International Relations

The European Union should work together with partners in Africa to secure electoral systems against cyberattacks and to prevent the spread of false and misleading information. This is also in line with European interests and values.

From Russia’s war in Ukraine to the green and digital transformation, we’re not short on challenges nowadays. What we are lacking is the vast sums of money needed to deal with them. The EU requires an estimated 500 billion euros a year for the green transition, while NATO’s European members need to find another 56 billion euros annually to meet the alliance’s 2% defence spending target.

India, the world's largest democracy, is holding its general elections from 19 April to 4 June 2024. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks his third consecutive term, the ballot reflects the complex realities of the South Asian giant and its political landscape. This dossier by the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung New Delhi office offers concise analyses of select issues surrounding the election, providing perspectives on the country's current political climate.

Through the stories of eleven asylum seekers, the video series "Lost in a legal maze" by the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Thessaloniki office aims to reveal the difficulties of navigating a legal system designed to fail them. In these five-minute episodes, filmed in Greece in November 2023, eleven refugees in different stages of their asylum procedures share on camera their own legal journey – from pushbacks to unjustified rejections to retroactive laws.

While the European Union is poised for alteration, it becomes important more than ever to remember why Türkiye matters for Europe’s migration challenges. The EU needs a stable Türkiye. A country in severe economic and political conditions, lacking sufficient support for refugees and migrants, perfectly illustrates the push factors that drive further migration where the EU is a near destination. A stable Türkiye benefits the EU, the population in Türkiye, and the surrounding region. This cannot be achieved with unfair policies.

To achieve international climate and development goals, developing and emerging countries would need an additional three trillion US dollars annually. But the Global South is currently groaning under the weight of an unmanageable debt burden. It’s time for a debt cut.

On 10 April 2024, South Korea held its 22nd general election, which marked the highest ever turnout for a parliamentary election. Voters used the election as an opportunity to issue a verdict on the first two years of the right-wing conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol’s five-year term. Giving the opposition one of the biggest parliamentary majorities in recent decades, voters pushed the president, who has inappropriately exercised his presidential veto power on bills passed by the parliament, to the verge of being a lame duck. This article analyses the driving forces behind these results, suggests implications for Yoon’s foreign policy and explains the challenges that the election results have created for progressives in South Korea.

On 14 February 2024, more than 164 million people cast their votes in Indonesia’s presidential election, making it the largest single-day election in the world. Frontrunner Prabowo Subianto, Indonesia’s defence minister, won by a landslide. This article analyses what Prabowo’s victory means for Indonesia, as well as EU–Indonesia relations, by looking at the current state of the relations and Prabowo’s recent nationalistic discourse.

The European Commission has signed a new agreement with Egypt. One of the aims is to reduce migration to Europe. But this will most likely not succeed.

This dossier is a result of an exploration of Germany's current feminist foreign and development policy, aiming to address the fundamental question: What is actually feminist about it?