Will 23 June 2016 go down in history as having an equal but opposite impact to that of 9 November 1989? This is one of many questions that editors at Eurozine partner journals considered when asked for their initial responses to the Brexit decision, and its reception in their home countries.
If the financial crisis divided the EU between creditors and debtors, opening a gap between North and South, the refugee crisis re-opened the gap between East and West. What we witness today, writes Ivan Krastev, is not what Brussels describes as a lack of solidarity, but a clash of solidarities: national, ethnic and religious solidarity chafing against our obligations as human beings.
Whatever the result of Thursday’s UK referendum, neither popular disaffection with mainstream political institutions, nor the sense among large sections of the electorate of being politically voiceless, is likely to subside. Nor will it, argues Kenan Malik, until the reasons for that disaffection are directly addressed.
Whether the UK remains an EU member or not after Thursday’s vote, there’s no business as usual to return to for Britain, the EU or even the western world. So says the executive editor of POLITICO’s European edition, Matthew Kaminski.
Both Remain and Leave campaigns are equally culpable for the toxic mixture of ill feeling and scare tactics that has defined the build up to Thursday’s referendum, writes Benjamin Tallis. A British citizen who has spent most of his working life on the continent, Tallis bemoans how these dismal campaigns have obscured the fact that, for all its faults, the European Union remains the world’s most successful liberal project.
Ahead of Thursday’s EU referendum, Ben Little of Soundings (UK) looks beyond the daily diet of questionable and competing facts circulated by party political factions, and considers the deep-seated tensions that currently shape the United Kingdom’s fractured political landscape.
There is a no-man’s-land between European post-democracy and notional national democracy that largely consists of grand coalitions of the political centre. It is here that European populism is flourishing and will continue to do so. Ulrike Guérot offers a corrective.
Public debate in Sweden on EU migrants has become particularly divisive of late, reinforcing misleading notions of who is considered “deserving” of welfare and who “non-deserving”. The authors appeal for a political community based on radically different principles.
It’s not just Europe’s far right parties; the radical Left too has both personal and political connections to the Kremlin, write Péter Krekó and Lóránt Gyori. Moreover, the old “comrade networks” of Soviet times remain active.
States such as Norway or Switzerland have tended to relinquish sovereignty to the European Union without any prospect of co-determining the course that the Union takes, write Erik O. Eriksen and John Erik Fossum. Moreover, such states experience new EU treaties or reforms as “shocks” for which they are poorly prepared in comparison to member states. But these are not the only lessons that voters in the UK’s upcoming referendum on EU membership may wish to consider.
Once the preserve of eccentrics and cranks, cryonics is entering the mainstream. Is eternal life possible – or even desirable? Traversing the interface between transhumanist subcultures and high-stakes investment in novel technologies, Cal Flyn investigates.
Even a democratically elected president of the European Commission, or the elimination of the circus that is a European Parliament based in two cities, will not make citizens fall in love with the Union. What’s required, says Jan Zielonka, is a form of European integration able to meet the needs of societies put under pressure by current geopolitical tensions and the digital revolution.
In this excerpt from Anthony Barnett’s book project Blimey – it could be BREXIT!, the founder of openDemocracy (UK) argues in favour of the United Kingdom remaining a European Union member state. In the process, he reflects on the changing prospects for a genuinely democratic Europe, and on the role of digital and other new platforms in shaping European debate.
Russia’s democratic movement needs to develop a cultural and political strategy based on the following premise, writes Sergey Lebedev: that a systemic failure to deal properly with Soviet-era crimes has engendered the present-day authoritarian Russian state. This is the only way to end the damaging series of half remedies that has so far sustained the illusion of justice being restored.
Once considered a force of stability after the Yeltsin years, Vladimir Putin now depends on exporting instability and escalating international tensions in order to retain his grip on power at home. In the face of which, Garry Kasparov warns against complacency – at the same time as insisting that it is merely a question of time before Putin’s apparent show of strength gives way to dramatic change in Russia itself. Kasparov speaks to Luka Lisjak Gabrijelcic of Razpotja (Slovenia).
Once again, Turkey finds itself at the centre of a storm of conflicting international interests. As neither the deadly chaos in the Middle East nor the refugee crisis show any sign of letting up, the issue of Cyprus rumbles on. Meanwhile, the country’s domestic politics remain something of a minefield. Jim Blackburn of New Eastern Europe (Poland) speaks to Adam Szymanski.