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While providing valuable insights about the development of our economic system over time, Thomas Piketty’s work on capital suffers from a critical flaw: like so many economic frameworks, it ignores the limits of the finite resources of our planet – the fact that our ecological capital is rapidly running out. A new unit of measurement which takes this into account is urgently needed.

Their worlds are still far apart: national security and foreign policy experts have traditionally thought of energy mainly in terms of the need to secure access to energy resources from abroad while avoiding strategic dependence on the suppliers.

Alexander Langer was a political Green pioneer, both in Italy, where he founded the national list of the Greens, as well as at the European level, where he became president of the Greens-EFA group in the European Parliament. In his thinking he radically challenged not only the myth of unlimited economic growth – but also to the notions of ​​progress and thinking in terms of left and right politics.

Prohibiting cannabis has been a failure. The number of consumers is constantly high, cannabis is available for everyone everywhere. In Germany, over 2.3 million adults are using cannabis. Twenty-two per cent of teenagers aged 15 to 16 are known to have already used the substance. In response, the German Greens have designed an alternative plan to regulate and control the cannabis market.

Almost three months after the 2015 General Election, a feeling of disbelief at the Conservative majority result remains afresh in the UK. The results, which were a far cry from the outcome predicted by the polls in the run-up to the vote, have given rise to a heated debate about the system of voting in the UK, and calls for a more proportional system, though this transition remains an uphill struggle.

After the social and economic transformation in 1989 Polish cities fell into chaos and decline. Many of them suffered from closures of industrial facilities, and crime was on the rise. After the EU accession in 2004, authorities decided to take use of the stream of money coming from the Union. The problem was that it came with a cost…

To avoid further catastrophes and deaths in the Mediterranean we need a radical shift in the priorities of EU asylum policies. Increasing the budget of the “Triton” operation of the EU border surveillance agency FRONTEX and doing another minute of silence is not enough!

There is nothing new about refugees fleeing from war. In the first years of World War I, more than 50,000 people arrived in Lesbos from the nearby shores of what is now Turkey. At the end of the war many of these refugees returned to Asia Minor (the Anatolian peninsula). But not much later the Greco-Turkish War and the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922 sent more than a million refugees to Greece.

The Spanish citizenry has organised the so-called “convergence list of candidates” for the local elections in May 2015. These lists have integrated political parties, civil society and independent citizens aiming to regenerate the local policy from a political, social, economic and ecological point of view. What are the common points of such lists?

This spring, Barcelona has become, once again, the battleground for the radical soul of Europe. Mayor-Elect of Barcelona, Ada Colau lays out her vision; with comments from Susanne Rieger, President of the Green European Foundation.