1) A handy short explanation of why I’ve been writing about the EU constitution here a lot recently.

2) A new bilingual blog aggregator type thing from new(ish) French news channel France 24, designed to provide an insight into the increasingly fascinating French elections. Ignore the fact that they asked to republish some recent posts of mine (oddly dropping all the links in the process), it could be handy over the next couple of months.

3) The funniest news story of the week – Slobbo the Vampire.

4) A triple bill from the Economist: Europe is united only by its contradictions ; How much does the European Union really encourage competition? ; and a handy overview of the economies of Eastern Europe

5) Talking economics, an introduction to economics even I can understand

6) Talking things I don’t understand being helpfully explained, a guide to Finnish politics in three parts (one, two, three), with more on the aftermath of the recent elections (and, elsewhere, a similar analysis of the results of Estonia’s elections a week ago)

7) Newsweek on the future of Europe – “Europe, it seems, is increasingly split—not along class or racial lines, but between its young and its old” (counter with an hysterical and hyperbolic Christopher Hitchens reviewing a seemingly even more hysterical Mark Steyn – assuming you like a bit of borderline racist froth)

8) Speaking of highly contentious (generally) right-wing assertions, a review I’d missed on a book exploring “Europe’s anti-Americanism” (and another take)

9) Being a journalist in Russia is a dangerous game – so much so, the only way to cope is to laugh in despair. And two recent examples of dead Russian journalists…

10) Finally, evidence is increasingly beginning to build that Britain is not quite so separate from the rest of Europe as many would like to believe – thanks to the beauty of science, the evidence is apparently building that we may have more DNA in common with Basques than with Saxons…