Europe

Turkish President Erdogan, usually a friend of many and often harsh words, needed almost a week before he took a stand on the Taliban takeover in Kabul.

As a representative survey reveals, citizens expect the next federal government to set clear priorities, to pursue an active and cooperative European policy and to invest more jointly in European issues of the future.

The European Green Deal will only become a true success story if the EU functions as a multi-level governing system in the truest sense of the word and the various levels operate at a well-connected interplay.

The Green Deal offers an excellent framework for a sustainable, viable Europe. The challenge of the day, however, lies in filling it with life. We must ensure that the right measures are undertaken to match and reach the right goals.

At least since the globalization debate in the early 1980s, it has always been about the contradiction between the local and the global. Ares Kalandides explains why it is time to rethink this approach and what opportunities and possibilities local initiatives offer today.

The EU strives for strategic sovereignty and the capability to master global politics. The crisis in Belarus presents an opportunity for Brussels to contribute to stability in its eastern neighborhood. In order to support a democratic transfer of power in Minsk, however, the EU must enhance its engagement across five areas.  

The vision of a strategically autonomous Europe is not met with great enthusiasm in Poland and the Baltic states. On the contrary, the preferences between Warsaw, Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn point to a renewal of the transatlantic bond and a stronger NATO in order to contain the challenges represented by Russia and China.

President Macron has been promoting the concept of European sovereignty and strategic autonomy for quite some time. His vision of a strategically autonomous Europe is based on the premise of profound geopolitical shifts and a new reality of big power rivalries. Still, Paris will have to convince skeptical EU Member States about the soundness of this concept.

If Europe’s elections are to remain contests of campaigns’ political ideas and not of their digital strategies, the systemic challenges to democracy must not be overlooked by the fires of the present moment.

The Moroccan government can live happily with the New Pact on Migration and Asylum. But many activists are disappointed by the contents of the Brussels Pact.

In the early hours of September 9th something rather expected happened. The Moria Refugee Camp on the Greek island of Lesbos was engulfed in flames, just a few hours after the announcement of the detection of 35 cases of coronavirus in the camp. The camp, which for years was a place of degradation of human dignity on the eastern border of the European Union, was almost completely destroyed. The EU Member states can no longer be inactive - they all share the responsibility for this disaster.

On July 1st, Germany will take over the EU Council Presidency in midst the Corona pandemic. This presents opportunities for Germany to redefine its European policy. How does Germany perceive its role in the European Union and what are the expectations of other member states for the German Council Presidency?

"Different wars: National History Textbooks on the Second World War" - this was the title of a travelling exhibition by the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum. It toured 22 cities in the EU and Russia over the last four years. It showed how current textbooks for secondary schools depict the Second World War in Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and the Czech Republic. The short film accompanying the exhibition will be released on 7 May.

The looming economic crisis in Italy threatens the livelihoods of the population and liberal democracy. Nevertheless, the northern EU states have refused Europe-wide financing and credit programmes.

The new coronavirus is not only catapulting us out of our everyday lives, but dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic also shows us the EU's inability to act in times of crisis. Not only are people stranded at airports and railway stations, but in recent weeks the hope that Europe will pull together has also been stranded.

Erik Marquardt got a first-hand impression of the inhuman conditions in the Moria refugee camp, where more than 20,000 people live in the most miserable conditions. An outbreak of coronavirus would be devastating. In order to draw more attention to this issue, he has co-created the Leave no One Behind campaign.

The Hungarian Parliament passed an Act on the Protection Against the Coronavirus. It gives an already authoritarian government extraordinary, dangerous powers. 

The otherwise so vibrant Paris seems to be extinct in view of the Corona measures. Bars, cafés, restaurants and everything else is closed, empty chairs pile up behind the windows. Only in front of supermarkets, bakeries, butcher's shops and pharmacies are long queues, at a distance of at least one meter.

Free seafaring in the Black Sea has been limited since the Russian Annexation of Crimea. How can Europe assist its partners in the region while defusing tensions at the same time?