Anyone in 2020 with a pair of eyes or ears cannot help but recognize the enormity of the tasks and challenges confronting Germany’s current presidency of the EU Council. At stake is nothing less than the internal reconciliation of Europe …

We are facing “the greatest challenge in the history of Europe.” When Angela Merkel uttered these words in the Bundestag only a few days before Germany assumed the presidency of the EU Council, the chancellor was not referring to the …

For more than a decade, the European Union has been in constant crisis mode – from the financial and the refugee crises to the seemingly never-ending Brexit negotiations. The COVID-19 pandemic is more than just the newest addition to this …

Anyone who grows up with conflict, as I did looking in on 1980s Northern Ireland from Dublin, learns not to trust calm.

The push for peace in Northern Ireland ahead of the 1998 Belfast Agreement was marred, and almost derailed, …

Where do you stand on the subject of democracy and the rule of law? This was a popular question during the run-up to the European elections in May 2019, and none of the top candidates was able to avoid it. …

Donald Trump wants one thing above all others: unconditional victory. Everything he does revolves around the consideration of whether the move will benefit him personally.

He pulled off a surprising win in 2016. As the 45th US president, he has …

For almost a decade, China’s relentless rise has been feeding fears that, under the leadership of Xi Jinping, Beijing was steadily tiptoeing to world domination. The most remarkable economic transformation in the history of mankind went hand in hand with …

The COVID-19 crisis is affecting all areas of our lives and, much like a concave mirror, exposing a number of unresolved problems and unacknowledged grievances in astonishing ways. This is precisely what happened in the case of Russia’s recent nationwide …

After watching thousands of young Germans take to the streets in solidarity with US protestors demonstrating against the violent death of George Floyd, it looked as if some people in Germany were coming to understand – for the first time …

I was still a child when I eye-witnessed racist behavior for the first time. It was in Algeria, the country of my birth. A “white” schoolmate of mine was harassing another schoolmate because of the darker color of his skin. …

For weeks now, a veritable mudslinging has taken place among intellectuals, journalists and historians in the feuilleton section of German newspapers. The controversy covers all the themes it takes to get Germans hot under the collar: freedom of speech, the …

US President Donald Trump’s idea of withdrawing a significant number of US troops from Germany is neither new nor a surprise. The White House issued the same threat once before, just ahead of the NATO summit in July 2018. At …

Book titles like How Democracies Die and How Democracy Ends express the widely held belief that liberal representative democracy faces acute danger. The most recent report by the NGO Freedom House is titled Democracy in Retreat. Modi’s India, Erdoğan’s …

EU officials worked meticulously on the development of the climate crisis package, even though the official language of the program was noticeably stilted: “A major element of the new development model will be to decouple future economic prosperity from environmental …

Infection numbers are sinking in Germany. Life has somewhat returned to normal. The economy is recovering. Yet gratification over the fairly mild course of the pandemic is being tempered by fears of a second wave, which could wreak havoc if …