EU: Future of Europe: Nearly half of citizens want reforms - by Elena Sánchez Nicolás

Almost half of EU citizens (44 percent) would like to see reforms to the bloc, a survey published on Friday (12 February) revealed.

"Reform of the EU is clearly something citizens want to see, and that is why we need to launch the Conference on the Future of Europe as soon as possible," the president of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, said.

The much-delayed Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) is seen as a chance to have an inclusive dialogue with citizens about the way ahead for the EU - particularly after the pandemic revealed major weaknesses of the Union.

Read more at: Future of Europe: Nearly half of citizens want reforms

EU: Germany tells the East: Speed up reform or you will lose your population – by Georgi Gotev

Germany’s minister of state for Europe delivered a blunt message to a gathering of the Eastern Partnership, organised in the Georgian Black Sea city of Batumi on Thursday (11 July): unless reforms in Eastern Europe speed up, its young people will leave to find a better life in Western Europe.

Michael Roth spoke at the Batumi International Conference, dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the Eastern Partnership, an EU initiative covering Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Some of these countries, Georgia in particular, see themselves as frontrunners and want to go beyond this framework, with a view to eventual EU accession.
Roth explained the enlargement fatigue currently felt in the EU.

“Many people in the EU are totally exhausted, confronted by so many crises: Brexit, transatlantic relations totally under pressure, migration, the rise of nationalism and populism. Many people are not really happy with enlargement,” the German minister said.

Read more at: Germany tells the East: Speed up reform or you will lose your population – EURACTIV.com

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Islam: The Berlin mosque breaking Islamic taboos - by Damien McGuinness

With its red-brick spire and stained-glass windows, St Johannes looks like any other 19th-Century Protestant church.

Go around the back, however, head up a few flights of stairs and you come to a simple white room, with shoes neatly laid out at the entrance and patterned prayer rugs folded away in a corner. That is because this is a mosque.

The room is being rented from the parish, while the church remains active.

But the mosque is not unusual because of its location. Rather, because of the people who come here.

At Berlin's newest mosque, men and women pray together, women are allowed to lead Friday prayers, and gay, lesbian and transgender people are welcome.

"Our mosque is open for everybody," says mosque founder Seyran Ates, a German Turkish-born lawyer and women's rights activist.

"And we mean that really seriously: everybody, every lifestyle. We are not God. We don't decide who's a good or a bad Muslim. Anybody can come through this door - whether you are heterosexual or homosexual, we don't care, it's not our right to ask."

Read more: The Berlin mosque breaking Islamic taboos - BBC News

EU-Turkey relations need structural solution – by Samuel Doveri Vesterbye

 EU-Turkey relations were boosted in the mid-1990s, when economic ties were upgraded and the 1995 Customs Union Agreement came into effect. Its benefits were widespread. It now needs reform to continue doing good, writes Samuel Doveri Vesterbye.

Read more: EU-Turkey relations need structural solution – EURACTIV.com

Refugees: European Refugee Crises: Migrant Influx Costs Europe, But Economy Could Benefit - by Henry Ridgwel

The influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants is testing Europe’s ability to respond — especially in the poorer Balkan states. But some analysts argue that Europe will benefit by welcoming the huge numbers of young people  — many of them well educated and willing to work.

Germany expects up to 1 million asylum seekers this year alone. The upfront costs of housing, education and social care are considerable — but it could stimulate the economy, argues Christian Odendahl of the Center for European Reform.

Read more: Migrant Influx Costs Europe, But Economy Could Benefit

Greece says sending reform list on Friday in bid to unlock aid - by Annis Behrakis

Greece is submitting a long-awaited list of reforms to euro zone and International Monetary Fund lenders on Friday in the hope it will unlock badly needed cash, a Greek government official said.

The European Union and IMF lenders, informally called the Brussels Group, will meet in Brussels later on Friday to start discussing it, the official said. Their approval, followed by the blessing of euro zone finance ministers, will be needed for Athens to unfreeze aid and stave off bankruptcy.

Athens has so far given little indication about whether the latest list will contain a more far-reaching reform than a previous list of seven reforms on broad issues ranging from tax evasion to public sector reforms that failed to impress lenders.

