Blog 3 Columns

  • The third intifada: Has the EU failed to comprehend once again?

    The third intifada: Has the EU failed to comprehend once again?1

    Mogherini calls for strong leadership to end the violence and to maintain the two-state solution as a sole pathway to peace in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Yet, recent grass root developments and local political shifts last March expose the blindness of this diplomatic hand wave.

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  • What does research tell us about Erasmus+?

    What does research tell us about Erasmus+?0

    The well-known European Union’s mobility programme Erasmus+ has been widely discussed in the last few years by the so-called Eurostars and in the public sphere at large. So far the European Commission has ignored students with poor foreign language proficiency and students who come from low income families. Instead, such students should be encouraged to participate in mobility, giving them opportunity to learn host country’s language during the exchange and providing sufficient scholarship to cover their costs. Otherwise, a new gap will open between the mobile elite moving toward a European identity and the less mobile people sticking to national identity or even aggressive nationalism.

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  • Kosovo in UNESCO?

    Kosovo in UNESCO?0

    Despite having received a recommendation of admittance by the executive board of UNESCO, Kosovo did not become a member of this organisation since the required 2/3 majority of votes in favor of its bid were not obtained in November 2015.

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  • How Uber contributed to the shift from regulatory state to evaluatory society

    How Uber contributed to the shift from regulatory state to evaluatory society1

    Uber bites again. Today, the venture-backed start-up launched its less controversial ride-sharing app UberX in Zagreb, Croatia. This post-socialist country has climbed on the bandwagon of the sharing economy after an already burdensome move to the market economy. The taxi sector’s reaction in Croatia is very indicative of the abhorrence by which vested interests ”welcomed” market liberalisation. More dramatically, the arrival of Uber threatens to exacerbate relations between the state-business nexus and citizens’ demands.

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  • Michel Foucault on refugees – an interview from 1979

    Michel Foucault on refugees – an interview from 19791

    ‘The refugee problem is a foreshadowing of the 21st century’s great migration.’

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  • Talking to my daughter about the economy (Book review)

    Talking to my daughter about the economy (Book review)0

    I expected a lot from Varoufakis’s economics for teenagers. I believe that basics of economics and entrepreneurship must be part of the high school curricula (possibly even of the last grades of the elementary school). Citizens who possess basic economic knowledge could more easily understand manipulations performed by politicians (when salaries and pensions are cut to finance party employment in the public sector); they would know that market prices depend on other people’s tastes and ability to pay, and not on the nature of the capitalist who produce them; or they would know that there is no such a thing as free meal – when the government gives you something for free, someone always had to pay for it.

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The School of Public Policy at CEU