Economics
An Electrification Race. Will the EU Avoid an Energy Crisis, and What Should It Do Next?
In a commentary entitled The war in the Gulf and the challenges facing EU energy policy, Agata Łoskot-Strachota, coordinator of the Energy in Europe project at the Warsaw-based Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW), examines in detail how the Persian Gulf war and blockade of the Strait of Hormuz have revealed the European Union’s profound vulnerability. Despite years of talking about an energy transition and reducing dependence on imports, the EU finds its economy and security hit hard by an external shock once again.
The Gulf War and Europe’s Helpless Energy Policy
In her article entitled Chilled ambitions: How the Iran war is foiling Europe’s LNG plans, Agathe Demarais, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, discusses how hard the Iran war has hit the European energy sector.
Washington and Moscow Get New Leverage over Europe
Since Israel and the United States launched their war on Iran in February 2026, global energy prices have skyrocketed, with crude oil reaching nearly USD 115 per barrel in early May and still growing. While this shock has hit low-income countries the hardest, it also places significant strain on high-income Europe.
An Energy Shock Is Coming. How Should Europe Respond?
It is common in Western discourse to claim there is a natural connection between capitalism and democracy. Sometimes the two concepts are virtually fused together. I always find this odd because I value democracy, but there is nothing democratic about capitalism.
Why capitalism is fundamentally undemocratic
In an article entitled The European Union’s External Imbalances: Past, Future, and Policy (Bruegel, Working Paper 07/2026) a group of authors led by Jeromin Zettelmeyer, director of Bruegel, an influential Brussels think tank, and Zsolt Darvas, point to a disturbing situation: for more than a decade, the European Union has had a persistent current account surplus of around 3 percent of GDP.
The EU’s Chronic Surplus: Handsome Figures Concealing a Deep Structural Decline
Cosmopolitanism and competition find their nemesis
How the “virtues” of neoliberal globalization paved the way to its demise
A report entitled Financing the EU budget: an assessment of five proposals for new resources, that examines the efficiency of new levies for the EU budget in 2028–2034, was posted on the website of the Bruegel Institute (Brussels European and Global Economic Laboratory) on 20 April 2026.
Financing the EU budget: an assessment of five proposals for new resources
Numerous facts indicate that the policy of militarizing the country was pursued solely to enrich high-ranking officials in the German government and the owners of military corporations.
Calm Down, Ladies and Gentlemen, This Is a Robbery
A new form of capital is ascending: cloud capital—networked algorithmic machines that grant their owners remarkable powers to modify our behaviour. And just as financiers needed neoliberalism, today’s tech lords need a new ideology to legitimise their rule. I call it techlordism.
Palantir and the New Order: Neoliberalism is dead. Say hello to Techlordism
You can’t quarrel with Russia and the USA at once and cherish a hope for some mythical ‘cavalry from behind the hill’ that will come and help. It is not cavalry that will come but people accustomed to surviving in deserts and wastelands – into which Europe will inevitably turn without an industry and agriculture of its own. For the sake of its own survival.
Oil? Gas? Fertilizer? Just Life.
An article entitled Energiepreis-Schock: Was eine resiliente Energiewende leisten muss, dealing with the challenges of the energy transition amid soaring energy prices, was posted on the Konrad Adenauer Foundation’s website on 13 March.
An Energy Price Shock: What an Efficient Energy Transition Should Achieve
An article by James Green and Sander Tordoir from the Centre for European Reform analyzes the current EU policy in respect of Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in high technology sectors.
Europe’s Door to Chinese Tech Investment Is Still Ajar
On 5 March 2026, The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies posted on its website a report entitled Reweaving Silk Roads: The Middle Corridor’s Role in EU Economic Security, dealing with the use and development of transit routes through Central Asia and South Caucasus.
Reweaving Silk Roads: The Middle Corridor’s Role in EU Economic Security
