European agriculture’s future under discussion: online survey

Visits: 17Agricultural policy is about many things, including not only food production and safety, public health, environment, climate and trade; it is also to consider the cumulative impacts of numerous modern challenges on different aspects of agro-policies and tackling climate and biodiversity challenges from other parts of the economy. The EU agro-policy is being discussed […]

Modern European defense strategy based on a specific industrial program

Visits: 5The newly created European defense strategy, EDIS is a reaction of the EU institutions and the member states on the EU-wide security challenges. It is aimed, generally at enabling to “transit” from “crisis response” to more feasible “structural defense readiness”. The European defense spending have become too complicated recently: there are too many different […]

European ways for growth through recovery and resilience: midterm review

Visits: 37Since early 2021, the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility, RRF has been transforming the member states’ socio-economic development. The EU-27 states adopted national recovery-resilience plans, NRRPs in line with the RRF’s requirements and according to nation-specific growth reforms. Bringing additional clarity to the EU-wide transformation efforts during the three years in action, the review […]

European social market economy: the concept of stable growth

Visits: 5The European integration “project” with its seventy years experience is based on a specific development model called “social market economy”, in which the member states’ growth sectors are heavily regulated by the EU institutions. Particularly, the post-pandemic period has shown the growing amount of the EU support for “managing” the states in the transition […]

Education policy in Latvia: urgent reforms are needed

Visits: 12The number of students in Latvia during the last two decades dramatically decreased: from about 131 thousand in 2005 to 74 thousand presently. About half of the students enrolled in 52 higher education institutions are in bachelor programs, about a quarter at masters’ level, three percent are in doctoral programs, plus about 20 percent […]

EU’s renewables: third project in the hydrogen value chain

Visits: 35Although the renewable hydrogen supply chain in Europe is still in a nascent phase, however, the new Hy2Infra project will deploy the initial building blocks of an integrated and open EU-wide renewable hydrogen network. This project was jointly prepared by seven states: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and Slovakia.  

New EU-wide consumer protection rules are expected

Visits: 34Consumer protection is within a shared competence among the EU institutions (mainly, the Commission) and the member states’ authorities. The member states, generally, are responsible for enforcing consumer rights, with the EU having some coordinating and supporting functions. Therefore among the rules in place are mostly directives, e.g. regulating “common” better enforcement and modernisation […]

EU’s platform workers directive: socialists and democrats initiatives

Visits: 15Three EU’s legislative institutions reached at the end of 2023 an agreement on the platform workers’ directive aimed to improve the working conditions of more than 28 million gig-workers in the EU member states. However, the final agreement was delayed, which was according to European socialists “a failed opportunity” to show the EU-wide intention […]