Friday
1st Jul 2022
Increasingly, analysts — both inside and outside of Russia — are considering the possibility of the Russian Federation's collapse into a series of independent states. Who are the most likely candidates for secession in Russia's south, east, and centre?
China's soft support to Russia is deeply troubling for Europe. Here is the EU's biggest trading partner signalling that it is on the side of Russia, its aggression, and its challenge to the post-war international order.
The independence campaign launch featured a new Scottish government report, comparing the UK's economic and social record with those of other European states — and arguing, unsurprisingly, that Scotland should be independent as a result.
We realise that we are living in one of those key moments in history, with events unfolding exactly the way Swiss art historian Jacob Burckhardt describes them: a sudden crisis, rushing everything into overdrive.
Bulgaria's target date for joining the eurozone, 1 January 2024, seems elusive. The collapse of Kiril Petkov's government, likely fresh elections, with populists trying to score cheap points against the 'diktat of the eurocrats', might well delay accession.
The Czech Republic is already in the throes of an extremely difficult period — several waves of Covid, high inflation, energy fears, an influx of Ukrainian refugees and a Prague corruption scandal. Now it has the EU presidency.
While the EU has made a quantum leap in its foreign and security policy, unless it reconsiders its more muscular approach it risks an arms race towards total militarisation.
Ursula von der Leyen, Frans Timmermans, and Kadri Simson, may be the faces of the EU's Green Deal — but Big Business is in the driving seat of its energy policy.
The Hungarian hacking allowed Russian intelligence to read 'over the shoulder' of an EU member state for an extended period of time. The difficulty for the EU is that it's not one nation, but a combination of 27 cybersecurity policies.
We now have French president Emmanuel Macron's "European Political Community", European Council president Charles Michel's "European Geopolitical Community", and former Italian PM Enrico Letta's "European Confederation" — among others.
The president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, puts the case for her country joining the European Union, to leaders at the Brussels summit.
I want to reaffirm the Yemeni Presidential Leadership Council and government are sincerely seeking to end the war, but there is a stubborn party, that is afraid of the consequences of peace, and that is the Iranian-backed Houthi militia.
This World Refugee Day, EU policymakers must build on their current efforts towards protecting and welcoming people fleeing Ukraine.
Ukraine's EU application is a chance to recalibrate not only the enlargement process, but the entire European project. EU leaders ought to embrace it.
Ukraine's membership in the EU would reinvigorate Europe's tired institutions, address the Union's democratic deficit, and provide young Europeans with a model of democracy in action.
If the geopolitical pivot towards the Indo-Pacific was a race, then the European Union risks lagging behind at the turn.
Romania isn't the only country portraying lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people as a threat to children. From Poland and Hungary in EU, to reactionary movements around the world are prohibiting portrayals of LGBT people and families in schools.
The Commission fell hook, line, and sinker for the arguments of big business on the corporate due diligence directive — conflating rules and regulations with so-called 'red tape' and rebranding regulations as 'burdens' on business which should be scrapped.
A terrorist state therefore commits acts of terrorism. A state sponsor of terrorism supports terrorist groups. So, is Putin's Russia a state sponsor of terrorism and/or a terrorist state?
As hopes of EU membership fade, southeast Europe is becoming "an enclave of economic distress, social tensions and unresolved conflicts in the middle of Europe", according to experts.
Twenty-five years after the conclusion of the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997, the European Union is poised to overcome its notorious 'democratic deficit'.
It's difficult to explain to our people how EU made immediate use of all diplomatic tools in the case of Ukraine after five-days of conflict — but has avoided to do the same in Palestine during the past 74 years.
At what point will Catalonia's Republican Left decide enough is enough? The separatists have kept Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez in power for two-and-a-half years, but they have little to show for it.
If the international community cannot fulfil its promises in Bosnia — given it's in the very heart of Europe, the leverage the EU and Nato possess, and the massive money invested — prospects for international state-building elsewhere are extremely grim.
Political parties are polarising, but society is not. Many citizens, in fact, remain where they once were — right in the middle of the political spectrum. Polarisation has, in short, become a political strategy.
Squeezing out lawful forms of protest has pushed Russians into undertaking more radical actions as part of a growing underground movement— one form has been graffiti or destruction of the 'Z' symbol, another is arson attacks against military conscription centres.
The Visegrád Group, the New Hanseatic League, the Benelux or the Nordics have frequently worked together — however, southern European member states have frequently found themselves in loose cooperation or, worse, competition.
The government in Budapest responds to EUobserver opinion piece "Are Orban's Covid powers now the 'new normal' in Hungary?"
Neither Reagan nor Gorbachev achieved their goal at the famous Reykjavik summit of 1986. Despite that fact there are lessons that current leaders — particularly Vladimir Putin — could adopt from these two iconic leaders.
Some Western European politicians are reviving the chimera of a negotiated settlement. None of this makes the current, half-hearted approach towards sanctioning Russia look better — nor does it shed any favourable light on the cravenness of Hungary's current government.
Ukraine is finally understood — and hopefully Belarus will be soon too — as a self-standing society and state with close links to its EU neighbours, rather being relegated to Russia's backyard.
Democratic Unionist MPs could affirm unequivocally they support the Good Friday Agreement, with no return of a border with physical controls on movement of people, goods or agricultural produce within the island of Ireland — but they won't.
As the world continues to seek productive ways to provide assistance to the beleaguered citizens of Ukraine, the Hungarian government is now using the humanitarian crisis to further its own authoritarian ambitions.
