Think pieces, Babble style.
When describing our diverse EU family, we love to gush about the likes of Paris, Budapest or Prague – but what about those further-afield places, whose name you may not know? Rural areas account for approximately 77% of all EU territory. Despite this, it’s the big cities that tend to receive the most attention in […]
The “going out” policy of the Republic of China has worked for years. Now the Chinese credit boom is about to come to an end. From practically zero to 700 billion euros – that is the incredible increase in loans that Chinese banks have granted abroad between 2000 and today. As the British “Economist” wrote […]
With roots in northern India, for centuries the Balkan Romani have been a consistent part of European heritage. However, their past in Europe has not been without hardships. What is it about this particular ethnocultural group that invokes such fascination, and yet such resentment? Who are the Romani people? Still generally on the margins of […]
Everywhere we look, we keep hearing that the wealthiest 1% keeps getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. While this is not exactly true and certainly not in Europe, as I demonstrated in my latest book, ‘Fear of the Future‘, it is certainly true that ‘the elite’ are a small minority. This is also […]
Okay, so Brussels itself is extremely diverse. But head to the EU quarter and any large building there sporting blue starry flags, and it’s a different story. We hear a lot about the flaws of the EU institutions these days – with Brexit (yet again) fast approaching, and the world arguably having more of an […]
2020 has only just begun, but it is already proving to be an interesting year. A new European Commission takes office and promises us a union that strives for more. Britain is finally going to Brexit. The USA are heading for an election. Tensions are growing between China and Hong Kong. Russia is remodelling its […]
In November 2019, thirty years after the Velvet Revolution, hundreds of thousands of Czechs commemorated the events of the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia of 1989. Three-hundred-thousand protestors gathered at the Letna Plain in Prague to remind themselves of the revolutionary times thirty years ago and reflect on the values and ideas of the revolution […]
Nowhere is the Union’s neighbourhood policy more mature than in the East, yet expectations are high and successes manageable. Political balancing act The Eastern Partnership was and still is the EU’s attempt to reach a first major milestone in its official neighbourhood policy, which has been in place since 2004. So far, however, this mission […]
Discussing the protracted negotiations to end the Vietnam war, the American diplomat John Negroponte once said that it had taken a long time to “force the North Vietnamese to accept the American surrender.” Things have moved more quickly in the Brexit negotiations, where it has taken barely a fortnight for Boris Johnson to surrender his […]
The Brexit debate in the UK has never been about reason and logic. For many protagonists on both sides of the argument, it is not really about Europe either. Brexit has become a cipher for who has power in Britain. The paradox is that those who stand to lose most from Brexit, are often to […]