Latest posts from all blogs
Will it bring nations closer together or pull them apart? The Financial Times commentator, Martin Wolf, has wrote an article on March 24th entitled the Pandemic is an Ethical Challenge. There seems little doubt that it will change the world fundamentally affecting every other issue, rivalries and conflicts, the role of governments, the role of […]
The government’s approach to building a post-Brexit trade policy appears based on Zen philosophy rather than economics. In economics textbooks, trade is a two-handed exchange between two people, an exporter and an importer, and one of these is foreign.
The health, stupid. Thoughts on Spain in state of alarm and the limitation of fundamental rights. Joaquín Sarrión Esteve Ramón y Cajal Senior Research Fellow. On 14 March 2020 Spain entered in the constitutional state of alarm (Estado de Alarma), according to the article 116(2) of the Spanish Constitution for the second time […]
Recent
As much as people talk about Brexit at all right now, much of what you hear is the cry that an extension of the Withdrawal Agreement’s transition period must happen. I’ve not seen a single industry representative, negotiation expert or academic say anything different for the past month, and I’m not about to go against […]
My original plan was to write about Polish Presidential elections today, expected to take place in May 2020, despite the calls for its cancellation after the outbreak of the pandemic: Covid-19. The acceleration of the spread of coronavirus, however, have succeeded in drifting my attention to the refugees and migrants. Particularly their survival in the […]
My last post dates back to early 2016 when I wrote about the risks of David Cameron sleepwalking us towards Brexit. The cataclysm happened. And it then took an agonising four more years of tortuous debate for the UK to actually leave the European Union. Friendships were left strained, relationships broken, investment stalled, and our […]
Can participatory democracy be the solution to the EU’s democratic deficit? This seems to be the European Commission’s intention with launching the Conference on the Future of Europe. If this is to work, the Conference must however itself be democratically legitimate. Based on past experiences, Camille Dobler gives four recommendations for citizens’ consultations. Can participatory […]
Within the social sciences, there is an increasing interest in the ways in which the theoretical concepts employed in research and politics contribute to making the objects they are studying.
The general elections held in Ireland on 8 February 2020, have witnessed the decrease of traditional parties’ electoral support and the rise of Sinn Féin, the left-wing party and former political wing of the IRA. Rather than being another populist phenomenon in Europe, this unusual (but not unexpected) victory could bring about more interesting developments […]
Public opinion has a central role in the politics of the Eurozone. But how do citizens form their opinions? Joris Melman’s original research indicates that opinions on the euro are often embedded in more general political orientations. For most people, the euro is above all a practical artefact in their daily lives, which makes them […]
As many better scholars than me have noted, it’s hard not to get caught up in a social panic. Just I’ve written many posts about “why is anyone thinking about anything but Brexit?”, so I now get to read endless materials about how coronavirus is the only thing that matters. Yesterday’s budget is a case […]
These days is the 10-th anniversary of the anti-European coup d’état in Ukraine´s political course, caused by the election of Victor Yanukovych as a new president. The new course symbolized “close to Russia – away from Europe” regime strategy, which ended in ousting of Yanukovych out to where he was leading the country – to […]
Maybe it’s the coronavirus, maybe it’s the floods, maybe it’s the excitement around the Prime Minister’s engagement/child-to-be, but we seem to have largely given up talking about Brexit any more. Sure, there’s debate if you want it, tucked away in the Westminster/Brussels bubble and deep in the inside sections of the paper, but it’s a […]
