Those looking for gritty details of fraught European politics will enjoy today’s Le Monde newspaper, which delves into the Roma-themed spat that erupted last week.
Its Brussels team has painstakingly recreated the lunch at Thursday’s European summit, the scene of a breath-taking clash between French president Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission head José Manuel Barroso. Read more
After yet another of their periodic public spats, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel are trying – yet again – to mend fences, this time on the margins of the U.N. poverty conference in New York.
Their mini-summit occurred Monday, less than a week after an E.U. conclave where the French president claimed the German chancellor not only supported his controversial policy of shutting down camps housing impoverished Roma, but that she was also planning on closing similar camps in Germany. Read more
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Peter Spiegel is the FT's Brussels bureau chief. He returned to the FT in August 2010 after spending five years covering foreign policy and national security issues from Washington for the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, focusing on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He first joined the FT in 1999 covering business regulation and corporate crime in its Washington bureau, before spending four years covering military affairs and the defence industry in London and Washington.
Joshua Chaffin is one of the FT's EU correspondents, covering areas including policies on trade, the environment and energy. He has worked in the FT's Brussels bureau since late 2008 and before that was an FT correspondent in New York and Washington DC. 
Alex Barker is EU correspondent, covering the single market, financial regulation and competition. He was formerly an FT political correspondent in the UK and joined the FT in 2005.
James Fontanella-Khan is FT's Brussels correspondent, covering media, telecom and internet regulation as well as justice, employment and social affairs and its impact on eastern Europe. He was formerly an FT correspondent in India. He joined the FT in 2006. 
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