The ghost of the Berlin Wall lives on 30 years after its collapse. It sweeps through the statistics on immigrant populations (higher in the west) and on poverty, pensioners and electoral support for the Left Party Die Linke and for far-right parties (all higher in the east). Persistent (...)
Attempted occupation at airport was called by new group using an app to bring young people on to streets
Until this week, the images habitually projected by the Catalan independence movement were of its red, yellow and blue estelada flags and of the huge crowds that have gathered on the (...)
The long prison sentences for the organizers of Catalunya’s outlawed independence referendum are just the latest sign of Spain’s repressive turn. The Catalan crisis has brought the state’s authoritarian impulses to the surface — and set a terrible precedent for criminalizing dissent.
"This is not (...)
Poland’s left parties have cooperated in the campaign leading to today’s general election. But can they find common answers to the problems facing ordinary Poles?
It has been an awful campaign season. An early indication of its main themes happened in March when the Marshall of the Senate, (...)
The Law and Justice party’s super-conservative, anti-LGBT agenda is alienating many young and moderate Poles
In the decades since the end of Communism, Poland has rarely been a country of mass demonstrations. It has never had its equivalent of Ukraine’s Euromaidan, for instance. But the four (...)
Portugal went to the polls on Sunday October 6 and gave the biggest share of the vote – but not an outright majority – to the Socialist Party. Instead Socialist Party government will be dependent on other parties – quite possibly the two on whom it has been dependent since 2015: the Bloco Esquerda (...)
A coalition committed to spending cuts could merely strengthen the far-right Lega.
From the outset of August it was clear that Italian politicians would be denied their usual month off. As his far-right Lega party polled over 35 per cent, Matteo Salvini’s rallies at beach resorts around central (...)
Repeal of law was key part of Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s election campaign.
Greece’s newly elected, centre-right government has ignored leftists’ protests to overturn a law that had prohibited police from entering universities.
In a stormy debate preceding Thursday’s vote, the prime minister, Kyriakos (...)
The GUE /NGL and EL suffered a defeat. Except for some notable exceptions – Portugal, Slovenia, and Belgium – and our having maintained significant electoral strength in Greece and Cyprus we lost across the board. Moreover, we must acknowledge that except for the Czech Republic we have no MEPs in (...)
Alexis Tsipras’s government imposed years of suffering on Greeks, only to let the conservatives back into power. Rebuilding the fight against austerity could take years — and will be impossible without a direct confrontation with the European Union.
The Greek election results were, first and (...)
A new five-party coalition government was formally appointed in Finland earlier this month, led by Prime Minister Antti Rinne. Rinne’s Social Democratic Party narrowly won legislative elections in mid-April with only 17.7 percent of the vote, leading it to partner with four smaller parties to (...)
The “renewal” of the Social Democrats in Romania offers little. Upcoming party leaders are committed to liberalism, and will only struggle for a few social reforms to keep the voters happy.
1. Failing against all odds
Just as the polls were announcing a crushing defeat for the Romanian (...)
Smiles from the Greens, triumph for Salvini and Farage, possible resignation from German Social Democratic leader and forced elections for Tsiprias in Greece – these reactions sum up the main features of the recent European Elections. Ten per cent more people voted that in the previous (...)
Efforts to tackle abuse have brought the platform into collision with the government
The denunciation filled the front page of one of Hungary’s main newspapers. “Facebook has become a political actor,” declared the pro-government Magyar Nemzet, the latest attack in an escalating campaign against (...)
Recently, relatively new political actors in Romania announced their intention to run for the upcoming elections of a new European Parliament. Their profiles could not be more different but they share nonetheless a common feature that neatly expresses the systemic and terminal crisis of post-communist Romanian politics. Rather than representing a break with the old order, the articulation of these new (...)
‘Watershed’ moment for island as Niyazi Kızılyürek campaigns on AKEL-led reunification ticket.
A Turkish Cypriot candidate is set for the first time to win a seat in next month’s European parliament elections in what is already being hailed a watershed moment for the partitioned island.
In a (...)
The candidate of the extra-parliamentary party “Progressive Slovakia” Zuzana Čaputová is the new president of the country. Despite her victory, the extreme right manages to set the tone for political debate.
The news that Slovakia will be headed by a woman for the first time travelled around all (...)
Bulgaria has the worst air pollution in Europe. The state is actually reducing its investments to clean up pollution. In this context of indifference, the poor majority suffer from high rates of sickness and premature death. Rather than targeting cynical corporations and an indifferent state, (...)
Slovenia is often presented as a success story among post-Yugoslav republics. Perceived as one of the most successful transition economies, Slovenia also has a status of a country immune to political extremism. Nevertheless, the refugee crisis in 2015., although without demographic consequences (...)
Joke Schauvliege falsely claimed state agencies had evidence that children’s climate change protests were a ‘set-up’
A Belgian environment minister has been forced to resign after falsely claiming the country’s intelligence services held evidence that children skipping school to demonstrate over (...)
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