Sovereign debt servicing is one of the largest cost items in the budgets of EU countries. In 2010 the situation around Greek sovereign debt turned into a real stress test both for the eurozone and EU itself. Amid the crisis there were even calls for Greece to leave the eurozone and bleak forecasts predicting crush of the Euro. The European Union has survived once again proving its flexibility and 8 years after on August 20th 2018 the bail-out program for Greece came to an end. Costing around 400 billion euros saving Greek economy resulted in imposing austerity measures and exacerbated social problems in the country. How does sovereign debt system work in other European countries and what economic parameters does sovereign debt impact the most? This is what our correspondent explores in “Awareness Campaign” column
Traditional Euro Digest, containing articles and researches on Europe and Russia for the first half of September 2018.
In this issue you will find:
a more detailed look into 2018 State of the Union Speech of Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission. The address focused on migration and common defence policy, but unlike the previous speech, barely mentioned reforms inside the European Union.
Analysis of the Spinelli Group manifest. An intellectual product of European federalists that outlines their vision EU reforms.
European press on the results of the parliamentary elections in Sweden where the ultra-right Swedish Democrats received almost 18% of votes.
Back to Sweden again: we have read ECFR research on Sweden’s influence in EU and recommendations on enhancing this influence in the view of the fact that Britain, traditional Swedish ally, is no longer in EU.
We have listened to “Asks Judy” expert discussion in Carnegie foundation about populism and ways to contain it both in Europe and across the globe.
Under the European Russia project the European Dialogue group talks to experts about values and understanding of these values shared by the Russian and the European nations. Our conversation with Edward Ponarin, Laboratory of Comparative Social Studies, Higher School of Economics, Head, highlights the way religion influences diversity of values in Europe, why Russia sees an increasing demand for developing a grand national idea and how the government capitalises on this demand
In fairness, recently passed law by Duma, which establishes supremacy of Constitutional Court’s rulings, does not necessarily mean that the country is about to drop international law standards. On its path to democracy Russia has adopted a great deal of international law principles turning them in integral part of its own legal system, and scrapping them all may turn out to be tricky
We publish one chapter from a future book on liberalism, which looks deeper into how well modern economy is doing whilst its underlying liberal ideas are undermined by a crisis
Under the European Russia project we talk to experts about values and understanding of these values shared by the Russian and the European nations. Vladimir Magun, Head, Laboratory of comparative studies of mass mentality, Higher School of Economics, Head, Personality studies department, Sociology Institute, Federal Scientific Center for Sociological Studies, Russian Academy of Science, told us about the values, which Russia lacks to boost its economic growth and why conservative u-turn and public rhetoric, which puts state interests above the personal ones are misaligned with value-affecting changes that happened 10-15 years ago.
Traditional Euro Digest, containing articles and researches on Europe and Russia for the last two weeks of August 2018.
In this issue you will find
— articles by European experts and journalists attempting to look if there is any ground for rapprochement between Russia and EU after Vladimir Putin met Angela Merkel in Meseberg this August,
— new collection of materials from Institute if Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences containing analysis of political, economic, and social situation in Germany in 2017
— research by American political scientists on how illegal refugees adapt to increasingly strict regulations barring them from entering and staying in the European Union
— Analysis of debate between politicians and political scientists on Spitzenkandidaten mechanism used during elections to the European Parliament.
Within last two years sanctions have become a usual part of newspaper headlines all over the world. The USA is anti Turkey and Iran, Europe is pro-Iran but anti-Russia. Russia is anti everyone else. We start our new column titled Awareness Campaign with an article on European sanctions, in which we try to explore why extending these restrictions against Russia every time turns into a stress test for EU and how has the Old World been affected by Russian retaliatory sanctions
What kind of bilateral unions exist inside the single EU? Can American experience be applied in elections campaigns in Europe? What will deputies opt for when finding themselves between the hammer of there own party and the anvil of Eurobureaucrats? Our new digest answers these questions and more. For those of our readers who lack time for long reads we prepare a gist of publications twice a month and share the ways in which these conclusions can be practically applied
“The European Dialogue” group is twice a month releasing a digest reviewing the most interesting publications on European domestic policy and Russo-European relations. We keep those of our readers who lack time to ready lengthy texts informed about the essence of these publications as well as how their conclusions can be practically applied. Previous releases of the Digest are also available for reading
