Language: English

On a sunny terrace on the borders of the river Oder, which flows between Germany and Poland, a small group of activists, journalists and politicians from different European countries decided in the late summer of 2011 to start a new magazine that would contribute to building a European public space and at the same time empower the Green movement.

There are at least 15,000 lobbyists in Brussels, and some of them know the EU institutions better than the institutions know themselves, partly because they are themselves former EU officials.

Paul Mason, economics correspondent for the UK’s Channel Four news, argues in his new book Post-Capitalism that capitalism is failing and will be replaced by a new system. Everyone should read this provocative and inspiring account of how, if we want to, we can transform our present economy to one based on sharing, democracy and participation.

On Sunday, June 16th, 2013, between the hours of 2:00 and 3:00 p.m., the price of electricity in Italy (the PUN or Single National Price) hit zero for the first time in history. In other words, electricity demand was fully covered by renewables. For the Italian energy sector and consumers this was an historic moment and an historic date.

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…