Even before the Covid pandemic has subsided, Europe is now facing another major shock in the form of the Ukraine war. It is threatening economic growth and jobs, and the accompanying soaring inflation is hitting low-income households especially hard. In all this, it is unclear how long the war will last and how drastic the restrictions on energy supply will be.
RecoveryCOVID-19
We are entering 2022 with the feeling that we have narrowly escaped a shipwreck and are now clinging to a piece of wood – knowing that new waves of the virus may come with their retinue of implications, and looking for references to know in which direction to swim. To set the direction to take, […]
The seven-year financial framework and the recovery budget of the European Union have been taken hostage by a bitter dispute over the rule of law. The European Parliament (EP) asserts itself as a guardian of EU values, imposing its requirements at last on the spending machinery of the Union. The declaration by the four leaders […]
The time for adjustments and tinkering is over. Well before the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, inequalities and social injustice had mounted in most Western countries to a point where they produced widespread resentment and triggered an ‘authoritarian dynamic’: a rejection of diversity, a call for sanctioning outlying behaviour and for building walls to defend closed communities. […]