The far right has surged in just a few years from 15 percent to 30 percent of the vote in France, and now has the support of up to 40 percent in a number of districts. Many factors conspired to produce this result: rising unemployment and xenophobia, a deep disappointment over the left’s record in running the government, the feeling that we’ve tried everything and it’s time to experiment with something new.
These are the consequences of the disastrous handling of the financial meltdown that began in the United States in 2008, a meltdown that we in Europe transformed by our own actions into a lasting European crisis. The blame for that belongs to institutions and policies that proved wholly inadequate, particularly in the eurozone, consisting of nineteen countries. We have a single currency with nineteen different public debts, nineteen interest rates upon which the financial markets are completely free to speculate, nineteen corporate tax rates in unbridled competition with one another, without a common social safety net or shared educational standards—this cannot possibly work, and never will.
Only a genuine social and democratic refounding of the eurozone, designed to encourage growth and employment, arrayed around a small core of countries willing to lead by example and develop their own new political institutions, will be sufficient to counter the hateful nationalistic impulses that now threaten all Europe. Last summer, in the aftermath of the Greek fiasco, French President François Hollande had begun to revive on his own initiative the idea of a new parliament for the eurozone. Now France must present a specific proposal for such a parliament to its leading partners and reach a compromise. Otherwise the agenda is going to be monopolized by the countries that have opted for national isolationism—the United Kingdom and Poland among them.
The President of the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development (CIRSD), Vuk Jeremić delivered a lecture at ADA University, Azerbaijan’s top-tier educational institution entitled "Geopolitics of the Balkans and How it Relates to the Caucasus”.
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Vuk Jeremić lectures at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna
At the invitation of the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna, one of the most prestigious and oldest schools on the European continent, CIRSD President Vuk Jeremić delivered a lecture entitled “(Geo)politics of the Balkans: The Revenge of History”, on February 7th, 2023.
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Prof. Sachs: “Sanctions against Russia ineffective and contrary to international law”
CIRSD had the privilege to host one of the world’s brightest minds and most famous economists – Prof. Dr Jeffrey Sachs in a live discussion titled "The winter of Our Discontent".
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Central Asia: The Age of Reform
The Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development (CIRSD) co-organized a conference on December 7, 2022, titled “Central Asia: The Age of Reform” at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, one of the most prestigious and oldest (1754) schools in Europe.
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