Hungarian President Viktor Orban announced in early July that Hungary would hold a referendum in October on the European Union’s plan to redistribute 120,000 refugees from Greece and Italy throughout the union through a quota system. Orban, who has clashed with EU leaders in Brussels since he came to power in 2010, has been a vocal critic of the EU’s response to the migrant and refugee crisis since its onset. Hungary was the first country to close its borders to migrants and refugees at the height of the influx, and the planned referendum is his latest rebuke of EU policy. [...]
Argentine President Mauricio Macri was in Brussels earlier this month to push the European Union on finalizing a free trade agreement with the South American trade bloc Mercosur. In an email interview, Inmaculada Martinez-Zarzoso, a professor of economics at the University of Goettingen, discusses the state of the free trade negotiations between the EU and Mercosur. WPR: How extensive are trade and political ties between the EU and Mercosur, and what is standing the way of a free trade agreement between them? Inmaculada Martinez-Zarzoso: Mercosur—and especially Brazil, Mercosur’s largest economy—is an important market for EU goods and services. The main [...]
Leaders from NATO, its partner countries, the European Union, the United Nations and the World Bank met in Warsaw last week for the alliance’s largest-ever summit. Among the key outcomes from the gathering, NATO leaders agreed to deploy four battalions to the Baltic countries and Poland in order to counter the growing threat from Russia; resolved to continue funding Afghan security forces and keep NATO forces in Afghanistan beyond 2016 for training purposes; and offered continued support for Ukraine’s military modernization efforts. Perhaps the most overlooked agreement to emerge from the Warsaw summit was the joint declaration between the EU [...]
