On 22 September 2013, the German federal election was held in the very eye of a European storm. While people throughout the Eurozone were debating whether or not the visibly dramatic effects of fiscal austerity policy in Southern countries would eventually be outweighed by the long-term benefits of structural adjustment, indifferent Germans enjoyed the warm breeze of relative economic well-being on their way to the polls.
Right before the Europeans started packing for their annual holiday, the Dutch government proposed its ‘subsidiarity review’ in June. This review states that the European Commission is not supposed to have a greater say over topics concerning criminal law, social security or pensions, and that the Commission should set broad objectives, but leave its implementation to the European member states. Where does this resort to subsidiarity come from? And in what way does a focus on subsidiarity matter? This article will explore the principle of subsidiarity, discuss its shortcomings and underline its potential.
To what extent do history and space shape the process of democratization? How to analyze the so-called transition paradigm? Grzegorz Ekiert, Professor of Government, Director of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies and Senior Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, answers Zbigniew Truchlewski's questions for Nouvelle Europe.
The challenge for the Czechs, Slovaks, and Hungarians is to take on board Poland and reinvent Central Europe. Interview with former French Ambassador Benoît d’Aboville.
“Today there is a European nationality, just as at the time of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides there was a Greek nationality.” Victor Hugo felt it, it has become a fact: we, Europeans, different in so many ways, have decided to walk a common path towards an increasingly united Europe. Nevertheless, European citizenship strongly remains passive. And, if our common identity is undeniable, it does not seem to be entrenched in Europeans’ consciousness. Only mutual understanding can lead the European project towards a continental and historic achievement. In consequence, there is a necessity to promote mobility and information; such are Nouvelle Europe's objectives.
Nouvelle Europe interviewed Prof. Timothy Snyder of Yale University on History and Memory.
Nouvelle Europe interviewed Prof. Snyder of Yale University on the history of Central and Eastern European nations and on his works (such as Bloodlands and The Reconstruction of Nations).
The European Youth Forum is the platform of youth organisations in Europe. As an independent, democratic, youth-led NGO, it “strives for youth rights and works to empower young people to participate actively in society to improve their own lives”. And yet, reality sometimes proves an obstacle to the will of empowerment. We are currently witnessing the gradual decrease in youth electoral participation, especially at the European level. Facing the problem, the European Youth Forum decided to launch a new initiative: the League of Young Voters, with the aim of bringing youth to the forefront of the next European electoral campaign.
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.
There is a Hungarian saying that the Hungarians and the Poles are good friends and will stay together for better or for worse. This saying seems to be reconfirmed in some of today's socio-political debates. As far as abortion and other sexual, reproductive and health rights (SRHR) are concerned, “Hungary is polandising,” Judith Wirth, Policy Officer at NaNe Women's Association from Budapest, argued at the conference “Women, Gender and Feminism(s) in the V4 Countries”.