Governance

The problems of cooperative law in Greece today, as well as the proposals for public policies implemented in Greece and Europe, are the subject of the online Autumn School

Participatory budgeting: a form of participatory democracy, the experience and the conclusions from its implementation in municipalities or communities

No country is safe from COVID-19 until all countries are safe from COVID-19. To state the obvious: To overcome a pandemic of this magnitude, vaccines must be made available quickly, cheaply, and fairly.

Today is a historic day, not only for Greece but with a european impact. More than five years after the start of one of the most important trials in the late history of Greece, a convicting judgment was passed.

Throughout the world, most media outlets and pundits are so consumed by the public health and economic consequences of COVID-19 that they consistently fail to highlight the looming political and institutional risks ahead. Could in fact the biggest casualty of COVID-19 be democracy itself?

The fact that movement was provided for exclusively listed reasons was criticized as unconstitutional, in view of the reversal of the relationship between the restriction that became the rule and the freedom that became an exception

"It is much better to be feared than loved", we read in an apostrophe of the Prince by Machiavelli. Thus, fear ensures obedience. The conscious assignment of rights living space in the name of threat brought forward by freedom. If people are afraid, then even external compulsion is not that indispensable.

For many, the current depression is expected to be harsher than the historical Great Depression of 1929. The simultaneous collapse of both offer and demand is causing an economic downtrend of indefinite duration, that is highly dependent on the course of the pandemic in the following months.   

The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the global economy are dramatic. The virus is shaking all major economies simultaneously. Rescue packages are being adopted, billions are being spent. Capital is being diverted away from the emerging economies. At the same time, the fight against the pandemic is increasing the national debt of many countries enormously and the crisis is acting as an accelerator for the developing countries that were already highly in debt. An Interview with Barbara Unmüßig, President of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, on the latest developments.

Big technology companies are getting a break from the “techlash,” but this does not mean that the monopolists are permanently off the hook. The crisis has highlighted privacy and security concerns and well as subpar labor standards in the industry. Social media face additional scrutiny for how they deal with COVID-19 related disinformation.