Dr Georgios Kostakos is Co-founder and Executive Director of the Brussels-based Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability (FOGGS). He has been a UN staff member, including with the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General, the High-level Panel on Global Sustainability, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and field missions for political affairs and human rights. He has also worked with think tanks, academic institutions and as a consultant on global governance and sustainability, peace and resilience.
President Putin’s visit to Budapest on 17 February has raised eyebrows externally and provoked protests within Hungary. Many Hungarians feel that their country is drifting to the East, while its present and future lies with the West. Prime Minister Orban does have some valid points for explaining his association with Mr. Putin. What is more worrisome in the long-run is the authoritarian affinities between the two.
The EU central institutions seem to be stuck to what 19th Century Europe identified as “mission civilisatrice”, fuelled by an underlying sense of self-righteousness and superiority vis-à-vis others, while individual member states continue to pursue their narrow but concrete geopolitical and economic interests, which go in different directions. It should come as no surprise that EU members are steadily losing ground on the charts of state power and influence in the world, overtaken by more dynamic, emerging powers. Of course, with its ambition, innovation and flexibility the US remains steadily at the top, as would the EU as a whole, should it become really united.
In this first “letter from America” I make a series of critical comparisons between New York and Brussels in an attempt to distil the best of both worlds, and hopefully infuse what is missing from one to the other. For Europe, which is the focus of this publication, this would mean less parochialism and more ambition for the future at individual and collective levels; more client orientation and more flexibility in employment conditions, while keeping an overall guaranteed social safety net that is the jewel of the “European model”; more openness to other cultures and influences, notably those from other EU countries but also beyond; much more openness towards and investment in new ideas, innovation and creativity; and an overall more optimistic attitude and can-do spirit…
The capital of the EU is also the world capital of the bande dessinée, and suffered its own terrorist attack in May 2014 with the killing of four persons at the Brussels Jewish Museum.
The EU capital is having some laid-back moments during the holiday season.
A drama in many funny acts unfolding in the bowels of the EU headquarters in Brussels
(Part II of Episode 1 just published!)
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.
