Is there any connection between the decline of the Pirate Party and the rise of the right-wing Alternative for Germany?
The EU will abolish the milk quota system today, Wednesday, thirty-one years after it was introduced. In future producers will be allowed to produce as much milk as they can and want to. Small dairy farmers won’t be able to keep up with the competition on the market, some commentators fear. Others believe the end of the quotas will have a positive impact.
Greece sent an updated list of reforms to lenders yesterday (1 April) to try to unlock financial aid and avoid a default. But eurozone officials said more work was needed before new funds could be released.
After his visit to Berlin, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras plans to present the Euro Group with an updated reform plan by Monday at the latest. Tsipras must convince Greeks that reforms are long overdue, some commentators write. Others fear that by giving in on the debt issue he will push voters into the arms of the far-right parties.
The percentage of women in parliaments has nearly doubled in the last 20 years. 22% of national parliamentarians worldwide are women, up from 11.3% in 1995.
Recent anti-Muslim demonstrations in Germany have fused right-wing chauvinism with Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and populism.
Europol chief warns on encryption
The EU has shown three simultaneous faces to Greece: ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’, to use a cinematic metaphor, all of them with the same message but with a different delivery package
Logo of the movie, 1966. Wikicommons/MGM.Some rights reserved.Symbolism is an essential part of politics and it often matters more than reality. The key for political elites is to send the right message at the right time and that gains them support and popularity.
As Ukraine turns into an oligarch republic, civil society has few chances left to make itself the true victor of EuroMaidan.
“After the Great Depression, secular stagnation turned out to be a figment of economists’ imaginations……..it is still too soon to tell if this will also be the case after the Great Recession. However, the risks of secular stagnation are much greater in depressed Eurozone economies than in the US, due to less favourable demographics, lower productivity growth, the burden of fiscal consolidation, and the ECB’s strict focus on low inflation.”
Nick Crafts – Secular stagnation: US hypochondria, European disease? – In Secular Stagnation: Facts, Causes and Cures, Edited by Coen Teulings and Richard Baldwin
Finland’s economy has been attracting a lot of interest of late. And not for the right reasons, unfortunately.
Barcelona’s citizens are setting aside the historical baggage of the nineteenth and twentieth century struggles of industrial workers movements, inventing a newly resonant language of rights and democracy.
During elections for change – and the first Greek Parliament for 92 years without a Papandreou in it – Adam Ramsay spoke with former scion of the Greek ruling class, George Papandreou.
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