Wednesday
21st Oct 2020
MEPs will vote this week on a supposedly historical reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, which accounts for over one-third of the EU's annual budget. But as it stands, it is set to become a historical failure of catastrophic proportions.
US secretary of agriculture Sonny Perdue argues that the EU is taking an approach "more based on 'political science' than demonstrated agricultural science" in its new Farm to Fork strategy.
The ongoing escalation of Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh is a most serious and significant one - just not surprising at all.
The European Commission claims that it evaluates all member states objectively. In that regard, its new rule-of-law report is a manifest failure.
Amazon is leading an assault on workers' rights in Europe, using big data and surveillance to crush efforts by workers to improve their conditions. It's symptomatic of a climate of impunity around breaches of privacy that benefit corporations over workers.
Safeguarding Europe's position starts with recognising the unpleasant reality that Europe's power is waning. Behind the facade of European cooperation, national self-interest still predominates and that has never been any different.
On a 2016 Latvia trip, vice-president Joe Biden told Baltic leaders not to take Donald Trump seriously. "Don't listen to that other fellow. He knows not of what he speaks", Biden joked. Months later, Trump was in the White House.
One ghost town symbolises Cyprus' plight. Varosha, a Greek-Cypriot city in the occupied district of Famagusta on the east coast, has been cordoned off by the Turkish military since 1974. This is why I never saw my mother's home before.
While the EU's enlargement progress reports have moved closer to capturing the problems of the region, they are still lagging behind in capturing the decline of democracy and rule of law in most of the region.
On the agenda of today's summit is EU-Africa relations. It is a bit of an 'orphan' item. Without a steer from EU leaders, policy-making on Africa will drift, proceed in silos and be more of the same.
A ban on using meat names such as "burger" or "sausage" for vegetarian products goes against consumers' choices for more sustainable food. Plant-based foods usually have a significantly lower climate and environmental impact compared to animal-based foods, such as meat.
It is often said that the British were the first to leave the European Union. This is, strictly speaking, not true: both Algeria and Greenland left the club long before Brexit came along.
This latest resumption in the conflict, as it is somewhat euphemistically called, is rather a self-declared offensive by Azerbaijan, aimed at achieving its desired outcome to the conflict by force rather than by negotiation.
The EU Commission wants to reduce cancer rates in Europe. So it's imperative this week's chemicals strategy properly regulates substances that can cause cancer - despite the efforts of the chemicals lobby, which has spent years successfully preventing tough action.
According to the World Health Organisation, poor mental health claims the lives of 140,000 people per year by suicide in the European region. Their lives could be saved if mental health care and support were properly funded.
How do we actually want to improve the precarious situation of millions of people with Romani background in Europe, when political leaders in the countries with some of the highest Romani populations openly nourish anti-gypsyist stereotypes, like in Hungary?
The member states themselves are the weakest link in the defence of democracy in the EU. They have been sitting on the Article 7 procedure against the Polish government for almost three years.
As president of a news organisation operating across Eurasia, I witnessed the reality of non-independent media in central Asia or in Vladimir Putin's Russia. Yet this trend is now becoming more commonplace in parts of the European Union.
The first ever report on the state of the rule of law in the EU due to be published this week by the European Commission marks a significant change in its mindset.
The EU's future relations with both the eastern and southern neighbourhood are at stake. A wrong signal to Belarus would be a wrong signal to all of the Eastern Partnership
Months after Black Lives Matter erupted, for many EU decision-makers the problems of racism in policing and criminal legal systems - the issues that sparked the George Floyd protests - are still 'over there', across the Atlantic.
The protests in Bulgaria clearly open the debate on whether the rule of law remains the central shared value for all Europeans.
Stockholm's response to Covid-19 has been an unorthodox set of policies, which has received a faire share of analysis and criticism - but not praise.
Azimjon Askarov's death in jail should prompt serious questions about judicial and rule of law reforms in Kyrgyzstan funded by taxpayers through USAID and EU grants.
Mark Rutte's comment is the first time the leader of an EU country has publicly considered the possibility of the EU integration project continuing without recalcitrant states.
Leuven's Catholic University, one of Belgium's best, has decided to close one of its respected but controversial chairs. And many say that is not because of an academic failure or scandal, but a result of the Turkish government's relentless pressure.
This is a critical moment. The UAE-Israel agreement, welcomed by the European Union, represents a severe blow to the Arab Peace Initiative, writes the diplomatic affairs' adviser for Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.
Let us be clear: without this new financial windfall, cities, towns and regions will not be able to overcome a crisis of colossal proportions like the current one.
The U-turns of Horst Seehofer and Markus Söder, both of Germany's CSU, are worth exploring, because they contain a useful message for the rest of Europe, too.
After a little over a year in Brussels as an MEP, and closely following the EU's foreign affairs, it astonishes me how ineffective the European Union leverages its power on the world stage.
For too long we have defined our relationship with China solely on trade, in which Europe mainly regarded China as an interesting export market and low-cost producer.
The micro-targeting of narrow, homogenous groups of people with very specific messages that exploit their vulnerabilities, makes it easier than ever to distort political debate, pushing people deeper into their echo chambers and stimulating single-issue voting.
A recent report noted apparel and footwear as the leading exports from the Uighur region - with a combined value of $6.3bn [€5.3bn] representing over 35 percent of total exports.
