Australia’s refugee policy has been a festering wound for the past three years. On August 10th the wound exploded when The Guardian revealed 2,100 reported incidents of the offshore detention centre in Nauru. Most of the attention has been rightly devoted to the abuses themselves. Yet, at the same time it occludes a more widespread, global problem: the risks of outsourcing.
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Last June, beclouded by Brexit, the EU launched its new Global Strategy. The strategy focuses on a number of issues and has opened a possibility for the EU to re-evaluate previous, and improve future, engagements. A case in need of a re-evaluation is the conflict in Georgia. Here the EU promotes state-building as the foundation for peace. The presence of Russia, however, drastically impedes the success of such an approach.
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In the aftermath of the abortive Putsch orchestrated by the Turkish military, the EU finds itself in a slippery position in the attempt to offset its geopolitical concerns against the upholding of the values it promotes as a normative power. The Union’s leaders have not understood neither the substance of the golpe nor its implications, whereas the EU’s own role in the scenario should be much more pivotal.
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Uber’s announcement to add self-driving cars to its usual taxi services in the United States is as unexpected as it is indicative of the automated future of the sharing economy. Governments should limit their efforts to regulate the rapidly-evolving sharing economy and instead focus on developing relevant skills.
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However desirable it may seem for political organizations to endow themselves with the halo of democracy, the European Union should be cautious to hastily “democratize” in response to the Brexit. Reform efforts to tame spreading Euroskepticism are necessary, yet not according to national standards. The EU will have to develop its own unique, transnational version of democracy.
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Affairs in which it was possible to write down such words seem worlds away from the situation we live in today, when the very concept of the European Union is challenged and put to a test, especially after the Brexit vote. Precisely because of this, it is important not only to reconsider the future development of EU’s internal affairs and structures, but also the plans and ideas that would redefine the EU as an international actor. Even though it seems the new Global Strategy, adopted two months ago, has come at the right time, the question remains whether it will trigger an adequate new approach to EU’s external affairs.
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