The New Federalist

Video: Freedom for Liberland!

Sometimes it’s easier to start your own country than to change the one you’re in.

Thursday 25 August 2016

Guérot: “An invitation to bravely think about the future of Europe.”

Ulrike Guérot, founder of the European Democracy Lab Berlin has published a book (in German): „Why Europe Needs to Become a Republic! A political Utopia“. Few months before the Brexit referendum the NewFederalist met her to talk with her about this utopia.

Wednesday 24 August 2016

I will continue dreaming of Europa

For one year I have now been living in Scotland’s capital Edinburgh, home to haggis and kilts. I came to take a four-week English course, but I stayed because of a city so full of history where the sea and the mountains live together just as the Scottish live together with lots of people from Spain and Italy, and I decided to stay without deciding on when I would return.

Wednesday 24 August 2016

How the past proves that Islam can be part of European identity?

Despite growing claims from the mainstream and many right-wing politicians across the EU arguing that Islam does not belong to Europe, it is not as foreign as it seems, as Muslim communities have already existed in Europe for several centuries. Bosniaks, Albanians, and some Greeks and Slavic Bulgarians, are native Muslim Europeans whose ancestors, through interaction with Arab and Ottoman-Turkish civilizations, converted to Islam. Islam was also recognized in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Even Adolf Hitler tried to find sympathizers of Nazi racist ideology among Bosnian Muslims. Nowadays, the mosques of immigrant communities in Western Europe already converted tens of thousands of people of native descent.

Wednesday 24 August 2016

Transnationalism and non-EU communities in Europe

In one way or another, non-EU communities face very serious problems with adopting the identity of their host countries because of transnationalism and multinationalism.

Wednesday 17 August 2016

Towards Pereustroika? Why “failed multiculturalism” sparks the need for change

Nearly 30 years ago, Russia and other former USSR states entered an active phase of perestroika (restructuring), when Soviet society started to experience radical changes after deep socio-cultural, political, demographic and economic stagnation that lasted for over two decades.

Wednesday 17 August 2016

Austerity and isolation in immigrant communities

It is important to mention that EU policies have encouraged austerity measures that affected the welfare policies of nation states including Belgium and France, and that this appears to be harmful for people belonging to non-EU communities who depend on state support. Such a situation was provoked by the global recession and the eurozone crisis that began in Ireland and other Southern European nation states including Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Most EU member states were left with no other choice but to reduce spending on social programs in order to balance federal budgets and avoid any serious form of bankruptcies in the future.

Wednesday 10 August 2016

European territorial cooperation as a possible solution to the “migrant” crisis

Facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, with the arrival of thousands of asylum-seekers and migrants onto its soil, the European Union ought to use all resources at its disposal to welcome them while respecting human rights. Could European territorial cooperation, an instrument of the EU’s Regional policy, improve the “migrants”’ situation in Europe?

Tuesday 9 August 2016

Brexit: Why the EU should not punish the UK

Abstract : The initial uncertainty created by Brexit is somewhat fading with the appointment of Theresa May as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The alternatives to EU membership are becoming increasingly clear, and each constitutes – for the UK, but more importantly for Eurosceptics – a certain defeat. In this context, the EU should neither overreact, nor accommodate London, as punishing the country may be counterproductive.

Tuesday 9 August 2016

The European Union, Russia, Europe, and the necessary reset

The recent events that occurred in Ukraine – the Russian invasion of the Donbass region and the Crimean referendum on joining the Russian Federation in 2014 – have resulted in Russia and the EU imposing sanctions on one another, heralding, some would have it, a “new cold war”. Russia is presented, in the EU and in the West more broadly, as a revisionist, expansionist and authoritarian power that oscillates between “progress” in terms of democracy and alignment with our interests on the one hand, and a “return” backwards to its old demons. Even worse, Russia is said to be attempting to “revive the Soviet Union”.

Tuesday 9 August 2016

Political activism in southern Italy: an insight on the new born JEF section in Calabria.

Choosing political activism in a region like mine it is not an easy choice. A region like mine in which, in many cases, but not in every case yet, politics is involved with Mafia and Mafia is involved with politics. In a region which has one of the highest rate of school dropout in Italy and in Europe as well. Not to mention the rate of unemployment especially among younger adults. Precisely, more than 60% of young adults, from the age 15 to 29, born in Calabria, either does not have a job, is not looking for one or is not going to continue their studies. This is a region in which those who face difficulties involving social and economic integration are not only illegal migrants (thousands of them who arrive everyday in the most important harbours of Calabria). It is quite the contrary, those who face those difficulties the most are young adults who live in Calabria. But they are not just citizens from Calabria, they are Italians, they are European. These are serious issues that would discourage anyone from engaging in any form of political activism in a region as such.

Monday 18 July 2016

Are France and Germany Hiding Behind the European Commission?

The European Commission, currently deadlocked in the middle of reapproving the widely-used herbicide glyphosate, is growing visibly exasperated with some of its most powerful members. Earlier this week, news emerged that the French, German, and Italian governments were quietly lobbying the Commission to move ahead with reauthorizing the herbicide without their support – all the while publicly speaking out against the move and bashing the substance.

Monday 18 July 2016
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