Read more: Greece says sending reform list on Friday in bid to unlock aid | Reuters

EU - The Eerie Silence Before the EU Reform Storm - by : Jan Techau

Perhaps never in the history of the European Union has there been a greater mismatch between the need for reform and the political capital available to enact that reform. So what will bring the EU member states to the point where they embrace meaningful change in that union of theirs?

This is the question that has been lingering in the air in Brussels as the new EU leaders have begun to take office. Everybody knows that it can’t go on like this, few trust that anything major will change, and many have an inkling that something big is about to occur. The atmosphere resembles a political drôle de guerre—that unnerving phase of silence and tension that everybody knows must end soon so the real battle can finally be fought.

The current combination of challenges facing the EU is extreme, even by the union’s crisis-ridden standards. That calls for an equally momentous reform effort.

First, the EU needs to address the possibility of the departure from its ranks of one of its leading members: the United Kingdom. The UK is a country with a positive long-term demographic outlook, firm liberal economic leanings, a strategic view on the world, and a rock-solid transatlantic orientation. There aren’t too many member states like that, and the EU certainly doesn’t want to lose them.

Second, the EU faces a Europe-wide sclerosis that has created structural unemployment, enormous debt, low growth rates, and lackluster innovation across the continent. Europeans have lived beyond their means and at future generations’ expense to such an extent that harder times with longer work and diminished privilege are unavoidable.

Europe’s lack of preparedness to deal with this sclerosis can be seen in the prolonged economic failure of France, another of the EU’s indispensable members and the second pillar, after Germany, of the single currency. The utter ossification of France’s political elite and the rusty mechanics of the country’s centralized republic have led to systemic paralysis and a huge populist backlash against modernity, openness, and economic and political liberalism.

To be sure, reforming France is ultimately a French task. But so much depends on it for the EU that some hard thinking needs to be done—at least in Berlin, London, and Brussels.


Third, the populist backlash visible in France is a harbinger of what might follow in the EU as a whole if the bloc does not decisively reform its governance structures soon. This will mean creating some sort of democratic participation in the EU that makes Europeans true citizens of the EU, not just token ones.
The European Parliament, in its current form, cannot address the EU’s democratic deficit.

Nor can subsidiarity or stronger national parliaments improve the union’s democratic credentials. If the current level of EU integration is to be maintained—or even increased, as necessity seems to dictate—the union will have to establish real Europe-wide participation in EU decisionmaking in the not-so-distant future.
This is highly unlikely. And yet, if it does not happen, the EU will start to come apart.

Democratic participation and its logical consequence, political union, are more likely within the eurozone than across the EU. Just as the currency’s founders envisioned, the euro will require a political union of some sort that creates legitimate governance of the EU’s already deeply developed economic integration.

READ MORE: The Eerie Silence Before the EU Reform Storm - Carnegie Europe

Middle East Online::Moroccan Elections: A Barometer of Reform? - by Muqtedar Khan

In Morocco the monarch is also the Ameer-ul-Momineen (Commander of the Faithful). The King of Morocco therefore is both the head of state and head of religion. He thus enjoys a unique form of legitimacy and allegiance that is not available to other monarchs and emirs in the Muslim World. Even the King of Saudi Arabia, who is richer, more powerful and has done much more for his population, and has also co-opted religion does not enjoy the same degree of legitimacy and support that is extended to the King of Morocco.

Unlike the King of Saudi Arabia who has tried to buy an extension to his lease on power with a sixty nine billion dollars aid package for his people, the King of Morocco like his fellow impoverished King of Jordan, has chosen to deal with the widespread discontent through political reforms. Moroccan reforms were rushed through in the Summer of 2011 with much heralded constitutional changes ratified by a national referendum in June. The reforms were supposed to make the elections fairer, reduce the King’s control in several areas and give the elected parliament and ministers real power to make policies. There are three areas however in which there were no changes and the King retained complete control over national security, foreign policy and religious affairs. 

While the changes did not satisfy most of the regime’s critics they have succeeded in keeping the public discontent at manageable levels. There is a prodemocracy movement, ‘February 20 movement’, which feels that reforms have not gone far enough and along with the banned Islamist party Adl wa Ihsan (Justice and Excellence), have called for a boycott. The current elections and their outcome, therefore are critical to cementing the legitimacy of the reforms as well as that of the regent. 

For more: Middle East Online::Moroccan Elections: A Barometer of Reform?:.