Bulgaria became a member of the EU, it became a member of NATO, but still, I don’t think that the expectations that everybody had when it joined the EU in 2007 were matched to the full extent.
By demonstrating a willingness to use force to intimidate and invade its neighbours, and by declaring a doctrine of protecting Russian speakers everywhere, Russia has created uncertainty, instability and insecurity across our continent. And across the whole Euro-Atlantic area.
Using the official election results and its own reasearch Republikon Instutite analyzed the results of the Hungarian national elections in 2014. In this article the most important findings are summed up regarding the turnout and the impact of the different elements of the new election system.
Besides the general turnout and results of the elections Republikon Institute took a deeper look into the performance of each parties as well, with special regard to the changes since 2010, the parties different performance in different regions and the phenomenon of fragment of ballots.
If we take a look back at how the integration process evolved, the ‘state of tension’ between the community (the EU) and intergovernmental methods has always been present. The establishment of the three Communities in the 1950s was a reflection of how the process relied on the community method: this is how the creation of the Community common market began.
Despite an ongoing crisis in the past few years, the governments of the 28 member states of the European Union agreed to spend 180m Euro per year and emit additional 19.000 tons of carbon dioxide into atmosphere simply to enable the meetings of the European Parliament to be held in two locations: Brussels and Strasbourg?
Reasonable climate policy means more benefits than costs. Therefore we need to know how expensive a warmer climate is before we cheer strict climate policy instruments. But that number is nowhere to be seen in the last WGIII-report. We are supposed to believe that two degree Celsius more would ruin the world.
At European level, the NEETs are considered as one of the most problematic in the context of youth unemployment groups. For few years already, some analysts have started to talk about a “lost generation” sometimes referring as the NEET as a population of young people literally doing nothing.
On May 1, 2014, the ten years long ban for foreigners on buying land in Slovakia comes to an end. The EU’s philosophy is that the European citizen is at home in every member country of the Union and this entails the possibility to buy an agricultural land. Thus, Slovakia and other member states are obliged to loosen these restrictions.
Besides the problems Europe is facing when it comes to competitiveness and the welfare state, the most critical and dangerous one is that of cohesion, including social cohesion.
