Reconnecting Europe blog

It is less than 100 days until the European elections kicks off in the first EU member state: the Netherlands will be heading to the polls on Thursday, 23 May, with the remaining countries to follow until Sunday, 26 May. After this, we will know how the 450 million eligible EU voters have decided (not) to vote.

The question keeps returning: What's next with Brexit? If the UK would like to opt for an Art. 50 extension, it will first have to ask the European Council where all 27 Member States would have to agree unanimously. The British Government undertook and takes a long walk from fantasy to reality...

We invite you to read the new texts published as part of the German-Polish European Blog. In the In the current edition we present the Polish and German perspective on relations with  Western Balkans.

What if... the Eurozone became a real transfer union to reduce economic inequality and increasing social unrest between and within Member States? Read our last post on the Reconnecting Europe blog and find more topics that shaped the EU in 2018.

In the early days of his mandate Erdoğan presented himself as one of the main defenders of women’s rights. However, after 2010 the government focused predominantly on religious themes and defined gender roles more and more traditionally and restrictive. According to surveys, nearly 50% of all Turkish women have experienced domestic violence and the political climate is increasingly discriminating against women.

Every European country has its semi-fictional national story, typically manufactured sometime in the 19th Century by a group of romantic intellectuals keen to impress a sense of cultural pride on their compatriots. In the case of my own country, Britain, that story has been used to devastating effect in recent years to splinter us off from the rest of the EU.

The Russian World assumes that there is a distinctive Russian civilisation with its own territory to be governed by a single political and religious authority. However a reunificaton of the 'divided world' between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine is more propaganda than reality.  

Şebnem Fincancı was rewarded for her lifelong engagement for investigating on torture and inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment. The manual she published in 1999 has been accpeted as official document by the United Nations and serves as handbook and guideline for doctors, lawyers and judges. However torture remains a reality in Turkish prisons. And not only.

The tectonic plaques of the eurozone are again on the move. The rise of populism and the extreme-right is not the beginning but rather the result of a long process of political flaws and errors. The Italian national budget proposal oposes the Italian government and the European Commission. But it is not about pro or contra the EU but about delayed and short-term reforms in the fiscal governance. 

Violation of human rights, deportation and colonization of the Crimean population and territory by Russia has a long history. ‘The Soviet period was a real nightmare for the Crimea Tatars’, and still is today. Four years after the annexation of Crimea by Russia, European political leaders continue to sidestep the issue of Crimea.