Institute for Human Sciences

The threat that the EU now faces is as deadly as the one that confronted the Habsburg Monarchy a hundred years ago, writes British diplomat Robert Cooper, one of the intellectual architects of EU foreign policy. But getting it right does not need a miracle.

Too big to fail? Too crisis-hardened to go under? The collapse of the Soviet Union has something to teach Europe’s politicians if another leap from the unthinkable to the inevitable is to be avoided in the case of the EU, argues Ivan Krastev.

The Ukraine-European Union summit, originally planned for 19 December, was to have brought talks on an Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU to a conclusion. However the conflict over the prosecution of Yuliya Tymoshenko has endangered the process, raising serious doubts about the European aspirations of the current Ukrainian leadership. The country’s future hangs in the balance, writes Tatiana Zhurzhenko.

The challenge for a liberal democracy is to remain as such, argues Charles Taylor in conversation with Slawomir Sierakowski. Western democracies suffer two types deterioration: a misperception of really existing problems and a lack of vital tension between the demos and the government.