As the European Union prepares its plan for a Digital Single Market, policy-makers must take full account of the fastest growing segment of that market – the app industry, writes Sophie Mestchersky.
The International Court of Justice in The Hague has cleared Serbia and Croatia of committing genocide. It dismissed the claims the two countries had brought against one another arising from the Balkan wars. The ruling hinders mutual recriminations and paves the way for reconciliation, some commentators applaud. Others fear it will only reopen old wounds.
Though the far-left Syriza party’s recent election victory has sent Greek equities and bonds plummeting, there is little sign of contagion to other distressed countries on the eurozone periphery. The question is how long this relative calm will prevail.
During a visit to Budapest, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to take a more open approach towards political opposition and civil society. But the move was not enough according to observers, who accused Merkel of cronyism with a “mafia state”. EurActiv Germany reports.
Greece’s new government dropped calls for a write-off of its foreign debt and proposed ending a standoff with its creditors by swapping its outstanding debt for growth-linked bonds, its finance minister said on Monday (2 February), one week after winning a national election on an anti-austerity platform.
On a visit to Cyprus on 2 February, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told his host, Cyprus President Nikos Anastasiades, that the two countries could form a bridge between Europe and Russia, currently estranged over Ukraine.
The US has no plans to deliver weapons to Kiev ‘in the near future’, an adviser to US President Obama stated on Monday in response to reports to that effect published in The New York Times. The US and Europe must arm Kiev, some commentators write. Others warn that Russia would see weapons from the West as a pretext for stepping up its intervention in eastern Ukraine.
When the West intervened in Libya, it later turned into chaos. When the West did not intervene in Syria, it turned into chaos as well. Therefore, it is hard to draw a definitive conclusion whether it is good or bad to intervene, Justin Vaïsse, director of the Policy Planning staff of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs toldEurActiv Slovakia in an exclusive interview.
We are now clearly in the middle of a “constitutional moment” and those who want a new settlement for the country are beginning to stir and take action. How can you get involved, and what’s coming up?
Protesters, including a few extremists flashing Hitler salutes, demonstrated Monday against perceived “Islamization” in the first rally of its kind in Austria. But the gathering drew only about 250 people, far short of the tens of thousands who have marched in similar rallies in Germany.
The battle for eastern Ukraine – part of the territory that makes up ‘Novorossiya’ – is a war game with no victors.
How do we make sense of the seemingly incongruous coalition between Syriza and the Independent Greeks?
Member states can only work together to buy natural gas, as part of efforts to reduce Russia’s negotiating power, on a voluntary basis, the EU’s Energy Commissioner, Maroš Šefčovič, said on Monday (2 February).
Alexis Tsipras: New hope on the horizon
The visit to Cyprus by the newly elected Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was an overwhelming success, one that offered hope that things are about to change for the better, writes Andreas Chrysafis.
Ahead of a visit from the new Greek Finance Minister in Berlin on Thursday (5 February), the centre-right faction in the Bundestag, Germany’s lower house, is standing its ground on Greece’s reform commitments, rejecting a debt haircut and an end to Troika inspections. EurActiv Germany reports.
A senior United Nations official warned Tuesday (3 February) that the humanitarian situation in eastern Ukraine was becoming untenable for millions of people, and urged “all sides” to halt the dangerous escalation in the fighting in eastern Ukraine.
The European Commission has proposed to help 1,633 media workers in Greece in sectors such as publishing, programming and broadcasting who have been made redundant, via the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF).
The primary goal of Podemos is to marshal an ample majority, which means in practice to build a middle-class party, and to give up the traditional Left/Right axis for a position of centrality.
French influence in the world declined in 2014, according to the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). Once ranked top in Europe for international affairs, France now occupies third place. EurActiv France reports.
The EU should help encourage a better business environment for pan-European media and help it develop new technology pilots, former Commissioners told an event on sustainable media staged in the Parliament last week (29 January).
Google leans towards EU-only ‘right to be forgotten’
Experts advising Google on a European court ruling ordering it to remove personal information from search results, is leaning towards limiting the application to European websites only.
Merkel is dead wrong on Ukraine
During her recent visit to Budapest, German Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted that the Ukrainian conflict “cannot be solved militarily” and thus Germany has no intention to support Kiev with weapons, writes Dr. Ainius Lasas
Conservative EU lawmakers mount censure motion against ‘extremist’ Greek cabinet
Conservatives in the European Parliament want the Assembly to vote next week to condemn a right-wing party in Greece’s new leftist-led coalition government, comparing it to an EU rebuke to Austria 15 years ago. But opposition on the left may thwart any resolution.
The 2015 general election in Britain – free and fair?
Majoritarian voting systems and parliaments are a terrible way to govern pluralist societies – here are some simple ideas that could do a far better job. We should be considering them.
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