European Student Think Tank

Italy is going to elec­tions by the end of this month after 14 months of technocratic-ruling admin­is­tra­tion. Pier Luigi Ber­sani, the center-left can­did­ate has a good chance of becom­ing Italy’s next leader and couple of days ago I atten­ded a short, yet very mean­ing­ful speech of him at the Ger­man Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions in Ber­lin. Pro-European, sharp and thought­ful, he delivered indeed a strong message.

Ger­many has taken the long road on its way to becom­ing the pro­gress­ive force that it is today. Their recent elec­tion to the Human Rights Coun­cil of the United Nations under­lines the level of trust and recog­ni­tion Ger­many has earned from the inter­na­tional com­munity. But des­pite the pro­gress it has made, right­ist extrem­ism in Ger­many remains a mat­ter of con­cern. It will take unity between all act­ors within Ger­man soci­ety in order to end the per­sist­ent prob­lems of intol­er­ance and hatred.

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.

While the ECB’s latest bond-buying scheme OMT has been greeted with enthu­si­asm in most of Europe, Ger­man politi­cians, eco­nom­ists and media remain scep­tical. The main reas­ons for this are con­cerns about infla­tion and dif­fer­ent Ger­man cent­ral bank­ing tra­di­tions, which raise gen­eral ques­tions about the ECB’s mandate.

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..

The EU should be fed up with gloomy news com­ing from weak links in the chain, but still, there appears to be much to con­tend with. It seems dubi­ous to argue that the European prob­lem can be solved in a fin­an­cial way. Struc­tural prob­lems need to be treated more col­lect­ively and they require more tolerance. [...]

Today the new pres­id­ent of France was sworn in. Who is the new pres­id­ent of France, and what will his rule mean for Europe? [Con­tinu­ation] The Agenda – Inter­na­tional Polit­ics and the Franco-German Axis Less rosy seems the inter­na­tional field, where Hol­lande will soon have to demon­strate, if he can assert France’s interests among the [...]

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.

Rethink­ing the EU’s future: Two play­ers of a game, Tur­key and the EU It is very likely to hear a joke from Inter­na­tional Rela­tions stu­dents in Tur­key: “Even Venezuela will become a mem­ber of the EU before Tur­key does”. It has been a long time since the Turk­ish author­it­ies have expressed their desire to join the [...]

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.