Unlike France, Italy or the Netherlands, the crisis of Romania’s elites has not led to a rise in xenophobic politics but to a digital revolution that challenges traditional assumptions about democratic change. Euro elections landscape, 2014.
There is a central Hungarian political paradox: it is the conservative governing party (FIDESZ) which has made successful use of the rhetoric of anti-establishment social movements in other countries, and which disposes of the means to do so.
Can the EU still be rescued following its disastrous failure to tackle the economic crisis?
It has become a cliché to compare the passivity of the Irish in the face of the Troika’s brutal austerity programme with the active resistance of the Spanish or the Greek. Yet, the Irish are challenging austerity in their own way.
As the old, post-communist left struggles with its own failures, the nascent new left already appears to be compromising with a liberal centre - a simple repeat of the old left's mistakes. For the left in Poland to survive, something has to give.
Much has been written about the indignados, what was new about them and what is, or will be, their legacy. It is time to acknowledge that the indignados have redefined how – and where! – we engage in politics.
In the first article of our new debate on the Left in Poland, Anna Grodzka MP discusses her party, the Palikot Movement, and its commitment to freeing up and encouraging the entrepreneurial spirit of the Polish people.
For its citizens, Europe has become a cold and alienating power, instead of the welcoming space it was meant to be. Where did that political and intellectual left which in the last two decades has been decisively Europeanist go wrong?
It is time that we realised where the real danger in Europe lies, and that there is a candidate to help us fight back against this gathering danger. But to do this we must begin to recognise how both are misrepresented for our consumption. A reply to Etienne Balibar.
Europe can make sense only insofar as it becomes a space which makes it easier to get rid of the fear that the crisis is disseminating within the social fabric, a space where it is more viable to struggle against poverty, exploitation, and discrimination.
In 1977 the autonomist collective A/Traverso were violently arrested by the Italian state. While the majority of their literature was lost or destroyed, fragments remain that provide vital context to democratic struggles in Europe today.
