Opinions

The Circular Economy Package and Plastics Strategy have set a high-level framework to improve the resource efficiency of the European economy. But to be effective, this framework must remain a policy priority for the next European Commission and Parliament, writes Nick Molho.

The Big Agri industry has launched a multi-pronged attack on the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) to End The Cage Age – a direct democracy tool that enables European citizens to request an end to the use of cages for farm animals, writes Olga Kikou.

The public image of Poland’s political mastermind Jarosław Kaczyński and his ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party was shattered by revelations published by the Gazeta Wyborcza daily on Tuesday (29 January). Piotr Kaczyński (unrelated to the PiS leader) looks into the fallout.

Despite new projects such as Nord Stream 2 and Turkish Stream, the transit of gas via Ukraine will continue, and the modalities need to be agreed, writes Danila Bochkarev.

The new president of Georgia, Salome Zurabishvili, is a worthy member of the small group of women in the club of world heads of state and government, writes Clare Moody.

The Brexit negotiations have assumed that EU citizenship will cease for all UK nationals if and when the UK leaves the EU. Tony Simpson, Tony Venables and Alexandra von Westernhagen question whether this is necessarily so, and what this means for EU citizenship in general.

Against a backdrop of US decline and an influential China and Russia, Europe must overcome its internal challenges and shoulder its responsibilities as a leader on the world stage, writes Robert Malley.

Europe's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was a big issue at this year's Green Week in Berlin. With all the billions of euros available, the agro-ecological transition is more than possible, especially if subsidies to agribusiness and factory farms were stopped, write Harriet Bradley and Trees Robijns.

Folklore shouldn’t stop progress: if a car works fine with today’s petrol from EU filling stations, it will work just fine with the new E10 petrol, writes Ethanol Europe's James Cogan.

As we prepare to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we can hardly remain composed in our mourning. Rather than observe silence as the deepest mourning is solitary, we feel like shouting.

As the world awakes to the threat posed by palm oil and soy to our forests, it’s in danger of overlooking how paper and packaging drives industrial logging, mis-shapes millions of hectares of forest landscapes and creates monoculture plantations, writes Sini Eräjää.

The EU should lead the international community in ensuring that the Yemen Peace Deal is not allowed to collapse, argues Mohamed Issa Abushahab. H.E. Ambassador Mohamed Issa Abushahab is the UAE’s Ambassador to the EU. The adoption of the Stockholm agreement, one month …

The new Franco-German co-operation treaty might strengthen the axis of the EU's two most powerful countries, but that might not be helpful for the rest of the bloc, writes Sofia Vasilopoulou.

Making finance and investments sustainable is essential to achieving a net-zero emissions world by 2050. And energy efficiency has the single biggest role to play, writes Peter Sweatman.

Make no mistake: Brexit will damage our security. It will weaken the UK more, but it will weaken the EU too, writes Matthieu Borsboom.

The politico-spiritual move away from Russian Orthodoxy, presented by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko as a major national security issue, has deeply angered Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has political ambitions in the region, writes Willy Fautré.

EU energy consumption is rising despite targets to reduce demand across Europe. This should not come as a surprise and is explained mainly by GDP growth, writes Samuel Thomas.

With the North Macedonia name change deal recently reached between Athens and Skopje, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has achieved more than improving his international image, by putting pressure on his domestic opponents, writes Nikolaos Koutsimpogiorgos.

Appointments to the European Central Bank's Executive Board are no less than a strategic and political decision over the future of the Eurozone. But experience has shown this process is not transparent, open, and democratic enough to protect the ECB from its legitimacy gap, argue Stanislas Jourdan and Sebastian Diessner.

As EU member states debate the bloc’s next 7-year budget, no sector should be off-limits. Annika Hedberg argues that each euro spent should provide added value for the EU and its citizens, including the agricultural sector, a major recipient of EU money.