Not discretion, but clarity is the better part of valour. Ukraine has courageously resisted the imperialist assault on its sovereignty by Russia, whose most important war aim is to reach back to Peter the Great. Russia wants access to warm-water ports, and buffers against invasion to its West and North. Whatever the successes of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, these aims have all been tainted in one way or another.
Western Europe
Looking at our globe from above the North Pole, we are shocked at how tiny our Europe is. Russia, however, our Eastern neighbour, seems to be a giant. And indeed, Russia’s territory and military capacities are gigantic by European measures. On the other hand, the population of the EU is more than three times bigger […]
The EU-Western Balkans summit in Slovenia on 6 October ended with a renewed sense of heightened impatience with the blockages in the accession processes of the six candidate countries. There is an urgent need for the economic and investment plan, that was proposed exactly one year ago, to materialise – especially as it is a […]
The EU needs a new policy towards the Western Balkans. It should enlarge to all countries of the region now if it wants to prevent other powers from taking advantage. Left without a concrete prospect of joining the EU, the countries of the Western Balkans are becoming less European and less democratic. The European Union […]
The number one topic of the Romanian parliamentary elections in December 2020 was not, as one might have thought, the public health issues raised by the raging Covid-19 pandemic, but the fight against corruption. Both the National Liberals and the Save Romania Union (USR), along with the newly formed Alliance for the Union of Romanians […]
The care crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has shed light on the everyday functioning of live-in care migration from Central and Eastern Europe. It presupposes the transnational lives of migrant care workers, but paradoxically also denies them at the same time. Germany and Austria are among the countries with the highest number of live-in […]