Latest Blog Posts

After the successful completion of economic integration with the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, public controversies resulting from disagreement on fundamental questions on the scope and future direction of European integration intensified. The rise of Eurosceptic parties in member states of the European Union (EU), the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty in national referenda in France […]

In the last decade, a number of European donors, including the EU, has framed their development policy within a human rights-based approach. Donors have also increasingly been willing to sanction their partners for non-compliance with human rights. Recently, the promotion of LGBTI human rights have been subsumed in several donors’ development policies. The EU, for […]

Since 2018, Italy and Malta have restricted access to their ports for NGO migrant rescue vessels. While both countries have faced criticism for this policy, it should be noted that since the 1990s, most EU member states have erected barriers along their borders to prevent irregular migration. There is, therefore, a degree of hypocrisy in […]

As we were racing fast to leave 2020 behind, 2021 came as a slap on the face as the COVID-19 mutations promptly popped up in different parts of the World, including in the UK, Brazil and South Africa, which have made the successful vaccination roll out across the globe all the more crucial. While all […]

The so-called “refugee crisis” revealed the urge to ensure the functioning of the Schengen area and the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), the need to operationally assist those Member States most affected by the sudden and extraordinary arrival of mixed migratory flows, and the need to effectively and uniformly implement the EU measures adopted in […]