The Daily Telegraph reports that the US government is increasingly worried by developments in the UK, where anti-EU sentiment and the Ukip are on the rise. In a context where Conservative PM David Cameron has remarked that Britain out of Europe was "imaginable" while his government has continued to drift towards holding a referendum on EU membership, the Obama administration is concerned about British withdrawal from EU institutions, which “would also reduce American influence on the continent.”

Historically, Washington has been able to rely on London for support for its views, particularly in the fields of foreign policy and free trade where Britain’s advocacy is thought to be crucial to prevent a “drift towards protectionism” in the EU. The fear is that a UK whose involvement in Europe is limited to participation in the single market will be a much weaker ally. As The Daily Telegraph reports —

“It is important to state very clearly that a strong UK in a strong Europe is in America's national interest," said a senior US administration official. "We recognise national states but see the EU as a force multiplier”.

The news that America will be exerting pressure to keep Britain in the European fold has not been welcomed by the Eurosceptic Ukip, whose foreign affairs spokesman, William Dartmouth, remarked: "It is not the job of the UK to make the work of US diplomats easier. It is our job to secure our own interests."

Europeans scandalized by US gun legislation, like Christoph Prantner in Austrian daily Der Standard, should keep in mind that the perpetrator of the Aurora massacre allegedly used a semi-automatic Glock pistol made in Austria, argues Charles Lane in The Washington Post. In the wake of the aftermath of the July 20 mass shooting during a midnight screening of the latest Batman film which killed 12 people, the editorial writer notes that –

For all the tut-tutting across the pond, America’s gun culture exists in symbiosis with Europe’s own culture of precision manufacturing – of which the Glock is a notable expression.

As the UN conference on the Arms Trade Treaty draws to a close on July 27,  Lane continues –

EU members shipped just under a million handguns to the US in 2010 [...] Europe’s small arm makers can still get rich, and create jobs, thanks to the Second Amendment Who knew? [...] Europe [is] practicing something different from what it preaches.

Lane suggests EU leaders could restrict European gun exports, given the fact “we’re talking about a product that can kill people” –

A prohibitive tariff on weapons from Europe wouldn’t end U. S. gun violence, but it might reduce risks at the margin [...] Europe’s battered economy might suffer, but at least it wouldn’t be the first time companies over there gave up U. S. market share so as not to encourage America’s evil ways. Last December, the EU restricted sales to the U. S. of the drug also being used in death penalty lethal injections -which Europa abhors. As it happens, Holmes could face capital punishment [...] Thanks goodness his blood wouldn’t be on Europe’s hands.

 “In Europe, economic meltdown tears at unity,” headlines USA Today, which devotes a wide-ranging report to the growing divide between “better-off EU states” and their poorer neighbours. What is to become of the unhappy Greeks, the unfortunate Irish who are emigrating in their droves, and the “thousands of jobless Spaniards” who might “soon be homeless?” wonders the daily. And how long can they continue to count on being bankrolled by “furious” Germans and True Finns, the populist Finnish party?

As Herman Van Rompuy has pointed out, Europe has now reached a point where it can’t finance its social model anymore. Worse still, its financial ills could lead to a domino effect, in which: “Greek banks collapse, then French banks collapse, then U. S. banks collapse” – a pessimistic vision shared by the Washington Post, which remarks that “kicking the can down the road” has been the only response to these problems thus far. However, the newspaper warns that “Europe’s day of reckoning on its financial crisis is at hand.” European governments will “need to find common ground, and fast, lest Ms. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy, and their colleagues, go down in history as the leaders who brought Europe, and the world, to the brink of economic disaster – and then over it.

“The decline and fall of Europe” is Time magazine’s fearsome headline. “Its economic union is unravelling, London is ablaze, and the continent’s once dependable trading partner the US is too feeble to save the day -- or the euro,” the US magazine reports. “Say goodbye to the old order.”

“The EU has created a single currency, but it hasn’t forged a deeper political or fiscal union,” the magazine continues. Opinions differ on whether to centralize further or break up the EU.  There are historic precedents for both: look how the Russian ruble fell apart when “economic discrepancies became too great” between ex-Soviet countries who tried to keep using it after the collapse of the USSR. On the other hand, remember the Exchange Rate Mechanism crisis in 1992, which prompted many European countries to move “towards closer economic integration”? Whichever way, “the crisis reveals the choice and the choice has to be made.”

“Can Europe be saved?” So leads the New York Times in its Sunday Magazine with a series of articles on Europe’s economic woes, kicking off with an essay by Paul Krugman. “There’s something peculiarly apt about the fact that the current European crisis began in Greece,” writes the Nobel prize-winning economist. “For Europe’s woes have all the aspects of a classical Greek tragedy, in which a man of noble character is undone by the fatal flaw of hubris.” European hubris lies in the creation of the euro, Krugman explains, “supposed to be the finest moment in a grand and noble undertaking: the generations-long effort to bring peace, democracy and shared prosperity to a once and frequently war-torn continent. But the architects of the euro, caught up in their project’s sweep and romance, chose to ignore the mundane difficulties a shared currency would predictably encounter – to ignore warnings, which were issued right from the beginning, that Europe lacked the institutions needed to make a common currency workable. Instead, they engaged in magical thinking, acting as if the nobility of their mission transcended such concerns.”

