EU/North America

Since late 2015, the Heinrich Böll Foundation is in the process of setting up a new office in Paris, which will focus on four main activities: energy transition and climate protection, greening the economy, democracy’s crisis of confidence, and European politics.

The Hungarian government will hold a referendum in order to signal to Brussels that refugees are not welcome in Hungary. The referendum cannot influence EU policies, and may not even be legal.

The German federal government sees Egypt as a state that can guarantee regional stability. But especially the support of the regime as-Sisi increases the instability in the region. It's time for a new approach to Egypt.

Opening remarks on the occasion of the "EU Quo Vadis?" Conference of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung in Berlin on May 26th, 2016 titled "Crossing Boundaries in European Asylum and Refugee Policy".

The EU needs a proper strategy that allows migrants a legal form of access. The current situation of the camps in and around the EU is unacceptable. The issue of clarifying immigration regulations for the EU must not be put off any longer.

At the beginning of May, large demonstrations against the policy of the government have taken place in Warsaw, Poznan and Wroclaw. The initiator of these and other former demonstrations in the last months is the movement KOD (Komitet Obrony Demokracji), the Committee for the Defense of Democracy. Veronika Felder and Michael Álvarez Kalverkamp spoke with Aleksandra Śniegocka-Goździk und Jarosław Marciniak, two KOD members, about the movement and the current situation in Poland.

In France economic and social problems, terrorism and internal security are viewed as more important than the migrant crisis. Seeing the migrant flows as a result of conflicts in the Arab world they deal with the problem with military assistance.

Turkey is hosting some 2.7 million Syrian refugees. Only one tenth are in camps and the rest spread around urban areas. Local cultural and religious affinity with them has kept social friction low.

Czech society is polarised by attitudes to refugees. This is absurd given that fact that only 1,156 have applied for asylum in a country of ten million people. Xenophobia and hysteria drive the debate.

Due to their recent history many Croatians understand the plight of refugees. Others fear the influx of different cultural and religious influences, and the effects on the economic situation.