Focal Points

At a time when the global pull of democracy has never been stronger, the crisis of democracy has become acute. Eurozine has collected articles that make the problems of democracy so tangible that one starts to wonder if it has a future at all, as well as those that return to the very basis of the principle of democracy.

Defence spending in Europe is on the rise. The US threat to withdraw its military commitment has focused political discourse. And yet finding a unified response to Russia’s war escalating further in Ukraine and pushing into NATO territory, to Gaza and the Middle East, will be a challenge given Europe’s polarized views on militarization. Eurozine’s partners, from across Europe and beyond, in once colonial powers, neutral territories, ex- Soviet countries and neo-colonial nations, are well placed to analyse pressing issues from sanctions and pacificism to recruitment, weaponization and civil protection mechanisms.

In the run up to the European Parliamentary elections in May, editors from the Eurozine network are reporting on national debates from across the EU. The aim is to compile a more detailed and comparative picture of the public mood than that usually provided by national media.

With trillions potentially having to be poured into national economies too big to fail -- Greece, Ireland, Portugal, even Italy and Spain -- the eurocrisis is threatening to overshadow the collapse of 2008. In a new Eurozine focal point, Jacques Delors, Jürgen Habermas, Daniel Daianu, Ulrike Guérot, Slavenka Drakulic and others discuss whether the EU is not only broke, but also broken -- and if so, whether Europe's leaders are up to the task of fixing it.

Twenty years after 1989, most former communist states in central and eastern Europe are members of the EU. Yet the transition from closed to open societies is far from "complete".