Since March 2020, following the Turkish government opening its border with Greece, mainstream media has suddenly discovered the existence of migrant pushbacks from the Hellenic Coast Guard (HCG) and various European border agencies.

It is undoubtful the role that the United States (U.S.) played and is still playing in shaping the integration process on the other side of the Atlantic: the creation of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation to manage Marshall Plan aids; the push towards the Economic and Monetary Union after the collapse of Bretton Woods agreement on quasi-fixed exchange rates; the renewed interest for a permanent structured cooperation in security and defence policy (PESCO) after a President-elect’s tweet questioning the usefulness of NATO. A recent proposal by Biden’s Presidency shook the almost decade-long impasse on international tax coordination and revamped the debate about tax policies within the European Union (EU).

With the EU-Vietnam FTA entering into force on 1 August 2020, Vietnam’s GDP and exports are expected to rise by 2.4 percent and 12 percent respectively by 2030. The agreement will lift 99 percent of tariffs on goods traded between the EU and Vietnam. Vietnam is the EU’s second largest trading partner in ASEAN after Singapore, with trade in goods and services worth $61.1 billion (USD) a year. Vietnam’s main exports include textiles, garments, furniture, aqua-agricultural products and, electronic products. Its’ key imports from the EU are machinery, appliances and, pharmaceutical products. The European Union is one of Vietnam’s largest foreign investors, with a total foreign direct investment of $6.9 billion (USD) in 2017 in two main sectors: industrial processing and manufacturing.

Stupide. So much so that with Covid-19 the fiscal rules for the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) of the EU have been suspended. After almost twenty years, that hardly institutional attribute expressed by one of the most institutional figures in the EU still echoes. The then President of the European Commission Romano Prodi had criticized, in an interview with Le Monde on 18 October 2002, the rigidity of the Stability and Growth Pact (hereinafter “the Pact”).

The Pact was based on two pillars: the carrot of Teutonic credibility on the monetary policy front and the stick that, starting from a minor lèse-majesté for a preventive control on public finance balances, could reach a less slight monetary sanction in case excessive deficit, the infamous 3% of GDP threshold. The objectivity of these rules, which in a Manichean manner divided fiscal policies into virtuous and vicious based on the annual balance, did not do justice to the quality of public spending. The fact is that a year later, the stupidity of the design of the Pact was translated downstream on its enforcement when, in November 2003, the Ecofin Council did not vote on the sanctions proposed by the Commission for France and Germany for excessive deficit[1].

The world is currently watching the protests across Poland in response to a new constitutional court ruling that effectively amounts to a legal ban on abortion in that country. This conservative ruling should not surprise those with an interest in European studies because recent government reforms have seen Polish courts stacked with allies of the governing Law and Justice Party (PiS).

Contrariamente a quanto avvenuto di fronte alla crisi economica e finanziaria del 2008, nel caso della pandemia del COVID-19 l’Unione europea ha saputo dare una risposta in modo veloce e sostanzialmente unitario. Tra gli interventi più significativi vi è la creazione del SURE, lo strumento di sostegno temporaneo per attenuare i rischi di disoccupazione in un’emergenza, il riorientamento dei fondi non utilizzati della politica di coesione per interventi a favore di indigenti, pescatori e agricoltori, il sostegno alla ricerca sul Coronavirus

Since 2018, the European Union (EU) and New Zealand (NZ) have been undertaking Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations (in parallel with the EU-Australia FTA negotiations). A small trading state on the edge of the Pacific, until 2015 the European Union had categorically ruled out the possibility of a bilateral FTA with NZ. Subsequently, the negotiations were fast-tracked in light of what was perceived as a global movement towards protectionism, such as the British referendum to leave the EU and the election of Donald Trump.

Over the last half millenium, this region, situated at the crossroads of Eastern and Western Europe, has changed hands many times; with each transition the identity of Belarusians – a Slavonic peoples distinct from modern day Russians and Ukrainians – has been forced to adapt to a new form. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the first historical emergence of a clearly demarcated Belarusian nation, there was a brief national revival, while Aleksander Lukashenko, democratically elected as president in 1994, encouraged the new country to become Europe’s last island of Soviet-style stability. Lukashenko, nicknamed “Bat’ka” (Father), a strict but caring patriarch, has ruled Belarus for 26 years, gradually replacing constitutional law with common unwritten rules.

The post-election protests in Belarus and the poisoning of Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny are cemented together by something greater than cause and effect. Certainly, what is unfolding in Belarus is a reminder that the collapse of the USSR is an ongoing affair. Yet while it has the hallmarks of other post-Soviet revolutions, what is striking is that it is occurring in a country which has for decades clung to the traditions, symbols, statecraft and narratives of the USSR. It is thus not merely a nationalist rejection of a Russified system, but a civic revolt against Soviet political and cultural behaviours.

Although the Covid-19 pandemic knocked Brexit of its long-held Number 1 spot on the UK government’s to-do list (EU representatives always liked to pretend they had bigger fish to fry, but it was pretty important to the EU too), negotiations over the UK’s withdrawal from the EU are continuing up until October. This is the so-called ‘transitional period’ from the date of the UK’s official withdrawal from the EU’s institutions on 31 January 2020 until the 31 December. By this date the EU and the UK will have smoothed the loss of access to the Single Market for the UK, and the EU will have mitigated the loss of one of its major economies, by securing a series of amicable deals and agreements.