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China elbowing Europe aside in Russian market

    “China’s growing presence on the Russian market and what it means for the European Union” By Alicia García-Herrero and Jianwei Xu, courtesy of the Bruegel Institute   Russia doesn’t just look West, it looks East – and increasingly so. China’s economy has developed very rapidly over the past two decades, becoming the world’s […]

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Organized crime is Europe-wide (and no, it’s not just from you know where)

“Mafia and the market” By Sergio Beraldo, courtesy of IREF   Many people share the opinion that Mafia is a typical Italian phenomenon, something about which only Italians should worry. This opinion is wrong. Data recently released by Europol show that thousands of criminal organizations active in Europe can be labelled as of mafia-type, with […]

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Without reform the EU will self-destruct

      “How to Destroy the European Union” By Prince Michael of Liechtenstein, courtesy of ECAEF and GIS     Once, the “European idea” helped unite a war-weary continent. Now, overbearing central authorities, suffocating bureaucracies and reams of red tape are limiting the freedom that idea once promised. Europeans are losing trust in their […]

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How to make the European Green New Deal work

  By Grégory Claeys, Simone Tagliapietra, and Georg Zachmann, courtesy of the Bruegel Institute     European Commission president-designate Ursula von der Leyen has made climate change a top priority, promising to propose a European Green Deal that would make Europe climate neutral by 2050. The European Green Deal should be conceived as a reallocation […]

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Can the transatlantic relationship survive the age of Realpolitik?

  By Martin Michelot, courtesy of Europeum   Reports that US Ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, was heard saying that his job “was to destroy the EU” call into question the reality of this desire for a “reset”, but it is clear that Europeans will need to come to the table. Their current level […]

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Welfare spending makes wealth inequality worse

                  “Welfare State Causes Wealth Inequality — Euro Experience” By Chris Edwards, courtesy of Cato Institute     Democrats running for president are condemning wealth inequality while calling for an increase in social spending. But expanding social spending would magnify wealth inequality, not reduce it, because it would displace […]

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Are Central European countries ready for the Euro?

                  By Zsolt Darvas, courtesy Bruegel Institute     Southern European euro-area members suffered from unsustainable developments after they joined the euro in 1999 and up to 2008, and have had great difficulties since. Inadequate national policies were the main causes of these unsustainable developments, but euro […]

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EU should copy Belt and Road in Africa

                            Hopefully the name will make more sense. China’s much-discussed Belt and Road Initiative, seeking to create and strengthen land and maritime infrastructure across Eurasia, has attracted a lot of criticism for saddling low-income countries in its path with lots of debt […]

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Europe will become even more polarized in downturn

                      The European Union was supposed to speed up the process of convergence between the continent’s high- and low-income countries, but by many measures the continent has actually become more polarized along regional, economic lines – and this trend is only going to be exacerbated […]

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Brexit has knocked UK politics for a loop… forever?

                            The old political division between Left and Right which has long prevailed in the Western world is basically obsolete, and nowhere is this more evident than in Britain in the chaotic age of Brexit, argues Carnegie Europe visiting scholar Peter Kellner. […]