This year will undoubtedly be crucial for the future of democracy. As Professor Timothy D. Snyder, specializing in this area, says, it could be a year of either a breakdown and further prolonged recession of democracy worldwide or a breakthrough and the defense of these democracies. They will manage to confront the growing populism, disinformation, and tremendous pressure from authoritarian systems.

During his first trip to Europe, Joe Biden kept repeating that ‘America is back’. We have to wait for the long-term effects of this visit, though. Only after some time we will see whether specific political decisions will follow handshakes and declarations. Nevertheless, we can already see that America under its new leadership is more pragmatic, predictable, and surrounded by allies, and therefore stronger.

National security has become a pretext for the introduction of protectionism in international trade. The United States use this policy to protect its market. It means a serious restriction of access to U.S. market for traders from abroad. The European Union expressed concern over this situation and warns against the creating of barriers to international trade. “Cannot justify restrictions on trade and investment based on national security if they are in fact protectionist and serve…

While the “green” countries like Austria or Switzerland are slowly surrendering the dream to reach the carbon dioxide limits set by the Kyoto Protocol, one of the few countries, which will probably reach them, is USA. Those United States, which refused to ratify Kyoto and were strongly criticized by the western world community for this decision. This situation would be unimaginable just a few years ago. How is such rapid change possible and how is…