Blogs

Blog: Yellow Card to Hungary’s Backsliding PM, EU Trans-boundary Crisis on Hold

October 6, 2016

Nick Sitter wrote a piece about the October 2 Hungarian referendum on EU migrant qoutas for the TransCrisis blog.

In the four-month long referendum campaign, Orbán made much of the need to ‘send Brussels a message that they too can understand’ – as government billboards proclaimed in July. If this was indeed the main motivation for the referendum, then it failed twice over.

Blog: Between Norway and a Hard Place or Singapore ain’t Clacton-on-Sea

TransCrisis blog post by Martin Lodge and Nick Sitter

Regulation will be at the heart of the relationship between a post-Brexit UK (or should that be England and Wales?) and the European Union. As politicians and civil servants scramble for answers as to what a future relationship may look like, rose-tainted images of a post-Brexit world are being paraded, whether this involves images of happy and sovereign Norwegian Vikings, cheese-melting Swiss or well-disciplined free-trading Singaporeans.

Blog: U.K. Votes Leave, transboundary problems remain

By Martin Lodge and Nick Sitter

‘Sir – my need is sore. Spirits that I’ve cited; my commands ignore’ – these words by Goethe in his famous Sorcerer’s Apprentice sum up much of the aftermath of the UK’s referendum result. Whatever the political and constitutional fallout in the UK from an election result, which saw a coalition of Londoners and secessionists being defeated by a group of aggrieved and post-50 year old voters, the crisis in European politics is only going to gather further speed. In doing so, the political pre-requisites for dealing with today’s transboundary crises will be undermined further. In all likelihood, this will end up hurting exactly those individuals who expressed their anger by voting for anti-EU politicians.

Security crisis or existential crisis for the EU?

Published on the TransCrisis blog by Martin Lodge and Nick Sitter

The terrorist attacks in Brussels on March 22nd are more than a classic terrorist attack against an EU member state. They represent a genuine transnational crisis for the European Union because they involve cross border-terrorism of a kind not seen before last year’s January 7thCharlie Hebdo attack and the November 13th attacks in Paris, because they target the EU as such, and because they could further the broader crisis that has been affecting the EU in view of sovereign debt and refugee crises.

The BREXIT deal – out of the frying pan and into the fire

Read the 2nd TransCrisis blog post by Nick Sitter, CPS research affiliate and SPP professor

The deal that UK Prime Minister David Cameron and his EU counterparts hammered out on Friday February 19th was an important step in defusing the crisis over the UK’s potential exit from the European Union, but it paved the way for more – and more serious – crises than it actually resolved.