Globalisation and Transformation

The First World War proved to be a calamity for both Germany and Europe, and the Second World War magnified this tragedy even further. Without both World Wars the European Union (EU) as we know it today might not exist. This article delves into the consequences of World War I, shedding light on the profound impact it had on shaping the course of history.

The upcoming European Parliament elections are overshadowed by the perception of an indecisive European Union ill-prepared to deal with geopolitical challenges. Inferring from that a general indifference towards the European Union or its Parliament, however, is a short-sighted fallacy.

The EU cannot give up on the project of a unified and free Europe without giving up on itself. This includes the promise that all European nations on the path to becoming a democracy and constitutional state can become a member of the European Community. Ukraine is the touchstone of this promise today.

Hungary receives massive aids from Russia in constructing new power plants. It is not only generosity, but mere a fiendishly clever economic strategy. Still legal and political risks have been neglected.

In an interview, political scientist Vladimíra Dvořáková of the University of Economics, Prague, enumerates the causes of the current turbulence on the Czech political scene.

Our Cambodia office director Manfred Hornung has registered with Cambodia's National Election Committee (NEC) as an independent observer for the parliamentary elections. In his articles he reports about worried citizens and protests on the election day.

In wars, rape has been used as a tool to go beyond the physical and military defeat of the enemy, to subdue a society politically and morally. The present article, written by psycho-therapist Dr. Jamal Khalil Sobh, sheds light on the repeated war crime of rapes of women, including the recent tragic incidents in Syria.

With the constitutional amendments adopted on the 11th of March, Viktor Orbán has once again caused a surprise. The reactions of the Western European public show that there is still an inadequate grasp of how political power is exercised by Orbán’s government. European democrats now finally need to formulate a common position against the power centralization in the country.

The anthology „Writing Revolution: The Voices from Tunis to Damascus“, supported by the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s office in Beirut, is one of the six books to receive the „English PEN Award for Outstanding Writing in Translation“ in the year 2013.