European Student Think Tank

South­ern Europe is burn­ing. This crisis has turned out to be the great cata­lyst expos­ing national ills of pre­vail­ing polit­ical and bank­ing sys­tems. Con­ven­tions were over­thrown and polit­ical estab­lish­ments dis­mantled; yet, Europe seems to be on hold, or in slow motion at best, wait­ing the Ger­man elec­tions. In the mean­time, a toxic envir­on­ment is breed­ing, European cohe­sion is eroding.

The EU is revis­ing its Digital Agenda, but still tech­no­logy does not find any place in it in terms of provid­ing pub­lic value. It is also fall­ing behind in terms of recog­ni­tion of some devel­op­ments in Esto­nia and les­sons that can be learned from the new European Cit­izens’ Ini­ti­at­ive. The rep­lic­a­tion of these can increase the demo­cratic legit­im­acy of the Union, if the vot­ing pro­ced­ures in the EP and the way it is con­sti­tuted are adapted.

The topic of the final week of November’s radio show Amer­ica Tonight was the bal­ance in socio-political issues in the soci­ety. A guest was asked how the Demo­crats and Repub­lic­ans fit together in the soci­ety and they sub­sequently respon­ded to these ques­tions in broad way, arguing that both dis­par­ate ele­ments are needed in our soci­ety. In rela­tion to Amer­ica, the guest believes that we should not insist on the period of 1940s, a period in which social wel­fare prin­ciples were fully pre­served in a soci­ety con­sist­ing of selfish and self­less people. He con­cluded with the idea that we need some people from right and left at the same time. The issue, at first glance, may seem fuzzy since the guest was given a lim­ited time to answer these com­plex ques­tions. Yet, he man­aged to focus the atten­tion of the listener on a single point: bal­ance in society.

Although this debate was intrinsic to Amer­ican soci­ety, it fits European soci­ety just as well. Indeed, by ana­lys­ing the choices of policies Europeans have made in the past, one would derive sev­eral out­comes when one delves fur­ther into the “bal­ance” issue.

As Ukrain­i­ans headed to the polls for a par­lia­ment­ary elec­tion on Octo­ber 28, 2012, the country’s future was once again put into uncer­tainty. The gov­ern­ing party of the sup­posedly pro-Russian Pres­id­ent Viktor F. Yanukovich, gained vic­tory des­pite strong sup­port for pro-western oppos­i­tion parties and an unex­pec­tedly strong rise of the ultrana­tion­al­ists. How is the election’s out­come going to influ­ence the EU-Ukraine-Russia Tri­angle and the future dir­ec­tion of Ukraine?

9th of Novem­ber: a his­tor­ical day for Ger­many sig­nal­ing the Fall of the Ber­lin Wall and the begin­ning of a whole new era. On this sym­bolic day and thanks to the “European Speech” pro­ject cooper­a­tion organ­ized by the Robert Bosch Stif­tung, the Korn­ard Ade­nauer Stif­tung and the Stif­tung Zukunft Ber­lin, I had the chance to listen to Mar­tin Schulz, the Pres­id­ent of the European Par­lia­ment, giv­ing his own European Speech in the Paul-Löbe-Haus of the Ger­man Bundestag. His words were mean­ing­ful and inspir­ing so I had to share the feel­ing with you.

Before the Ukrain­ian elec­tions of Octo­ber 28, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, vice-president of the European People’s Party, declared that the vote on Octo­ber 28th was to be a “his­toric oppor­tun­ity to reach a con­sensus among all act­ors of the demo­cratic oppos­i­tion.” Such cooper­a­tion from the oppos­i­tion would ensure that the incum­bent Party of Regions would not reclaim a con­sti­tu­tional major­ity in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament.

Our Press and pro­mo­tions Officer, Maryama Marong, has atten­ded the European youth Par­lia­ment (EYP) 71st Inter­na­tional Ses­sion this Novem­ber. Read her report and more inform­a­tion about the event here.

Recently Prof. Joseph Stiglitz, one of the world’s most fam­ous and pop­u­lar eco­nom­ists presen­ted his latest best­seller “The Price of Inequal­ity” at an event of the Ger­man Coun­cil on For­eign Affairs. EST’s Stylia Kam­pani was around and presents a sum­mary and some thoughts on its content.

The fin­an­cial mar­kets have been sub­ject to con­sid­er­able cri­ti­cism in the last weeks; ana­lysts are wor­ried that fin­an­cial con­sid­er­a­tions will dic­tate decisions that should be taken via a demo­cratic pro­cess. By ana­lyz­ing the reas­ons and the effects of the cri­ti­cized beha­vior the con­clu­sion must be drawn that Europe in the long term should be grate­ful for the present warn­ings of the market.

Pro­test­ers and free­dom fight­ers in the Arab world can count on the sym­pathy, and some­times the sup­port of West­ern demo­cratic nations. But this sym­pathy clouds our judge­ment, because we auto­mat­ic­ally con­ceive the rioters as her­oes. The vil­lains are those res­ist­ing change, some­times will­ing to give their lives for the dic­tat­ors. Yet, we hardly under­stand why. The demo­cratic prin­cipals that we hold dear and that we wish new regimes will adopt should make us want to know the whole story.