Op-ed - Page 14 of 14

Défendre la liberté d’expression en France pour un projet commun de société

Dialogue , Op-ed , EU
10 January, 2015

The author of this article is a Muslim woman in her mid 40s, of Algerian nationality but resident in France since her youth, who prefers her identity not to be disclosed.

La radicalisation religieuse est un refuge idéologique pour les terroristes qui ne fait que masquer le déséquilibre psychologique de ces personnes et l’échec de leur intégration sociale. Voilà ce que ces terroristes combattent réellement, un ordre social où ils n’ont pas pu trouver leur place. C’est un problème social et non un problème religieux.

Romania: abandoning communism’s remnants

I voted in the last presidential election just a few weeks ago. Yet still, when I gave my identity card to the embassy staff in Brussels I was somehow reminded of Romania’s communist legacy. “You are only half a Clujeanca, your birth place is actually Comanesti,” said the official. Indeed, I was born in the eastern part of Romania because my mother had been assigned a job there, as part of the Romanian Communist Party’s economic policies. Young professionals like her were uprooted upon finishing university, and spread around the country so that all regions would develop equally, no matter their local specificities.

The threat of Deflation

In the past inflation was the number one enemy of economists. Nowadays, you might find that the exact opposite is true, and that a fall in prices is now in the spotlight. Deflation has arisen as the main threat to the economy, and the European Central Bank (ECB) is under pressure to take decisive measures against it. Prices in the Eurozone have seen the first year-on-year decline in five years, according to Eurostat.

Art and culture should be at the forefront of European unification

Christos Mouzeviris
The Eblana Blog , Dialogue , Op-ed , Arts
24 December, 2014

…Apart from maintaining its single market, Europe must promote among others its cultural and historic wealth through the media, its educational system and through appropriate festivals and gatherings. The European identity, what unites us, needs to be stressed and take precedence over what divides us. This will serve everybody well in times of crisis, keeping the unity of the continent and benefiting from the accumulated strength of all EU nations. It will also help strengthen the sense of solidarity and promote equality in opportunities and living standards across the EU.

When climate changes fast but interests slowly

On Sunday, 14 December 2014, representatives of all UN member countries and the European Union managed to agree on the “Lima Call for Climate Action”. This was the most important result of two weeks of exhausting deliberations at the conference but also before. If one reads the three-and-a-half pages of this decision one will see many repetitions of code words that may not mean much to non-negotiators. The question easily arises: is all this diplomatic commotion of any use? How is it connected, if at all, to the real world of climate impacts and much-needed climate action?…

Juncker tells Greeks who (not) to vote for

The purportedly most democratically legitimate President of the European Commission has made a surprising statement, just days before the Greek parliament votes for a new president of the republic, by telling Greeks who they should not vote for. The President of the European Commission cannot tell European citizens, or their representatives, what to decide, it should be the other way around: Greek citizens, together with the rest of Europeans, should be telling Juncker what to do.

Are we heading for a new Cold War?

“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.

The EU Circus performing in Manhattan again

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.