Despite a hectic schedule and pressing affairs of state, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault took time out to host a lunch for AAPA members at Hotel Matignon on April 11 during which he explained the priorities for his government and addressed some of the challenges facing France and Europe today.
In a relaxed atmosphere in one of the dining rooms at his prestigious residence, Ayrault, in combative form, reviewed his policy reforms over the past 10 months and his strategy and priorities for the coming four years.
Fourteen keen AAPA journalists and the …

 
 
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius met February 6 with close to 40 AAPA  members to discuss France’s priorities and concerns in the foreign policy domain.
In an ornate setting at the Quai d’Orsay, Fabius went “off the record” to explain his government’s concerns about Europe, Syria, Lebanon, Mali, Iran, the Middle East Peace Process and many other topics.
For about 90 minutes, in a relaxed, round-table format, the Foreign Minister gave his vision of how the international community should tackle the crises at hand, noting the difficulties of getting consensus in several …

 Amid widespread reports that Britain was gradually easing out of European Union obligations and might block the next proposed EU budget, European Affairs Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told some twenty five of us over breakfast Nov. 13 that intense efforts were underway to resolve critical issues with London in anticipation of the key EU summit meeting Nov. 22-23.
 
He urged an agreement at the summit on the EU’s €1 trillion budget for 2014-2020, saying: “We are working to find the right balance and compromises.” Cazeneuve added that “EU budgets always present these …

 
British Ambassador Peter Ricketts sipped Earl Grey tea with two dozen AAPA members over breakfast at the top of the Paris Thomson Reuters building, displaying his diplomatic knack for giving very little away and only letting the genteel demeanor slip briefly while expressing Britain’s frustration with the slowness of euro zone leaders to come up with a convincing solution to the debt crisis.
 
The June 22 gathering was timely, coinciding with a four-way meeting in Rome to prepare the end-June EU summit.  Ricketts warned that Europe was “coming to the end of …

If the 27-nations of the European Union want to re-launch their stagnating economies and EU political integration, it must be a collective effort and not that of one or even several leaders, and it will probably take years, according to Daniel Cohn-Bendit.
 
Speaking to some 20 AAPA members at the Paris headquarters of the European Parliament March 5, the outspoken leftist European deputy remarked that a relaunching of Europe has “never taken place in any one country,” and will require greater political will in the 27-nation bloc. Cohn-Bendit criticized the German-led …

A Field Guide for Global Reporting
“Whenever you see hundreds of thousands of sane people trying to get out of a place, and a little bunch of madmen struggling to get in, you know the latter are newspapermen.” It was this astute observation by iconic reporter H.R. Knickerbocker that Mort Rosenblum uses as a peg for his latest book: “Little Bunch Of Madmen,” designed as a field manual for global reporters and those who aspire to the trade. Drawing on his own experience as well as interviews with legendary journalists he …

Some thirty members had a first-hand chance to probe Bulgaria’s Irina Bokova’s background…