The growth challenge for Europe and the EMU. CHALLENGE EUROPE Issue 22- Challenges and new beginnings: Priorities for the EU's new leadership, September 2014.

The European economy is slowly and painfully striving to reemerge from the last six years of crisis. It was a crisis of enormous intensity and contagiousness, given the unprecedented depth of global financial integration combined with the systemic flaws in the EMU architecture. And it is not over, as the high levels of unemployment and the growing divergence between Member States testify. The threat of fragmentation is imminent as ever: fragmentation between euro-ins and euro-outs; fragmentation between North and South; fragmentation within societies, with increasing income inequality and a growing number of, what used to be, the middle class population slipping through the social safety net and below poverty lines. Policies of front-loaded fiscal consolidation have left welfare states in economically weaker countries severely underfunded. According to OECD data, the number of people living in households without any income from work has doubled in Greece, Ireland and Spain, and has risen by 20% or more in Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, and Slovenia. Fertility rates have dropped further since the crisis, deepening the demographic and fiscal challenges of ageing. There are long-term implications from these deteriorating trends, regarding people's long-term health, education and upward mobility from low-income families. It is also highly likely that many of the people unemployed for a long period of time will never again be able to gain proper access to the job market and build a normal career track. The enduring effects of the crisis risk creating vicious cycles of low growth, high debt levels, austerity, declining productivity, and stagnation. These developments carry heavy implications for the future growth prospects of the European economies, for future prosperity, and for the sustainability of pension systems and welfare states. They must be urgently reversed.

Changes in the political elite, economy and society of Belarus: Appearances and reality. OSW Study 30/2008

In late 2006 and early 2007, relations between Russia and Belarus were hit by the most serious crisis in many years. In a setting of heightened tension, the Belarusian authorities decided to gradually modify their economic policy and thoroughly restructure the ruling class. The new situation created new, much more difficult challenges for the Belarusian opposition. The processes initiated by the authorities were not intended to bring about either the democratisation of public and political life or full economic liberalisation; their only purpose was to enable the regime to tackle new challenges and survive in the changing international context. Nevertheless, modernisation has been initiated in Belarus' authoritarian system of power, which until now was considered to be completely incapable of reform. This puts the country's main political and economic partners, including the European Union, in a new situation.

Turkey: has the AKP ended its winning streak? OSW Commentary No. 117, 2013-10-07

Since the conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) took power in Turkey in 2002, it has enjoyed a constant winning streak: it won each election (with a support level of 49.83% in 2011), subordinated the army (which had de facto stood above the civilian government) and was reforming the country. The situation in the country was stable (especially when compared to the crises and restlessness in the 1990s), the economy was booming, Turkey’s position in regional politics was strengthening, and Ankara’s significance on the international arena was growing. This encouraged the ruling class to make long-term plans, leading up to the hundredth anniversary of the republic in 2023. In the coming decade, Turkey governed by the AKP was to become one of the global economic and political centres, a full member of the EU and at the same time a political and economic leader in the Middle East. However, the negative trends in the situation both domestically (mass public protests, the deadlocked Kurdish issue and the unsuccessful attempt to amend the constitution) and abroad (the war in Syria and the coup in Egypt) seen over the past few months have laid bare the limitations of the AKP’s rule and have affected the government’s democratic mandate, prestige and credibility on the international arena, as well as peace and order and domestic security. When compared to the beginning of 2013, the way the situation will develop in Turkey is at this moment definitely less predictable; and the possible scenarios include both relative peace (however, with socio-political tension present in the background) and the threat of destabilisation. Therefore, although the AKP will still remain the sole major political force, this party will have to face challenges which will decide not only its political future but also the directions the country will be developing in. However, a comprehensive solution of the accumulated problems and a simple return to the status quo ante, convenient to the government, seem unlikely in the foreseeable future.

North Rhine-Westphalia and the European Union. ZEI Discussion Paper C232, 2015

Keynote speech at the Final Ceremony of the ZEI Class of 2015. On the occasion of the Final Ceremony of the ZEI Master of European Studies “Class of 2015”, Prime Minister Hannelore Kraft congratulated the this year’s graduates and at the same time the ZEI and its staff for its past twenty years of innovative and successful academic work. Twenty years in which the European Union has succeeded in making progress in many areas, like Economic and Monetary Union, EU enlargement, introduction of the Euro and the changing role of the regions in the EU. North Rhine-Westphalia, the 8th largest region in the EU, is conducting proactive policy both in Berlin and in Brussels and combines European and regional politics in many areas. The European Union has to face new challenges, which can be only solved successful and confidence building as a common and even closer Union.