Category: EuroActiv

Germany’s ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) “failed” to see Russia’s aggressive intentions, bargained away trust by ignoring warnings from Eastern Europe and maneuvered Germany into dangerous energy dependency, the party’s co-chief acknowledged Tuesday. In a striking mea culpa speech in Berlin, Lars Klingbeil, one of the two leaders of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD, said that […]

Germany plans to decriminalize the purchase and ownership of small amounts of cannabis under a long-awaited reform blueprint that would deliver on an election promise of weed reform by the center-left coalition which came to power last year. The reform, leaked to the RND newspaper group Wednesday, would also allow cannabis sales in licensed shops […]

LONDON — British Prime Minister Liz Truss told MPs she’s a “fighter, not a quitter,” as she attempted to see off a fresh party row over whether her cost-cutting new chancellor will significantly hike state pensions. Truss — facing her first round of prime minister’s questions since sacking her chancellor and junking totemic campaign commitments […]

Fossil fuels have been responsible for the largest inflationary shocks in Europe since World War II: the oil crisis in the 1970s and the energy crisis that has now been unleashed by Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. Europe’s vulnerability to the current energy crisis has been the result of a longer-running pattern of holding back […]

Former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen is being investigated by police over his role as Latvia’s PNB Banka went bankrupt, the Danish newspaper Börsen reported Wednesday. According to Latvian authorities, Rasmussen, who was the chairman of PNB’s independent steering group, and other former managers are being probed over their past management of the bank. The administrator of the bankruptcy […]

President Joe Biden and Russia’s Vladimir Putin are slated to attend next month’s G-20 summit in Indonesia, setting up the possibility of a high-stakes face off in the midst of an increasingly deadly Moscow invasion of Ukraine. U.S. officials are taking steps to ensure that doesn’t happen. Biden last week opened the door to meeting […]

The EU is planning to sanction multiple Iranian individuals and entities within the coming days over arms sales to Russia, four officials and diplomats told POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook. The move comes amid reports that Russia has used Iranian drones to strike civilian targets in Ukraine and may soon receive precision-guided Iranian missiles. According to U.S. […]

Johan Van Overtveldt is chair of the Committee on Budgets. Monika Hohlmeier is chair of the Committee on Budgetary Control.  When money gets tight in Europe, the European Commission and member countries resort to budgetary instruments outside of the regular European Union budget. This became abundantly clear first during the pandemic, then again with Russia’s […]

TBILISI — As you walk the streets of Tbilisi, Russian speakers are everywhere. That’s not something Georgians are happy about, to put it mildly.   Even before President Vladimir Putin announced a mobilization of extra troops on September 21, Georgia was the second most popular destination (after Turkey) for Russian runaways; About 50,000 arrived in […]

Tommaso Grossi is a policy analyst in the Social Europe and Well-Being Programme at the European Policy Centre. The opinions expressed are his own, and not those of his employer. Niccolò Barca is a freelance journalist and photographer based in Rome. Triggered by outgoing Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s premature fall, the result of Italy’s […]