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In July 2011, ISAF officially handed over seven areas to Afghan National Security Forces, beginning a process to gradually transition all security responsibility from international to Afghan leadership. Drawing on The Liaison Office’s experience in the region Loya Paktia, this paper examines the shortcomings of a transition strategy that focuses on security, while ignoring important social and political factors that could undermine the strategy. 

The current crisis is not a crisis of confidence, nor is it purely financial in character. The current crisis is, above all, a device for domination, spoliation, and precarisation. What we witness today is the depredation and expropriation of common goods, of wealth, and of rights. What we need is a common social, fiscal, and budgetary policy.

Germany appears to have come into its leadership role in the crisis involuntarily. Nevertheless, it is time that Germany also acknowledges that the crisis can only be overcome together with solidarity and stability and a sustainable future foundation for the European Union. 

Using the example of Greece, Anna Visvizi illustrates what kind of growth European countries need. She points out, that the strategy of the EU can not only focus on promoting economic growth per se but must be aimed at the fundamental factors for a sustainable socio-economic growth.

Some sort of fiscal and political union is feasible. Yet does it make sense for Germany to be in such a union? Isn't is about time that German consumers had their day in the sun? That, amongst other things, is what a euro break-up would deliver. 

The Euroblogosphere can be seen as a tool towards greater democratisation as i tconstitutes a community of individual citizens sharing information and ideas. Eurobloggers have the potential to become something like a popular lobby, giving voice to the interests and grievances of common Europeans.

Ramil Safarov’s surprise extradition on 31 August 2012 and his immediate pardoning upon arrival to Baku has raised a few intriguing questions not only outside Hungary but inside the country. It shows that Hungary’s current government is prepared to go a long way – if necessary, against fundamental human rights – in order to secure its economic interests.

Will the euro crisis end up in a historic tragedy? Europe’s destiny today, as so often throughout history, lies with Germany. In particular the German Left has a historic responsibility to take an active role in saving the eurozone.

A chain of rapid and unprecedented changes in Hungary’s Higher Education Act have been adopted and implemented recently by the government of Viktor Orbán. The changes share the intention of centralising power and establishing supreme control over all levels of education.

With conventional oil production in decline, the global oil industry is investing heavily in dirtier and riskier forms of oil and also in unconventional resources, such as tar sands, and oil shale. All are difficult and costly to produce, usually more carbon intensive than conventional oil and may have calamitous long-term impacts on the local environment.