Tag archive for ‘EU’
A Year of Missed Opportunities for the EU
In politics it is August rather than January when people look back at the last year and take stock of what has or has not been achieved. Hence, as I have been soaking up the Spanish sun, my mind has been replaying events from the last twelve months. Last summer, I had great optimism for [...]
Is Post-Ideology coming to a Voting Booth near You?
I hadn’t planned on writing about Hungary again quite so soon – not unless our domestic politics raised some point of larger significance to European progressives in general. But a few days ago our new right-wing (?) prime minister, Viktor Orbán announced that the time of the old ideologies that had shaped the 20th century [...]
New Transatlantic Relations with a “Pacific” President
By his own definition, Barak Obama is the US’ first „Pacific“ President. Indeed, raised in Hawaii and Indonesia there are few “Atlantic” ties to be found in his biography. Obama’s remarks, delivered during a visit to Asia, may be only intended as a polite gesture; nevertheless they indicate a shift of attention away from Europe [...]
Russia’s Great Gas Game
Russia and the European Union are geopolitical neighbors. Whether or not their relationship is in fact neighborly, rather than tense and confrontational, is of critical importance to both. Unless it modernizes its economy and society, Russia can forget its claim to status as a world power in the twenty-first century and will continue to fall [...]
European Economic Governance Madness
Euractiv reported about a new Franco-German declaration to the task force charged with working up a mechanism of economic governance for the EU/Eurozone. Completely ignorant about the ongoing debates about how counterproductive early fiscal austerity could be the document states: Member States would be expected to enact national laws that formalise the public finance recovery [...]
Who “Lost” Turkey?
Turkey’s “no” last month (a vote cast together with Brazil) to the new sanctions against Iran approved in the United Nations Security Council dramatically reveals the full extent of the country’s estrangement from the West. Are we, as many commentators have argued, witnessing the consequences of the so-called “neo-Ottoman” foreign policy of Turkey’s Justice and [...]
Economic Crisis Provides Opportunity for Greater ‘Europeanisation’ of Defence Spending
As governments outdo each other to cut their budgets, one area that ought to be ripe for pruning is defence. After all, the combined EU member states defence spending is 200 billion euros, the second largest in the world after the USA. Room then, one would think, for big savings. Naturally, defence is a very [...]
Closing the ‘Democracy Deficit’ in the EU and US
My recent research trip to Switzerland with a group of other Americans was enlightening, in more ways than one. Besides admiring the great beauty of the Swiss mountains, lakes and picturesque cities, it was a chance to study in depth the Alpine jewel’s system of direct democracy (initiative and referendum, or I&R). With both the [...]
Reforming Global Economic Governance — Towards Bretton Woods III
World economic governance needs to move towards a Bretton Woods III involving effective supervision of all structural imbalances by the IMF, greater resources for the IMF along with fundamental reforms of that institution, and a shift from the dollar as dominant international reserve currency. This requires cooperation between the G3 – the US, China and [...]
Salvaging Gender Equality Policy
The author puts forward five principles to establish a more equal gender order against the risks of recessionary cutbacks. These encompass parental support policies, gender-specific impacts of minimum wage and pension policies, women’s rights to economic independence, public sector restructuring, and the need to challenge the power of male elites in the private sector. As [...]
The British Labour Party has a great Opportunity!
Ok, one day after a party was removed from office after 13 years it might not seem to be the time to talk about opportunities. But if you look at the fundamentals, the British Labour party has a great opportunity to regroup and go for office again in the near future. Social democratic parties have [...]
Isolationism on the Rise Among Disgruntled Electorates as Europe’s Rightward Shift Continues
The swing of Europe’s electorate to the right during the last couple of years was continued in last week’s British general election. Admittedly, unlike elsewhere, no far-right party was actually elected. This though was probably no more than a consequence of the UK’s unique electoral system. The mood of the electorate was undoubtedly towards the [...]
