The rejection of the constitutional treaty by referendum in France and in the Netherlands in 2005, as well as the current threat of an in/out referendum on the EU in Great Britain, has cast light on the enduring debate about the democratic deficit and the crisis of legitimacy in the EU. What is at stake and are there possible ways out of this doom and gloom?
Call it “multi-speed”, “core Europe” or even “variable geometry”, there is one thing that we are sure of since Prime Minister Cameron’s speech last Wednesday: this terminology constitutes the new future of the European Union, but maybe also its demise.
With the fast approaching end of labour restrictions of the 2007 EU Enlargement countries Bulgaria and Romania, reluctance grows in the UK, forming a complex political debate. Are concerns only with regard to the protection of national economy or do they have some broader significance too? This article assesses the main elements of this debate in a UK, EU and UK-EU context.
In the current profound financial crisis, most European member states wish they did not lack the freedom of decision-making with regards to their economic and monetary policies. But there is one thing they have not surrendered to Europe: their national identity.
The most common expression to describe the status of the European Union enlargement in the times of the Eurozone crisis is “enlargement fatigue”. But besides being more or less willing to accept new members, is the EU still as attractive, in a moment when it seems shaken by centrifugal forces?
Sustainability – policy-making’s new buzzword. Definitions vary but by and large the consensus defines it as sense of the capacity to support, maintain and endure. Applied to environmental preservation and policy-making, sustainable development conveys the idea of efficient resource management so as to meet human needs while preserving resources and the environment for future generations.
The best known achievements in spaceflight are most likely Yuri Gagarin’s first human orbital flight and Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon. Both have been achieved by the two space-superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union. Their dominance in the human exploration of space makes it easy to forget that Europe has a space programme as well.
Some Americans like the saying: America, love it or leave it. According to this article, the EU has a wholly different mantra going on. The EU suffers from what I intend to call the ‘love it or hate it’ syndrome’. Media, politicians and the public seem to either be frantically Europhile, or distinctly Eurosceptic. Meanwhile, a more nuanced version seems nowhere to be found. This article posits that as long as loving or hating stands in the way of reasoning on the Union, the EU will be unable to move forward. What is needed is the acknowledgement that there is no singular European identity with which we can all associate ourselves, which does not mean that there are no European identities at all.
2012 has been an election year in the European Union’s Eastern neighborhood. The year started with presidential elections in Russia, followed by parliamentary elections in Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, and Ukraine. Even though the electoral saga continues in 2013 with presidential elections in the South Caucasus, the most critical elections are now behind us. What are the outcomes? Have elections brought the Eastern neighborhood closer to substantive, if not procedural, democracy?
The Ukrainian parliamentary elections’ day turned out to be calm and the voting process peaceful, mainly because the main actors played their winning cards well in advance.