European Student Think Tank

2012 has been a very busy and pro­duct­ive year for the European Stu­dent Think Tank. A new board has taken over duties, and the edit­or­ial office launched the Essays/Papers/Theses Pub­lic­a­tion sec­tion on the web­site. The amount of art­icles has increased, and in order to broaden its appeal and read­er­ship, EST has strung up cooper­a­tion agreements [...]

2012 has not been a good year for Putin. Demon­stra­tions across the coun­try and grow­ing sup­port for the oppos­i­tion are dam­aging his image as Russia’s “saviour” and “Restorer of former glor­ies”. More import­antly though, his most potent for­eign policy tool, Gazprom, is facing increas­ingly tough times due to lower gas demands, more com­pet­i­tion and the devel­op­ment of a European shale gas industry. To make mat­ters even worse, the EU has opened an anti­trust probe into Gazprom’s deals in Cent­ral East­ern Europe.

It has been a long-standing feat in the UK to hear par­lia­ment­ari­ans talk about a Scot­tish inde­pend­ence. For dec­ades Scot­land was con­sidered too poor to attempt to break out of the Union with Eng­land but due to resource rich­ness and an SNP land­slide win at the last elec­tions, inde­pend­ence is becom­ing more likely. Which con­sequences will this have for Scot­land and the EU?

The European Cent­ral Bank’s decision to launch OMT (the Out­right Mon­et­ary Trans­ac­tions pro­gramme) to pur­chase unlim­ited amounts of bonds, is a risky but neces­sary step, and has been mostly wel­comed by mem­ber states. There are good reas­ons for praise, but the Euro­zone is far from saved. What OMT does and what it doesn’t – read it here.

Ger­many has been the global front-runner in terms of “green­ing” its eco­nomy. After the nuclear-accident in Fukushima in 2011, the coun­try decided to aban­don nuc­lear energy com­pletely and rely on renew­able energy. What seemed like a bold and determ­ined move might endanger the European energy sup­ply, espe­cially since the European sovereign-debt crisis has become the major focus of EU lead­ers actions. How­ever, every crisis offers an opportunity..

Ger­many has played a major role in every dis­cus­sion revolving around the cur­rent Greek budget­ary crisis. Not only has the coun­try been singled out as the biggest cred­itor, and more gen­er­ally as Europe’s pay­mas­ter, but it has also come under severe cri­ti­cism for enfor­cing an export driven eco­nomic policy that con­demns its European part­ners to neg­at­ive trade bal­ances with Ber­lin. How­ever, is that cri­ti­cism fair? Prob­ably not.

Ger­man fin­an­cial aus­ter­ity demands have dom­in­ated the debate on how to save the coun­tries hit hard­est by the euro­zone crisis: Greece and Por­tugal. How­ever, des­pite severe cuts in the social spend­ings as well as massive lay-offs, res­ults are mea­gre and new bail­out pay­ments are dis­cussed. There is no doubt that aus­ter­ity is essen­tial for a bal­anced budget, but starving the eco­nom­ies of Greece and Por­tugal is not going to help at all. What the EU needs to do is rebuild their economies.

It seemed that Nabucco might actu­ally win the pipeline race in the Caspian basin, but the group of con­test­ants has grown even big­ger with the addi­tion of BP’s South East European Pipeline. Could this mean the end of Nabucco and is it a reason for concern?

The Hun­garian gov­ern­ment of Viktor Orbán has been repeatedly cri­ti­cised for tak­ing the coun­try down the road of author­it­ari­an­ism. After its grab on the Hun­garian National Bank, the EU and the IMF have finally decided to pre­vent a fur­ther deteri­or­a­tion of demo­cratic stand­ards. The decision comes late, but is right, because Hun­gary is start­ing to resemble Rus­sia more than any coun­try in the EU.

The out­come of twenty-six to one in favour of stronger integ­ra­tion and tighter fiscal and budget­ary rules has left the UK in the corner. Sel­dom has such a degree of unity been found among mem­ber states. Cri­ti­cism of Cameron was harsh and aggress­ive, but is London’s decision to remain out­side really that bad? Well, yes, but not neces­sar­ily. It might actu­ally be great news.