In 2016, Switzerland will hold an unprecedented referendum. Citizens will be asked to vote in favor of or against a radical idea: an unconditional basic income of 2,500 Swiss Francs (about 2,000 €) for all adults. Under Swiss law citizens can organize popular initiatives if they manage to gather 100,000 signatures. The organizers of the…
In the departure hall of Ercan International Airport, Turkish Cypriots commemorate the 76th anniversary of the death of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first president of modernTurkey. As Northern Cyprus is a self-declared state that is only recognized by Turkey, travelers from Europe have to touch down first at a Turkish airport before they…
Less than one month to go… Running the San Silvestre from the centre of Madrid to the popular Barrio de Vallecas on 31 December is probably the healthiest way to prepare for the excesses of the night. Thousands of people gather every year for this 10 km marathon in which the least important is who gets…
Sometimes we are called the “Erasmus generation”, but not all young people in Europe benefit from an Erasmus exchange. Sometimes we are called the “lost generation” because of our surging unemployment rates, the uncertainty regarding our pensions and the future of our planet.
During the past few months most politicians and commentators have praised the democratic progress in the Union. The fact that political parties announced their candidates for the Commission Presidency in advance of the elections for the European Parliament; the visits these “Spitzenkandidaten” paid to many cities in the Union; the lively exchanges that took place in the European Parliament during the confirmation hearings of the commissioners-designate, have been interpreted as major steps towards addressing the so-called democratic deficit in the European Union´s institutions. Some have said that the current Commission leadership benefits from a “very strong democratic legitimacy”.
“The world is on the brink of a new Cold War. Some are even saying that it has already begun,” said Gorbachev, now 83, at an event to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. He accused the West and the US of “triumphalism” after the fall of Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe, and noted that trust between Russia and the West had collapsed during the events in Ukraine.
In the second half of September, each and every year, world leaders gather in New York for the annual high-level meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations. It is like the annual town hall meeting of the planet, an opportunity for presidents, kings and prime ministers, to make public statements on the big issues facing their countries and our world as a whole, and to discuss privately possible solutions to the thorniest among those issues.
