debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
This crisis has been good for Germany. Unemployment is at its lowest level since unification, real wages are going up after a decade of stagnation, up to now exports are booming, tax revenues are plentiful, and hence a public deficit of just 1% – well below the Maastricht criteria – was possible without any major [...]
There has been much talk about the crisis of social democracy and the shortcomings of the progressive agenda as the key explanation. Without disputing the priority of designing the right programme, I’d like to stress another important factor: the collapse of communities. Our societies are increasingly fragmented. Once large-scale communities make place for smaller groups [...]
The stupidest parlour game in Spain consists of predicting how long our crisis will last, as if the country were predisposed to tolerate an unemployment rate above 20% for another decade. We are not witnessing an ordinary stagnation, in the vein of Japan’s lost decade, but rather a prolonged emergency. The terrible crisis on Europe’s [...]
A couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon an article on “Cameron’s Munich” comparing the alliance between the English and the Czechs at the last European Council with the situation of Munich in 1938. This is just another example how ‘war rhetoric’ has returned into the public debate. I always thought that European integration was always about [...]
As 2011 draws to a close, it is fair to say that this year has been one of the most disastrous for the European Union in its history. The eurozone crisis has spread from the periphery to the core and all political and financial rescue packages were too little, too late. Towards the end of the year [...]
Like most countries in the region, Hungary hasn’t had it easy. Democracy wasn’t quite the fluffy experience the abstract western examples had seemingly shown. The economy was downright awful and for the first post transition decade, and along with the market economy came widespread existential angst, which had previously been the sad privilege only of dissidents. Even [...]
Culminating in the current economic crisis, neoliberal restructuring has led to growing social disintegration and increasing exclusion from societal participation. This indicates a profound social and a latent political crisis, as reflected by, partly tremendous, electoral gains of the extreme right in many European countries. Reawakening nationalisms and increasing xenophobia, racism, Islamophobia and sexism characterise [...]
All Content