EU Scream

10/01/2024

Check out this podcast episode by EU Scream with our Dutch-speaking MEP lead candidate Sophie in 't Veld:
https://euscream.com/sleepwalking-into-2024/

09/05/2023

Our current levels of consumption aren't sustainable. Growth is reaching its limits in a materially finite world. We need to get real.

But here's the thing: the definition of getting real still is up for grabs. Is it turning our economies upside down, right now, in order to have an immediate impact on the climate and resource crisis? Or is it moving at a pace that ensures steady and sustained buy-in from lobbies and voters?

Falling somewhere in between is the approach taken by co-leader of The Greens/EFA in the European Parliament Philippe Lamberts.

Next week Philippe will convene a conference with rockstars from the so-called Beyond Growth movement including Kate Raworth, Tim Jackson and Jason Hickel. Civil society activists are hailing a kind of NGO Woodstock.

Like those activists, Philippe doesn't pretend our current approach to growth can be decoupled from ecological pressure. Dogma around self-regulation and efficient markets is "bu****it" that's driven economic policy for too long, Philippe tells the latest EU Scream podcast.

All of the 1,500 seats inside the conference have been snapped up — and thousands have registered to watch remotely. But more remarkable still is how some of the EU's heaviest hitters are coming along too. Among those expected to address the conference: Ursula von der Leyen, the conservative president of the European Commission.

"The complexity of the transition is such that you need collective intelligence" and "that means being able to work with people who are not your people," says Philippe. The goal of the conference, he says, is “increasing the community that is behind this agenda of transformation.”

https://euscream.com/the-man-bringing-beyond-growth-to-brussels/

18/12/2022

How to fix ethics in the European Union after the Qatar scandal, with Professor Alberto Alemanno of HEC Paris.

14/08/2022

https://euscream.com/model-minority-myths/

Author and podcaster Grace Ly is from an Asian European community in France that's often portrayed as a model minority but she says that's a corrosive stereotype and that she still has to navigate the double standards of French universalism.

17/05/2022

White-collar professionals have volunteered to fight in Ukraine alongside hardened veterans from Iraq and Syria. Florent, a French recruitment expert, and Tomas, a Lithuanian in digital media, swapped their suits and offices for camouflage and cruise missile attacks. Among the dilemmas they encountered in the field: whether to join the militias rather than take a contract with the Ukrainian army to ensure they got a weapon. They’re now back in Brussels and tell their story to EU Scream.

Would you pick up a gun and fight for Ukraine?

05/10/2021

Eleni Varvitsioti, a co-author with Victoria Dendrinou of The Last Bluff, describes the characters the book brings to life and its most memorable scenes — including the tragicomic denouement featuring François Hollande.

"The Last Bluff" describes how a scrappy government in Athens tried, and failed, to stare down Europe's financial and political establishment during the Greek debt crisis.

09/09/2021

The EU has long been studiously silent about residency rights for the kinds of undocumented workers and migrants who led a gruelling hunger strike this summer in Brussels.


Coordination des sans-papiers de Belgique

The EU is studiously silent about granting residency rights for the kinds of undocumented workers and migrants who undertook a harrowing hunger strike in Brussels this summer.

09/09/2021

There is a double standard at the heart of the European Union’s powerful executive body, the European Commission.

Women benefit from affirmative action when applying for jobs at the European Commission but people of colour seeking advancement do not benefit from special consideration.

09/09/2021

Parallels with the Soviet era are increasingly evident in Poland where the ruling coalition hounds judges and captures courts.

Polish human rights commissioner Adam Bodnar lambasts European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for a lack of leadership amid the antidemocratic onslaught in his country.