Irish, EU & international politics & economics
By Niamh Ni Bhriain. Covid-19 is causing thousands of deaths every day, but the pandemic is killing in other ways too. Governments around the world responded to the pandemic by shutting their borders to international arrivals and severely restricting people’s freedom of movement. While for some this was unprecedented, for […]
By Veronica Ocvirk. The free trade agreement between the European Union and the Mercosur bloc of Latin American countries will benefit EU multinationals but pose serious disadvantages for local industries in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. “President, we have an agreement!” This WhatsApp audio message went viral in Argentina with […]
By Zack Breslin. Neoliberalism has been exposed as a failed doctrine, first by the financial crisis that erupted more than a decade ago and now by the Covid-19 pandemic. What replaces it? The seismic events of the financial crash of 2008 revealed the consequences of allowing rampant financial capitalism to […]
By Carlo Sands.When mining giant Rio Tinto blew up two sacred Indigenous sites dating back 46,000 years in the Pilbara in Australia’s north-west earlier this year, it was with the consent of the state Labor government. It shows that while the Western Australian (WA) Labor Party sometimes pays formal respects […]
By Pearce Clancy. Four months on from the General Election, talks between Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, and the Green Party are coming to a head and likely to result in a Programme for Government. Although originally expected to be finalised over the weekend, at the time of writing the final […]
By Kevin Squires. As the new Israeli government moves to illegally annex yet more Palestinian land, anyone who has been following the fate of the Occupied Territories Bill will have seen it emerge as one of the principal sticking points in the ongoing Irish government formation negotiations. If made law, […]
By Lisbeth Latham. Triumphalist comments about the end of capitalism or neoliberalism abounded in the aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2008, just as there are many people today who believe that the current crisis is the end of neoliberalism or capitalism. Unfortunately, neoliberalism and – more importantly – […]
By Emma Clancy. Addressing members of the European Parliament on 27 May, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed the creation of a ‘Next Generation’ European Union recovery fund worth €750 billion, to be raised by the Commission – a temporary Eurobond. The funds would be disbursed as €500bn in […]
By Emma Clancy. Protests against institutionalised racism have spread to cities across the United States in response to the horrific murder of black man George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis on Monday. Police have responded to three days of protest in the city by pepper-spraying and baton-charging crowds. Minnesota’s […]
By Mick Wallace MEP. The Sahel region consists of those countries lying to the immediate south of the Sahara Desert, stretching in a strip from the west to east coast. The region is semi-arid, part desert, part savannah and it links the Sahara to more fertile lands further south. From […]