One year has passed since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation. On the morning of 24 February 2022, we woke up to a new reality that definitively ended the post-Cold War status quo. Russia, theoretically possessing the second most powerful army in the world, violated international law and began bombing military and […]
Vladimir Putin
The Russian aggression against Ukraine with its manifold consequences determined politics and life in Europe in 2022, and it will continue to do so in 2023. From the point of view of country size, Europe’s largest country invaded the second largest one. The effects have been not only European but global. It is primarily the […]
By granting candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova and by recommitting to the EU membership of the Western Balkans, the European Union opened a new phase of its enlargement which will redesign the European political map again. It was undoubtedly the right decision to assert European sovereignty and also to welcome an embattled country which is showing with bravery that it belongs to the European future and not to a war of the past. A war of the past in Europe because it combines the clash of empires of WW I with the clash of political regimes of WW II. The future in Europe is being created by the values of freedom, equality, solidarity, democracy and sustainability and by a process of European integration which involves enlargement but also deepening. Deepening is a pre-condition for successful enlargement. But as enlargement has now become a political and moral imperative, the issue today is not about choosing between one or another. It is rather about how to make both with a new approach.
When Vladimir Putin first invaded Ukraine in 2014, Europeans had a simple choice: increase or decrease their energy dependence on Russian fossil fuels. Europeans chose to increase. National governments like Spain and France could have freed themselves from Russian gas just by implementing their own national building renovation plans. But they chose not to.
Western economic sanctions on Russia have worked as a substitute for war. But they also might provoke a xenophobic backlash. Given the destruction that has taken place, and what is at stake in the war, we need to shift our focus, speculate about the different ways in which this war can end, and the strategies […]
In the Hungarian elections on 3 April, the Fidesz-KDNP alliance reached a two-thirds majority in parliament for the fourth time. The result clearly indicates that the System of National Cooperation (an autocratic structure abbreviated as NER in Hungarian) now already constitutes a specific period in Hungary’s history, like the Horthy system between the two world […]
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