Monday
30th Nov 2020
Despite the current challenges, we have good reasons to be positive. The Mediterranean region has the potential to rise and recover if we put in the means and efforts to address them together.
The fate of Jonathan Taylor, a British whistleblower stuck in legal limbo in Croatia, is a test of European laws designed to protect those who put themselves at risk for the common good.
What will the new Joe Biden administration bring to the realm of digital policy, and how will it affect the relationship with the EU?
Time the for EU to help free the Saharawi people after 45 years of Moroccan occupation in the scorching desert because Spain once swapped them for a school of fish.
It's time for the European Union to rethink how it deals with migration and treats refugees and asylum-seekers. As it is, a father awaits sentencing for the death of his own son.
Should Big Tech and gig platforms push for a policy similar to Proposition 22 in Europe, workers' rights could quickly become a ceiling rather than a floor.
An internal power struggle has undermined the world's leading international security body since the summer. The OSCE is due to finally get new leaders in December but the unprecedented power vacuum has hit at a crunch time for hotspots worldwide.
The Brussels rumour mill has it that the EU Commission is being pressured to put forward a weaker proposal than what civil society organisations, trade unions, and the European Economic and Social Committee say is needed.
Some in Europe are calling for re-shoring or near-shoring supply and industrial chains of such critical sectors as medicine and pharmaceuticals, to reduce dependence on China's supply chains and market. Minister Xia Xiang sets out the opposite case.
The more the US comes to face economic headwinds, because of the corona pandemic, but also because of the stagnating productivity, growing external debt, and an increasingly unbalanced growth model, the more the tendency of economic nationalism will become manifest.
The parliamentary elections took place amid the Covid-19 pandemic but sparked hopes among Georgia's western allies that the electoral deal reached with the help of US and EU officials could pacify the deeply-polarised political actors. But actually the opposite happened.
The UNESCO world heritage site in Aksum, Ethiopia, other heritage sites and religious centres are now under threat. This tragedy is compounded by a terrible loss of innocent lives, sexual violence and a destabilising refugee crisis.
The Nagorno-Karabakh war shows the West needs to rebuild relations with Turkey and put forces in Georgia to prevent still greater conflicts, the former head of US forces in Europe says.
Imposing minimum wages and interfering in collective bargaining through binding legislation, not only means breaching EU treaties - there is also a serious risk that this will undermine successful labour market models that have delivered real wage increases for decades.
While online is becoming the main method for buying pets, the lack of rules on the responsibilities of platforms regarding pet advertising has severely compromised consumer protection, fair competition, and animal health and welfare.
Let us be frank, in Europe too, we are grappling with democratic backsliding and assaults on our democracy from the inside.
You hear voices already calling for the European Council to give in to the Hungarian and Polish demands, by coming up with supposedly 'technical' solutions allowing them to veto any corruption case or breaches of the rule of law .
The EU institutions and member states have hardly more than two fully-fledged and one half-baked strategic option to solve this institutional crisis - that may have more far reaching consequences for the EU than Brexit.
At the start of the German presidency of the EU Council it committed itself to a "fair taxation" agenda. But as we enter the final leg of its six-month term, time is running out to make good on this promise.
In the coming weeks and months we will find out to what extent president-elect Joe Biden is willing to consider the transatlantic relationship as a vital US interest again, and put it at the heart of US policy.
At the very moment when an incumbent president across the Atlantic was carrying out staggering attacks on the foundations of democracy, the European Parliament obtained a historic agreement to protect the rule of law in Europe.
The scary thing about this election is, if Trump had even a minimum of political professionalism, if he had even tried to live up to the promises to the people who voted him into office, he might well have won.
Now, in a country which the European Union often holds up as an example of its success story - Georgia - something has gone very wrong.
A new report published on Monday by NGO watchdogs Counter Balance and CEE Bankwatch Network exposes serious failures of the European Investment Bank in the development field.
An outcry from major European city governments - including Amsterdam, Berlin, Madrid, Barcelona and Budapest - has helped shelve an EU Commission power grab over municipalities' services industries, such as in affordable housing, energy supply and waste management.
The EU is not a club of democracies anymore. The Hungarian and Polish governments provide real-life lessons on how to destroy democracy's institutions, and they have plenty of eager students. Any attempt to paint a different picture would be hypocritical.
Uzbekistan applied for the EU's highly-prized 'Generalised Scheme of Preferences' trade tool in June this year - but despite some improvements the central Asian country still falls woefully short of these requirements.
If Joe Biden is elected tonight, there will be a sigh of relief in most European capitals. However, that should not blind us to the fact that the Biden presidency will not be a walk in the park for Europeans.
There is a persistent problem of 'fake observers.' Often the government of the country they are observing, or even the election management body itself, pays for these observers, holds fancy dinners, and puts them in five-star hotels.
Public opinion in Poland does not back a ban on women's access to abortion care - including parts of the electorate that PiS is supposedly representing.
The sincere and simple personality of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, currently the most famous Belarusian opposition leader in the world, is truly fascinating, writes Lithuania's minister of foreign affairs, Linas Linkevičius.
The decline of the US and the rise of China have immense consequences for Europe. Above all, it means that all member states must be committed to making enormous efforts to close ranks in terms of trade and security.
Boris Johnson hopes that the new partnership demonstrates to his counterparts on the continent that, despite quitting the EU, Britain will remain a key player in European security affairs via a commitment to upholding Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
