European Institute

By Brian Beary, Washington Correspondent for Europolitics

Climate change activists are celebrating this week's landmark ruling by a court in the Netherlands requiring the Dutch government to make better progress in meeting its targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

By Ryan Barnes, Senior International Trade Specialist, U.S. Department of Commerce

While the famous quip, “all politics is local,” may be a slight exaggeration, local elections often provide a good indication of larger political trends. The May 24th local and regional elections in Spain are a case in point; in fact, the recent results may signal a tectonic shift in the current political structure.

By Michael D. Mosettig, former foreign editor of PBS News Hour, writing from Vienna

VIENNA -- Austria's capital finally has an anniversary worthy of celebration after a year of mordant commemorations of the centenary of the outbreak of World War I that reduced this city from the center of an empire to a struggling backwater and more recently of the end of World War II when the country was a mostly willing appendage of Nazi Germany.

By James D. Spellman, Strategic Communications LLC

As strains on Greece’s economy, government, and people worsen, the de facto bankrupt country faces a summer of deadlines to repay massive debts that far exceed its resources, underscoring the need for an unprecedented, long-term bailout that Athens and Brussels are at an impasse in their negotiations to produce.