Poland’s historic election: democracy won
With the progressive bloc likely to replace the populists in power, the relics of the latter and a polarised society will remain challenging.
Politics
Analysis and debate on European and national politics, democracy, the rule of law, parties and elections, and Europe’s place in the world.
Israel-Palestine: a comparative perspective
An enduring refugee crisis, the conflict is unlike any similar episode from World War II and its aftermath.
Drawing the consequences from the Várhelyi affair
Arthur Colin and Henri Lastenouse
The European commissioner’s announcement of discontinuation of aid to Palestine, though countermanded, was hugely damaging.
‘Trigger points’ and the polarisation entrepreneurs
Progressives, Eszter Kováts writes, need to avoid the trap of a politics which only knows friends and foes.
On the road to (no)where? The SDGs at half-time
In 2015 the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 but real change demands a green social contract.
Slovakia: could this be Fico’s last hurrah?
The populist’s party topped the poll once more in the elections in Slovakia. Yet green political shoots emerged too.
Social democracy versus the nativist right
If progressives are to defeat the populists, Jan Zielonka writes, they must offer a vision beyond the nation-state.
EU enlargement—back to the future
How the European Union failed to deal with the collapse of Yugoslavia has lessons for the imperative of enlargement today.
Ursula von der Leyen—the accidental president
The State of the European Union address reflected a union buffeted by a series of crises.
Exchanging glances: Serbia seduces illiberal America
The government of Aleksandar Vučić is trying to clean up its image, Lily Lynch writes—without having to clean up its act.
Russia is winning the information war
In Europe the struggle by Ukraine has largely been seen as a defence of universal norms. But around the world that is far from universal.
Lachin corridor needs more than EU tunnel vision
If Europe does not wake up to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, it could be complicit in genocide.
Olaf Scholz, the improbable role model
A state that protects—and a bulwark for democracy and modernity. Is this, Robert Misik asks, the new paradigm of the democratic left?
Facing Europe’s huge challenges
The outlines of a new progressive narrative for Europe are emerging amid the smoke from forest fires and the war in Ukraine.
Europe facing three threats to its future
The EU has to navigate disturbing internal dynamics, external challenges and a weak economic outlook.
Refugees: ‘how could we possibly get here?’
The European Union is crossing human-rights red lines with its Common European Asylum System.