Europe

What does the European Commission think about the Western Balkans? What are their expectations, and what challenges have to be faced? The TRAIN Programme’s 2016 Alumni Seminar enabled its participants to slip into the shoes of EU commissioners and gain a new perspective on the EU accession process.

How can fundamental rights be protected in EU candidate countries and in countries that are potential accession candidates? From June 21 to 25, TRAIN Programme participants addressed this question at the program’s midterm seminar in Berlin. The session provided the twelve think tank representatives from Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia with the opportunity to discuss their draft policy papers and meet with relevant actors from the German policy scene.

Wie denkt die Europäische Kommission über den Westbalkan? Mit welchen Erwartungshaltungen und Herausforderungen sieht sie sich konfrontiert? Das diesjährige Alumni-Seminar des TRAIN-Programms ermöglichte den Teilnehmenden, in die Schuhe von EU-Kommissaren zu schlüpfen und so eine neue Perspektive auf den Beitrittsprozess zu gewinnen.

On the morning of June 24, experts met at the DGAP to ponder the triumph of the Brexiteers and discuss the referendum’s extraordinary impact on Europe, the UK, and the world: longtime MEP Elmar Brok; Sarah Raine of the International Institute for Strategic Studies; Nicolai Ondarza of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs; Philip Oltermann of the Guardian's Berlin bureau; and the DGAP's Jana Puglierin. Click below to hear an audio file of their discussion

Greece has become the EU’s Achilles heel. While its shattering debt crisis is familiar to all, the fact that Greece for some time has been the EU point of entry for mounting numbers of refugees from the Middle East has gone largely unnoticed. Manuel Sarrazin, Nick Malkoutzis, and Yiannis Mouzakis discussed the country’s political and social situation in light of the debt crisis and its other economic and social problems. And they discussed the path toward fiscal and economic recovery.

European partners disagree about how to respond to Europe’s current political challenges, to say nothing of the challenges facing its neighboring countries. The Pew Research Center’s newly published survey “Europeans Face the Word Divided” gives insight into how divided European citizens are in their views concerning the role of their governments and the European Union in the world. A few days before the Brexit referendum, Bruce Stokes gave an exclusive presentation of the report at the DGAP.