Paris bureau chief Steven Erlanger profiles the “odd couple” at the heart of what Krugman terms the “Euromess” – German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy – “She makes fun, in private, of the way he walks and talks, of his rapid, jerky gestures and facial grimaces. He mocks her deliberation, her reluctance, her matronly caution… They are the best hope Europe has for continued unity. But they do not like each other at all.” For the EU to work, however, “Sarkozy and Merkel have to get along.”

On September 2, Israelis and Palestinians are meeting in Washington to have yet another go at the Middle East peace talks. But while the discussions are taking place under the aegis of the United States, the European Union remains absent from the event.

It is incomprehensible that "President Obama is keeping the EU away from the negotiations", declares Yossi Beilin in La Vanguardia. The former Israeli justice minister, president of the Geneva Initiative and former negotiator in the 2001 talks held at Taba, recalls that the principal steps in the peace process over the last 20 years have been made in Europe: the Madrid conference of 1991, as well as the agreements signed in Oslo (1993), Paris (1995) and Geneva (2003).

Beilin also observes that Obama is "aware of Europe's vast experience" and "knows that Europe will be called in over the three principal international problems" facing the establishment of a Palestinian state: finance, the question of who will participate in the multinational force for the protection of the Palestinian state, as well as the issue of who will help in the relocation of Palestinian refugees.

In light of these conditions, the former Israeli negotiator considers that Europe must not "beg" for a role in the renewed peace process, but must be "constantly implicated in the talks". This is what worked so well during the Madrid conference, where the "Europeans played a decisive and key part" in advancing the negotiations. Beilin believes that it is now up to "the United States and the other implicated parties" to ask that Europe also assume "a decisive role" in the talks.

"They are peaceful, romantic people", who live in "a single country" from which "China has much to learn", who "act responsibly when confronted by problems", as well as being "tall, good-looking and blonde". Such is the vision that Chinese children have of Europeans. As La Vanguardia explains, these comments are the fruit of the project "One meter off the ground: how children imagine Europe", conducted by Spanish production company PDA on children 7 to 12 years of age attending a Beijing school. The project, supported by the EU's Spanish presidency, "would make the European founding fathers weep with joy", declares the paper. 

For the United States, if Ankara turns it back on the West, it is due to "European Union reluctance to admit Turkey as a member," reports the Financial Times. According to the London based business daily, the accusation was voiced on 9 June by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, in the wake of Turkey and Brazil's decision to vote against the the UN Security Council resolution imposing a fourth round of sanctions against Iran, which will include a partial arms embargo with authorisation for inspection of Iranian ships. In mid-May, Turkey and Brazil, who are non-permanent members of the Security Council, concluded an agreement on the enrichment of Iranian uranium, which marked the adoption of an independent diplomatic approach that does not follow the hard line endorsed by western countries.

Without a doubt, Europe – a continent "where new ideas, new technologies, and better ways of living are flourishing" –  has overtaken North America in its bid to address "the defining challenge of the twenty-first century." According to The Walrus, "After a century as Western Civilisation's primary battleground and museum of antiquities, Europe has again become its pace-setting think tank and laboratory." The Canadian weekly arrived at this conclusion in the course of an environmental "New Grand Tour" which travelled from Vauban (Germany) to Copenhagen, and from Berlin to Seville in search of the initiatives – carbon neutral homes, bicycle lanes, renewable energies and hide-speed trains – which have put Europe in the vanguard of the fight against global warming.

Some good news for once: "Why Europe will win," reads the headline in Newsweek's international edition. "Contrary to the widespread cliché of American dynamism versus European economic stagnation, over the past decade Europe's top companies have beaten America's (not to mention Japan's) by an often substantial margin," writes the New York weekly. "Despite the rise of China and the rest," Europe has managed to sustain "at about 17 percent, its share of world exports since 2000, while America's has fallen by more than a third, from 17 to 11 percent." The European businesses in the top 3,000 global companies also have a better record of growing profits – "at an average rate of 13 percent a year over the decade from 1998 to 2008, almost double the 7 percent rate for their U. S. rivals" – and they are more adept at seizing markets beyond their borders. Newsweek notes that 39% of European companies' sales are to countries outside of the EU, whereas foreign markets only account for 30% of sales by American and Japanese companies.

“A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of Socialism’s slow collapse.” An allusion to Marx's Communist manifesto opens the front page article in today’s International Herald Tribune. Fresh after the “clobbering” the SPD received in this weekend’s German elections, the august American daily has revived the debate as to whether the European left is dead or not. “Where the left holds power as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack," it notes. "Where it is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless.” This is ironic given that the world is in the midst of one of “the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system”. The reasons puts forward for such a decline are due to the centre-right’s recent embrace of traditionally social-democratic ideas – “generous welfare benefits, nationalized health care, sharp restrictions on carbon emissions, the ceding of some sovereignty to the European Union.” Says Tony Judt of New York’s Remarque Institute on European issues – “I don’t think Socialism in Europe has a future; and given that it is a core constitutive part of the European democratic consensus, that’s bad news."

Pondering the low turnout in the European elections, Gareth Harding in the WSJ Europe argues that if the EU has managed to create institutions it has failed to create “an electorate or demos”. A disconnect exists between Brussels “and the vast majority of Europeans who view politics through a national prism.”

Low-cost airlines, however, mean Europeans “are criss-crossing the continent like never before.” Continental integration, he argues, owes as much to Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary as to the EU founding fathers. Further evidence that a “people's Europe is slowly emerging” can be seen in the success of the Champions League. “If sport can become Europeanized,” he concludes, “there is no reason why politics cannot be. All we need now is the political equivalent of a Zinedine Zidane”.