Despite the two rivals’ public commitment to cooperate on reducing carbon emissions, neither is in the position to act decisively or stay the course. In this post, Professor of Law and Governance Peter Drahos reviews the main political, economic and environmental constraints.

Foreign direct investment in Africa fell significantly in 2020 due to COVID-19. Independent of the success or failure of the EU’s Global Gateway infrastructure initiative, Africa’s governments can boost the region’s recovery, writes Policy Leader Fellow Umar Kabanda, by improving the conditions for public–private partnerships.

At a critical period in which Israel is cracking down on Palestinian civil society, the European Union can act to support the work of community building and human rights documentation before they disappear altogether, writes Tariq Azeez.

EU policymakers concerned with restoring competitiveness to digital markets are working on an ambitious framework for data access regulation. In this post Philip Hanspach (Economics) and Nicolas Petit (Law) explain why the Digital Markets Act is unlikely to be the hoped-for silver bullet.

Border crises are reinforcing rather than breaking a pan-EU governmental consensus on border security, according to the Migration Policy Centre’s James Dennison and Andrew Geddes. In this post they point out the many new political problems which this focus on border protection creates.

Facebook has morphed into Meta – a metaverse company – amid much hype. In this post, PhD researcher Francisco de Abreu Duarte explores what should be done to prevent the surrender of digital spaces to private and commercial actors.

The recent meeting of US President Joe Biden with the Pope is likely to revive controversy over whether Biden, a devout Catholic, should be excluded from receiving Holy Communion due to his political stand on abortion. In this post, EUI alumnus Radosław Michalski explains the options for defusing the issue, from a doctrinal perspective.

Ambitious emissions reductions are on the agenda at the COP26 summit starting in Glasgow this weekend. In this post, Principal Investigator of the PASTRES project, Ian Scoones, points out some common misconceptions about the relationship between livestock and climate change, and why differentiating between extensive and intensive livestock production and their contrasting contributions to greenhouse gas emissions is so important.

The Taliban’s grab of power in Afghanistan also has repercussions for international justice. Law scholar and EUI alumna Sophie Duroy draws attention to a recent statement by the International Criminal Court Prosecutor that essentially lets the US off the hook for crimes committed in the war against terror.

Are smart glasses a threat to privacy, data protection or even human rights? Law Department researcher Natalia Menéndez González reviews the product’s unconvincing ‘privacy’ features and highlights initial concerns raised by European data protection authorities.