Why boosting climate policy must be at the heart of our coronavirus pandemic recovery by Dr Anton Hofreiter MdB, Co-chair of the parliamentary group Alliance 90 / The Greens in the German Bundestag, Berlin The coronavirus has shed a light on a new type of security threat. Everyone became aware that no border and no…
Europe must invest in high value space technology by Dr Johannes Bühl, postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz Institute for TroposphericResearch (TROPOS), Leipzig Dr Johannes Bühl is a postdoctoral researcher at Leibnitz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS), Germany. Born in 1983, he studied physics with a main focus on optics at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena.…
We need to achieve a green but just and fair transition by Marc Lemaître, Director-General, DG for Regional and Urban Policy, European Commission, Brussels Climate change and environmental degradation are an existential threat to Europe and the world. European Commission President von der Leyen has chosen climate and environment-related challenges as the top priority of…
by Robert Walter, former MP and President of the European Security and Defence Association, London On 16th March, the United Kingdom published its Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy. This document, in the words of the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, was clear that “Having left the European Union, the UK has started…
by Gerhard Arnold, Theologian and Publisher, Würzburg The Arab “axis of resistance” against Israel has broken, even if two long-standing hostile neighbours, Lebanon and Syria, will not hear of normalisation of their relations with the Jewish state. The “Abraham Accords”, brief and general statements about future cooperation between Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)…
by Natalia Pouzyreff and Michèle Tabarot, members of the French National Assembly, Paris In October 2020, the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Defence Committee of the French National Assembly entrusted us with a mission on Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO). It took place in the context of the first strategic review of PESCO with the evaluation…
by Hilde Hardeman, Director of the European Commission’s Service for Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI), Brussels The EU launched a comprehensive response to the Covid-19 pandemic, focussing both on the needs at home and on the situation in partner countries, notably with our support for the COVAX mechanism (Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access) in close cooperation with…
It is high time for the EU to make strategic choices by David McAllister MEP, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, European Parliament, Brussels/Strasbourg As Europe begins its path to recovery from a major health crisis, foreign policy issues that have been temporarily out of the spotlight are bound to resurface. This comes at…
by Patrick Bellouard, President of EuroDéfense-France, Paris Since the beginning of 2020, Covid-19 and its economic and social impacts have revealed the vulnerability and dependencies of Europe in the health sector and more globally in the economic domain and value chains. There is a feeling of global uncertainty.The battle to halt the pandemic is a…
by General Eberhard Zorn, Chief of Defence, Berlin As Europeans, we have demonstrated solidarity with our partners and allies in the past months and supported each other in the fight against the coronavirus, including with capabilities of our armed forces. However, we must not allow these circumstances to draw attention away from the fact that…