Calling the situation of the centre-left parties in Central and Eastern Europe ‘difficult’ equals hiding behind a diplomatic langue de bois. In none of the countries of the region, Social Democrats are in government – neither at the helm of a coalition, nor as a partner in one. Sometimes they even failed to enter parliament […]
fragmentation
Romania’s Social Democratic Party (PSD) won the recent Romanian legislative elections, with around 30 percent of the votes and more than 34 percent of the seats in Parliament. Despite these results and the huge negative impact of the pandemic on Romania, we now have a political blockage. The conservative President, Klaus Iohannis, refuses to recognise […]
On March 17, the Dutch went to the polls in the middle of the Covid pandemic and a faltering roll-out of the vaccination programme. In addition, the government had resigned shortly before the elections over a scandal of racial profiling of families claiming child support. Neither the scandal nor the botched vaccination scheme seemed to […]
The last European Council raised “strategic autonomy” to the level of a central concept for a new phase of the European project. The implications will be multiple not only for external, but also for internal policies. The Covid-19 crisis has exposed multiple weaknesses of European integration: failures in supply chains in vital products, public health […]
The global health, climate and economic crises have led to a deterioration of the world order as we knew it. The gap between current global challenges and global governance is widening and weakening the multilateral system. A new, fair and inclusive multilateralism for the 21st century must be invented, write Maria João Rodrigues and Conny […]