The Decolonisers

There is a double standard at the heart of the European Commission. Women — mostly white women — benefit from affirmative action when applying for jobs. But people of colour seeking advancement do not benefit from special consideration.

Parallels with the Soviet era are increasingly evident in Poland — where the ruling coalition hounds judges and captures courts.

Ursula von der Leyen appears secure in her job as president of the European Commission. That's despite a troubled vaccine rollout in which delayed deliveries can cost lives and livelihoods.

The hard-left is often associated with the colours red for revolution, and black for anarcho-syndicalism. But the movement is more and more green these days too.

James Crisp has Boris Johnson's old job in Brussels covering EU affairs for The Daily Telegraph. He often writes with that jaundiced eye on the European project you'd expect from a correspondent on a venerable Conservative UK newspaper.

In this episode Daniel Ziblatt discusses the dilemmas facing Europe's modern-day conservative parties — including the German Christian Democratic Union and the European People's Party.

Can the EU do more to hold back the kinds of malign forces that overran the US Capitol? It's not an idle question. Democratic shortcomings in the EU are regularly invoked by the far-right to whip up nationalist sentiment.

Politicians mostly talk about shutting migrants out. That endangers migrants' lives and obscures an important truth: that Europe already relies on large numbers of migrants for farming and manufacturing.

Brussels is increasingly expected to serve as the European Union's sheriff on rule of law — but its ability to enforce adherence to democratic norms and values remains weak.

"Strategic autonomy" has become the mantra for European Union officials. But now with Joe Biden as US president-elect, and prospects for a renewal of trans-Atlantic ties, the urgency and relevance of the concept are again up for debate.

Intersectionality is the concept that overlapping identities — disability, gender, race and sexual-orientation for example — create forms of discrimination that can go unaddressed. But many EU leaders are wary of the kind of identity politics that intersectionality implies.

Bigots and far-right extremists are using online violence to try to silence feminists and LGBT people. It's a cowardly tactic since perpetrators don't even have to meet their targets. We hear stories from two Europeans on the receiving end

Commissioner for home affairs, Ylva Johansson, would like to win the approval of all EU member states for a new proposal for a common asylum and migration policy — something her predecessors failed to do.

With no non-white commissioners, just how well-equipped is the EU Commission to tackle race?