Sunday
23rd Jan 2022
President Emmanuel Macron's address to the European Parliament championed a bold and ambitious pro-European agenda. There is one problem though - the plans rely on a system of governance that has gridlocked the EU for over a decade.
A lack of transparency and unwillingness to engage stakeholders, with first the EU pandemic recovery plans and now with the cohesion funds, threatens to imperil a bounceback instead of steering the Green Deal.
The strong advocacy of Central and Eastern European capitals for including fossil gas and nuclear power in the EU's green taxonomy only leads to another unsustainable energy lock-in for the region, leaving their grid exposed to third-country coercion.
On Thursday, MEPs must press for a ban on all live exports outside the EU, and call for overall journey times within the EU to be limited to four hours for poultry and rabbits, and eight hours for other animals.
There are also numerous loopholes in the deal which will enable corporations to keep portions of their profits outside of the scope of the tax, so paying even less than 15 percent.
Competition is fierce and getting African leaders' attention is no easy task. US president Joe Biden has his own Africa summit, and Turkey, Japan, Russia and - most importantly - China, also have Africa forums up and running.
Simply opening the Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania's capital, Vilnius, sparked a large-scale expansion of China's economic warfare against democracies. China's actions amount to a fundamental attack on the DNA of the European Union: the internal market.
This election is marked by the untimely passing of David Sassoli, who steered the parliament through an extremely complex and challenging period. He showed that it was possible to reach agreements through much-needed dialogue, and away from dogmas.
As an independent watchdog, the EU Commission can launch infringement procedures, taking member states to the European Court of Justice if they do not comply. But all too often the watchdog just barks a little before returning to its kennel.
New research has discovered fundamental flaws in a key component of the European Union's flagship Emissions Trading System. The little-known 'Market Stability Reserve' fixes a problem of the past but amplifies future shocks and undermines market stability.
In recent months, 140,000 citizens and 152 MEPs have joined the #EUforAnimals campaign, demanding more prominence be given to animal welfare by making it explicit in the name of the relevant directorate-general and job title of the appropriate EU commissioner.
While the EU is turning the Conference on the Future of Europe into another round in the outdated debate between eurofederalists and eurosceptics, President Biden has diplomatically endorsed the emergence of the Union as a democratic polity in international law.
Since hostilities between Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front in Western Sahara resumed in November 2020, the EU has been reluctant to play an active role in the conflict.
Eurocentrism in our education and thinking is actually a product of a German-Christian ideology of the 18th century. Instead of admitting guilt we should change the way we study and teach history.
When you are told "we are all in the same boat", be suspicious. In fact, 205 years after the survivors of the Frigate of Medusa shipwreck were reduced to cannibalism to survive, "we are all on Medusa's raft".
Watch as fervour, passion and anger run high and MEPs stake out their stalls on the 'meaning of Christmas'. There is something for just about everyone.
EU and national policymakers would do well to make a New Year's resolution to encourage a growing interest in donating to good causes far from home - by extending Europe's single market benefits to philanthropy.
Reply by Paolo Borchia, MEP, to the article "Lead energy MEP silent on gas meetings before vote published" by EUobserver on 23 September.
After four years in Brussels, ambassador Zhang Ming, head of Chinese Mission to the EU, comes to the end of his tenure. Here is his farewell letter on his feelings about working in Brussels and his aspiration for China-EU relations.
In these times of unprecedented social and economic challenges, the EU must self-critically rethink decades of poor decisions.
This election will be further tarnished by the total absence - for the first time in Hong Kong's history - of opposition parties, following the all-out war waged by Beijing against the city's historically spirited pro-democracy movement.
Clubs, associations and social networks help to give meaning not just to life, but to the entire democratic system. Be they dinner groups, voluntary fire brigades, citizens' councils, environmental NGOs, neighbourhood committees coaching refugees, and yes, why not, breastfeeding-support groups.
Let there be no doubt: a possible secession of Republika Srpska is the deathblow to the Dayton accords and to peace and stability in the region. The spill-over of such a disaster scenario for the EU is hard to foresee.
For the sixth Eastern Partnership summit in Brussels on Wednesday, the EU should better differentiate between slow and fast reformers, deepen integration of the 'Association Trio' (Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia), and address the burning security issues in eastern Europe.
Europe is politically weak because its opponents know that nothing makes the European Council more nervous than a few thousand migrants trying to cross an external EU border. And these opponents, act accordingly. Lukashenko, for example.
The Greens and the FDP disagree on major political issues. While they both support the climate battle, their ways of ushering change are vastly different: the Greens advocate tougher environmental laws and regulations, and the FDP calls for market-based solutions.
One of the challenges for the French EU presidency is to convince its European counterparts that Paris's demand for harmonised standards covering agricultural imports is inseparable from the EU's flagship Green Deal, and the core concept of European sovereignty.
Lacking any monetary policy instruments and fiscal discipline, the economy in the north of Cyprus is suffering the consequences of the recent unorthodox and controversial monetary policy decisions made in Turkey.
A deep-dive into the new German coalition government's thinking on Hungary, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and the 'ever-closer' federal state of the EU itself.
Although legal instruments have been developed, no universally-agreed definition of gender-based violence against women online or via technology exists - and this Council of Europe recommendation aims to fill that gap.
France will take over the EU presidency on 1 January. If Emmanuel Macron wants to make it a stepping stone in European integration, he should make additional efforts to Europeanise its objectives and seriously engage with EU partners beyond Germany.
The 'Waterloo'-era 1970s was indeed a positive and thriving time in Sweden, during which much progress was made in society. That progress, driven by the Social Democrats, with Olof Palme as prime minister, ensured a high-level welfare state.
