Welfare and Social Issues

The question of the future of European integration became especially important after the “Leave” vote in the referendum on UK membership in the European Union. Do we need just better common institutions – or do we need a new vision, as Dutch author Dick Pels, suggests?

Since the crash of Polish President Lech Kaczyński’s plane in 2010, a period of renewed nationalism centred around Catholicism, conservatism, and an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mentality has taken hold in Poland. This wave of populism has led to an increase in division and violence.

What has transpired in Britain since the Leave campaign won the Brexit has only shown how easily the veneer of civility and conviviality can be peeled back to reveal the virulence of racism and xenophobia seething under the skin of British social life.

This spring students in Amsterdam occupied their university, sparking similar protests in many other cities from the UK, to Canada, to Montenegro. What was the cause of this unrest and how did the protest come about? A reconstruction.

Although the reality is often forgotten behind the acronym, the four letters of TTIP represent a huge transatlantic free trade agreement. How can such a complex issue as a free trade agreement bring out the masses?

In a rational world, security threats might boost European integration, given their cross-border nature. Today’s Europe, however, is different.

As a Bruxellois, confronted with the terrible events in Zaventem and the Maelbeek metro station, terrorism has reached my doorstep. More than ten years after September 11th, my reaction to these attacks is very different to the one I had back then.

Before we can tell whether multiculturalism is strengthening or weakening solidarity between the people of a particular society, we need to acknowledge that there were deficits of trust and solidarity long before multicultural policies were adopted. Such policies are potential tools for overcoming the historic deficits in trust and solidarity.

The borders that criss-cross our maps, and the notions of national unity that they connote, belie the fact that within and across these neatly delineated units there are communities whose very existence is a challenge to this territorial division. The case of the Roma people, spread throughout Europe and beyond, is an apt illustration of this.

Following the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, the international spotlight has been on Belgium as an alleged breeding ground for radical Islam.