"Je plaide pour une véritable intégration européenne plus poussée à 17 pays, avec des convergences politiques, budgétaires, économiques et scientifiques. Une intégration européenne plus poussée pour une plus grande cohésion régionale et sociale. Une intégration européenne plus poussée à 17 pour davantage de solidarité et de responsabilité collective.

Prime Minister Cameron identifies three challenges facing the EU. Firstly, how it changes in response to the eurozone crisis. Secondly, how it changes to compete in the global market. And, thirdly, how it narrows the gap between itself and its citizens.

Public policy advocacy is generally defined as the attempted or successful influencing of legislative-administrative decisions made by public authorities through the use of interested representatives. A public policy advocate , or interest representative, is an individual or organization that seeks to influence policy.

Extract from an essay written by Josef Janning of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP)

Chancelor Angela Merkel has achieved a remarkable 41.5% of the vote (see breakdown below). The next weeks in Berlin are going to turn into a period of gamesmanship as Mrs. Merkel tries to form a stable governing coalition. Her only options are the Greens and the Social Democrats. Germans would be happy with a so-called 'grand coalition' with the Social Democrats because it would unite the country's two largest political parties. Such a government would also have a majority in the upper house of parliament- the Bundesrat offering support for Mrs.Merkel throughout the legislature.

The ranking of the EU richest countries is based on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) database of April 2013. The ranking is done according to GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita.

It cannot be said too many times that having an effective organization is crucial to successful public policy advocacy. Surprisingly many organizations in the EU Member States don’t have sufficient knowledge on how to increase the level of their public policy advocacy engagement.

What follows are solutions for increasing the level of public policy advocacy engagement and the benefits that can accrue in doing so.

Solutions

What follows is an Extract from a document published by the European Council on Foreign Relations titled " The German Election: What Europe expects and what Germany will not do.

The Euro crisis has failed to explode in the last three years, in spite of repeated predictions that it would. Many commentators (and politicians) now rejoice that the problem is solved. While a few of the countries have made steps toward recovery, there are still several that haven't, and, by and large, those that haven't are larger than those that have.

As always with European crises, the summer was a quiet period as everyone did put aside these dire economic issues and went on holiday. But there will be more fireworks after German elections, when tough decisions will be made.

Beside the top 6 EU Member States (Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, and Poland) whose combined population represents 355.79 million or 70% of the total EU population, the 30% remaining is comprised of 22 Member States that  have fewer votes in the Council (Romania, Netherlands, Greece, Czech Republic, Belgium, Hungary, Portugal, Sweden, Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Slovakia, Finland, Ireland, Croatia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta).