Greece to foster close partnership of European South

On September 9, leaders of Greece, Italy, Malta, Cyprus, Spain, Portugal and France will meet in Athens invited by Greek PM Alexis Tsipras to discuss on a new vision for Europe. The "Athens Summit", as it is called, aims to set the pace for the challenges EU and Eurozone are faced with, especially after Brexit and the dire effects of austerity.

The agenda will focus on the need for a new strategy for Europe, a new social model that will emphasize on the need to get away with catastrophic austerity, the refugee issue, which is about to come back to news headlines as the EU-Turkey deal and the relocation program are not efficiently developed. Each one of these countries has its own national interest and concerns for the coming period, but there is one strong component that brings them together: the aim to strategically change the course of events in Europe and stimulate sustainable growth.

Five reasons why the EU’s ‘Marshall Plan’ against migration is a bad idea

Three years into the most important human mobility crisis since World War II, Europe insists on kicking the ball away.

The latest proposal by the European Commission (EC) to the Parliament recommends sizeable economic investments in nine countries from Africa and the Middle East. The basic logic is that this would spur economic development and persuade potential migrants to stay home, while at the same time locking origin and transit governments into migration control schemes.

EU policy towards Russia increases Euroscepticism

The EU policy toward Russia and Ukraine is increasing Euroscepticism within national electorates. France and the Netherlands have shown just how the respective opposition to the current sanctions regime and the integration of Ukraine may lead to stronger anti-EU sentiments in Western Europe.

Recent developments highlight the growing rift between western European electorates and the European Union (EU) policy toward Russia, and Ukraine. Since 2014, the EU has been engaged in a far-reaching power play against Moscow. This led, among other measures, to the implementation of a sanctions regime against Russia and the push for ever closer ties with Kiev. This EU policy has generated backlashes in national economies and led to the rise of a specific euro-sceptic narrative forged on the opposition between national interests and EU priorities regarding Russia.

EU Energy: Only Adversaries To Choose From

Currently, less than half of the EU’s gas demand is met by domestic production. The rest is imported, mainly from Norway (36 percent), Russia (41 percent) and Algeria (10 percent). In recent years, LNG, or liquefied natural gas, has accounted for around 10 percent of the imports, with most of them coming from Qatar, Algeria, and Nigeria.

Although there are ISIS groupings in Algeria, the gas installations seem now secured. The last major attack on a gas facility in Algeria happened in 2013; 132 foreign nationals were taken hostage. The inevitable European military intervention in Libya will force Jihadists to move to Algeria and Niger. In Algeria, they will endanger gas installations and in Niger, they pose a risk to Areva’s Uranium mine in Arlit. Arlit provides a big chunk of uranium for France’s nuclear plants, which produce 75 percent of French electricity.

Brussels Attacks: Unresolved Issues

Nothing has changed in EU's security policy since  Paris attacks occurred five months earlier. Even worse, the approach the international community has adopted with respect to security and terrorism has not addressed the roots of the problem nor endeavored to foster a productive debate.

Brussels and Paris are only two among many other places around the world that have been hit by terrorist attacks. From Yemen and Afghanistan to Tunisia, Ankara and Beirut, thousands of people have died. Before and after the rise of ISIS in the Middle East, the major problem of the EU and the United States is the lack of strong cooperation between the national secret agencies and the continuous undermining of education and religious dialogue towards decreasing the powerful effect of extremism and hatred.    

Why don't EU leaders realise that this refugee deal with Turkey is exactly what the people traffickers want?

By any measure, the war waged by the EU against the people smugglers blamed for the refugee crisis has been an abject failure.

Refugees at a makeshift camp near the Greek village of Idomeni; thousands are stranded at the Balkan border AFP/Getty

If sabre-rattling, barbed wire, and naval flotillas and other barriers could disrupt the trade in transporting migrants, this is a war would have been won long ago.

The end of the European Union as we know it

The EU Summit held on Monday in Brussels proved that there is a long way to go for the member-states to start perceiving the EU as a supranational organization. The refugee crisis and the struggle of Greece and its allies in Europe to make clear, in every possible way, that being part of such an organization means having both rights and obligations, did not prevail.

It has been already seven (7) months since the relocation program has been agreed between EU28, but so far implementation has been extremely weak. From 160.000 available places, only 400 refugees have been relocated, showing in the most striking way that EU has a big leadership and decision making problem. Greece has once again been on the spotlight, this time for literally geographical reasons.

THE EU ENERGY UNION: MORE THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS?

In a new CER policy brief, 'The EU Energy Union: More than the sum of its parts?' Dieter Helm 

looks at how an Energy Union built around EU-wide gas and electricity networks will help 

produce cheaper, greener and more secure energy for Europe

Greeks Bearing Gifts: How Europe’s poorest country is doing more than anyone else to help Syrian refugees.

One Friday in late summer, just as the Syrian refugee crisis was beginning to peak, a blue station wagon pulled up to the Kara Tepe refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. The car’s side mirror was held on with masking tape and force of will. Big letters on the side said “Free Food For All” in English and Greek. A half-dozen sunburned, chain-smoking Greek leftists of all ages piled out, followed by two barrel-sized aluminum vats, several gas burners with propane tanks, two folding tables, forty bags of pasta, a box of spices, a dozen car-battery-sized cans of tomato paste and a couple of three-foot-long wooden paddles for stirring soup.

Iran Is Part of the Problem, Part of the Solution

Image by European External Action Service

The participation of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad-Zarif in the Vienna talks in October is a reluctant US-Saudi recognition of Iran’s importance in any future roadmap for the Syrian crisis. Since the Islamic revolution of 1979, and especially after the outbreak of popular protests in the Arab world, the two regional powers along the Persian Gulf have been jostling for influence and domination in Bahrain, Yemen and, above all, Syria. The move also signals a belated Saudi-Western recognition of the Iranian role and influence in resolving the four-year old crisis. With over 200,000 deaths the crisis has emerged as the witnessed the largest destruction and human suffering since the Iran-Iraq war.

MILLSTONE OR MULTIPLIER? EU FOREIGN POLICY

EU foreign policy co-operation gives the UK a chance to persuade 27 other countries to support British aims – but Britain’s success depends on the UK showing more interest.

Since the Maastricht Treaty established the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in 1992, successive British governments have seen CFSP as an important tool to achieve national foreign policy goals. Were they right, or would Britain’s foreign policy be more effective outside the EU? One way to judge is to compare some of the priority objectives of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) with the EU’s foreign policy goals, for example on Iran, Russia, Somalia and international organisations.

China's European charm offensive: Silk Road or Silk Rope?

The UK should not imagine that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s October visit means it now has a 'special relationship' with China. The visit was just part of a Chinese charm offensive aimed at the EU. 

Xi Jinping’s state visit to the UK from October 20th-23rd had every possible element of flattery and friendship. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, said before the visit that the UK was China’s “best partner in the West”. Xi told a joint session of Parliament that China and the UK were becoming “an interdependent community of entwined interests”.

25 years on: How the euro's architects erred

A quarter of a century after the euro’s conception, the flaws in its design have become apparent. EU leaders have fixed some of them but the euro needs better policies in order to be a successful currency.

It is almost 25 years since European finance ministers, meeting in Rome in December 1990, launched an ‘inter-governmental conference’ on Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Their work emerged a year later as the Treaty of Maastricht, which set out a roadmap for creating what became the euro.

Law and Justice in Poland. But what about the EU?

Law and Justice Party (PiS) is the absolute ruler in Poland. Couple of months ago Andrej Duda, also coming from PiS, secured the presidential seat, while last Sunday in parliamentary elections Beata Szydlo, Kaczynski's political chosen one, led the party to a landslide.  ​

Especially after this year's twin win for PiS, old-school, veteran Kaczysnki is undeniably Poland's most influential leader. Appeared in the front scene in 1989 after achieving to form the first non-communist post-war government, his comeback is associated with his country's big step in Brussels' decision-making inner room. With Donald Tusk serving as President of the European Council -in spite of his political rivalry with Kaczysnki - Poland increases its influence in the European soft and power politics block. This does not go alone as during the previous years Warsaw's political leadership has proved to be a strong pro-European voice in Eastern Europe, demonstrating a bold stance during CAP talks, assuming a pro-US stance in NATO intervention in Middle East and Central Asia, while balancing efficiently between its Soviet-friendly past and the stakes of European unity when confronted with Russia's interest in the neighborhood.

The UK response to the plight of Syrian refugees is a national embarrassment

Europe once stood for human rights, collective action and the reconstruction of lives shattered by war. Not anymore. Faced with a refugee crisis that leaves the lifeless body of a three year old Syrian toddler washed up on a beach, 70 dead in the back of a van on an Austrian lay-by, and thousands drowned in the Mediterranean, Europe’s leaders are behaving like rabbits caught in the headlights.

The time has come for the EU’s citizens to draw a line in the sand. We need a plan of action commensurate with the scale of the displacement. And we need a public mobilisation in defence of our shared values. This crisis is also about us.

The crucifixion of Greece is killing the European project

You couldn’t have had a clearer demonstration of what democracy now counts for in Europe than this week’s immolation of Greece. In January, after five years of grinding austerity imposed by the troika of creditors had shrunk its economy by a quarter and pushed millions into poverty, Greeks rebelled and elected an anti-austerity government.

 Anti-austerity protesters clash with police in front of the Greek parliament on Wednesday night. Photograph: UPI/Landov/Barcroft

Following months of fruitless negotiations, the country voted last week to reject the latest cuts, tax rises and privatisations demanded to deal with the disastrous impact of the first phase of austerity. The response of the eurozone’s masters was immediately to ratchet up the pain still further. For the “breach of trust” of daring to put the terms to its people, Athens was to be punished. So on Monday – threatened with expulsion from the eurozone and economic collapse courtesy of the European Central Bank’s cash blockade – the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, bent the knee.

The Ugly Heart of the European Project

Going into this past weekend, it looked as if the Grexit crisis that had occupied the world’s attention for weeks was finally heading into the final stretch.

Under pressure to comply with creditor demands, on Thursday Greece tabled a proposal that contained harsher austerity measures than the proposal that the Greek people had overwhelmingly rejected by referendum just one week prior. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras then quickly garnered parliamentary approval for his proposal, to avoid the country’s economic collapse, returning to the negotiating table this weekend. Under pressure to make labor reforms, liberalize markets, and accelerate privatization in the face of threats to exclude Greece from the eurozone from German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, Greece had caved. 

The Greek Revolt Against Bad Economics Threatens European Elites

A look behind the scenes of the Greek referendum and what could happen next.

James K. Galbraith, author of The End of Normal and professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, has an inside view of the crisis leading to the recent referendum in Greece. Galbraith has worked for the past several years with recently departed Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis as both a colleague and co-author, and he has just returned from Greece, where he looked down over the rooftops of Syntagma Square as citizens made history in a strong vote against austerity. He discusses the dramatic turn of events and what is at stake going forward as the austerity doctrine — and the entire neoliberal project — come under threat.

Is the Euroskeptics’ boon, investors’ bane?

The formation of ‘Europe of Nations and Freedoms’, another anti-EU bloc in the European Parliament, will give Euroskeptics a stronger voice at the supranational level. However, doubts remain on the stability and impact of the cobbled-together group.

Last Tuesday, far-right leaders Marine le Pen (French, Front National) and Geert Wilders (Dutch, Freedom Party) announced the creation of their new ‘Europe of Nations and Freedoms’ (ENF) political grouping in the European Parliament.

Syriza can’t just cave in. Europe’s elites want regime change in Greece

It’s now clear that Germany and Europe’s powers that be don’t just want the Greek government to bend the knee. They want regime change. Not by military force, of course – this operation is being directed from Berlin and Brussels, rather than Washington.

 ‘There’s no suggestion of genuine compromise. The aim is apparently to humiliate Tsipras and his government in preparation for its early replacement with a more pliable administration.’

But that the German chancellor Angela Merkel and the troika of Greece’s European and International Monetary Fund creditors are out to remove the elected government in Athens now seems beyond serious doubt. Everything they have done in recent weeks in relation to the leftist Syriza administraton, elected to turn the tide of austerity, appears designed to divide or discredit Alexis Tsipras’s government.