don't really need to read the other two when you read it.

The EUobserver is edited by the wife of eurosceptic Danish MEP Jens-Peter Bonde (see Jon Worth), but just as Bonde is a rather fair eurosceptic, the EUobserver has a rather fair editorial line.

As a small aside, EUpolitix is part of the The Parliament magazine, which is worth reading if you want to go even further in-depth and read more opinion, but online it is only available as a downloadable pdf.

In addition to one of these three regular news sites, EU News, by the European Voice is worth reading on a weekly basis. It has a different, more in-the-loop news selection. The European Voice is owned by the Economist, which sometimes shows.

If you are interested in policy, there is no alternative to EurActiv, which covers the developments in all EU policies in as much detail as you want. EurActiv is sometimes seen as affiliated with the EU as it receives some EU funding, but this is only to the tune of 15%.

There are many more news sources, but you can get a quite complete picture of what is happening in the EU by reading the EUobserver and EurActiv once every two days and checking EU News once a week.

Beyond that, read the blogs to your right.