Britain would get a big economic boost if it left the European Union, former finance minister Nigel Lawson said on Tuesday, fuelling the debate about a referendum on British membership. Writing in the Times newspaper, Lawson insisted that "the case for exit" was now clear and urged Britain to sever its 40-year association with Brussels. "In my judgement the economic gains would substantially outweigh the costs," wrote Lawson, who is the most senior member of Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party to call for Britain to leave the EU.

A winter of discontent in Bulgaria, when mass protests forced out the government, could give way to a spring of political deadlock and instability after elections Sunday in the EU's poorest country. The outcome is expected to be a fragmented parliament full of many of the same politicians who have run Bulgaria since the end of communism two decades ago. Voters are stuck in a blind alley, facing a "choice between the same parties they protested against this winter", Ivan Krastev from the Centre for Liberal Strategies think-tank said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition partners kicked off their campaign to stay in government at the weekend, brandishing the French economy as a warning against German opposition policies. Under the slogan "With us Germany remains strong", the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) presented itself as a bulwark against Germany losing its economic footing, at a congress in the southern city of Nuremberg on Saturday and Sunday.

Hundreds of Hungarians gathered Saturday in downtown Budapest for an anti-Zionist protest organised by the openly anti-Semitic Jobbik party, just a day before a World Jewish Congress (WJC) meeting kicks off here. Some 500 protesters, including some in the uniform of the banned paramilitary Hungarian Guard, took part in the demonstration, which the interior ministry had tried to prevent, according to an AFP photographer.