Dancing in the plenary, young musicians playing Beethoven and solemn speeches — the Conference on the Future of Europe ended on 9 May in the European Parliament in Strasbourg with pathos in all its forms. …

Russia attacked Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Since then, unimaginable hardship has come over the Ukrainian people, who continue to fight against the invasion of their country in an astonishing fashion. Putin’s brutal and reckless behaviour in the middle of the European continent has also sent shockwaves through the West…

The volume of data is increasing dramatically. Predictions put the amount of data worldwide at an incredible 175,000 billion Gigabytes by 2025 — an increase of 530% since 2018! As data includes valuable information which can be extracted for commercial purposes using algorithms, a rise in the data-based economy has…

Italian presidents are the heads of state, and their role may sometimes seem ceremonial. In times of crisis and political volatility, however, their influence grows. President Mattarella held the country together and on track with its European commitments. …

Another year, another try. Once again, we try to forecast the events most likely to induce crucial changes for the world (economy) in 2022. However, our approach is a bit different this year: first, we focus more on Europe. Second, we raised the stakes (again): We started with 11 events…

Europe’s economies are facing a number of far-reaching changes in the coming decades. These undoubtedly include demographic change and ecological transformation. As both processes are occurring simultaneously, there is considerable pressure for both economies and societies to adapt. World population growing, Europe shrinking Europe is the only region of the world where the population will…

Part 4 in our series China’s role(s) in the world economy — China as a rival: In part 3 of our series on China’s role in the world economy, we showed that China already competes on an even level with advanced economies in important key technologies or has even surpassed them. Part 4 looks at the international rules-based system. Since China under…

GED blogpost series on China’s role(s) in the world economy (Part 1) On July 1, 2021, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) celebrated its 100th birthday. Following up on this important event, we will publish a five-part series on China’s future role(s) in the world economy. From a western perspective, this role will oscillate within the triad of partner, competitor, and rival, covered…

Limiting global warming and climate change requires a substantial reduction of CO2 emissions. Industrialized countries and oil-producing states have a special responsibility and importance in this regard due to their longstanding high per capita emissions. However, an effective and efficient climate policy also requires these countries to include newly industrializing…