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It is nearly impossible for even the closest U.S. allies to comply with its byzantine immigration system. That needs to change.

Rwanda will make history when it becomes the first African nation to host cycling's Road World Championships from 21-28 September.

On 24 September (15.00-17.00) the DROI Subcommittee and the FEMM Committee are organising a public hearing on ‘The EU strategy to promote and to protect human rights of women worldwide (notably in Afghanistan & Iran, with a focus on fighting gender apartheid)’. Representatives of the EU, the United Nations, the International Criminal Court and Amnesty International will participate in the exchange while human rights defenders and journalists will share their personal testimonies.

This public hearing will assess the current global trends, examine the global human rights situation for women, especially in Iran and Afghanistan, and discuss the overall EU strategy to protect women's rights worldwide. It aims to put forward concrete proposals to complement currently implemented strategies in support of persecuted women. Additionally, the hearing aims to assess how international legal mechanisms could recognise gender apartheid in order to bring perpetrators to justice.

This discussion is particularly pertinent in the current geopolitical environment, where a regress of gender equality is becoming globally apparent.

Members of the Iran and Afghanistan Parliamentary Delegations and of DEVE Committee have been also invited. The hearing is public and will be webstreamed.
Location : Brussels, Room: SPAAK 5B1
Draft programme
Live streaming
Accelerating progress on Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG 5): Achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls
Women's rights in Afghanistan: An ongoing battle
Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Treasury’s latest sanctions show momentum, but contradictions in U.S. policy risk blunting their impact.

Geopolitics in East Asia is pushing Ulaanbaatar and Tokyo to rely more on each other.

Tribunal de Bobigny, 8 novembre 1972. L'avocate Gisèle Halimi appelle Paul Milliez, professeur de médecine, catholique pratiquant et opposant à la légalisation de l'avortement, à témoigner en faveur de Michèle Chevalier, accusée d'avoir aidé sa fille à se faire avorter. Dans les semaines qui suivent (...) / France, Enfance, Femmes, Histoire, Santé, Société, Médecine, Droits des femmes - 2022/11

Selon l’Unesco, 774 millions d’adultes dans le monde ne savent ni lire ni écrire, et près de deux tiers sont des femmes. Pourtant, les études démontrent que les mères analphabètes mais impliquées accompagnent mieux la réussite scolaire de leurs enfants qu’un parent scolarisé, mais absent.

Selon l’Unesco, 774 millions d’adultes dans le monde ne savent ni lire ni écrire, et près de deux tiers sont des femmes. Pourtant, les études démontrent que les mères analphabètes mais impliquées accompagnent mieux la réussite scolaire de leurs enfants qu’un parent scolarisé, mais absent.

„Wir werden bis Mitte Oktober ein sehr starkes handelspolitisches Schutzinstrument beschließen“, sagte der erfahrene Kommissar. Die EU und die USA stünden vor derselben Herausforderung einer „globalen Überkapazität“.

Recent trends cast doubt on the long-standing assumption that young people in Japan are politically irrelevant.

VIENNA/HELSINKI, 18 September 2025 - The OSCE Chairperson-in-Office’s Special Envoy, Ambassador Terhi Hakala, has concluded her official visit to Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. The aim of the visit was to strengthen OSCE partnerships in the region.

In all three countries, Special Envoy Hakala met with representatives of the host country governments, the international community as well as civil society.

“It was a privilege to visit all three countries in a region which, also due to my previous assignments, has a special meaning for me. I was encouraged to witness the ongoing strengthening of regional co-operation among the Central Asian participating States, as there is a clear recognition of the advantages of working together on shared challenges and opportunities in the region,” said Special Envoy Hakala.

In all three countries, Special Envoy Hakala met with the teams from the OSCE field operations, commending their commitment and valuable work on the ground. She also visited OSCE project sites on the ground, meeting with their staff and beneficiaries.

“The Finnish OSCE Chairpersonship is a devoted advocate of the work of the OSCE field operations, as they continue their valuable work in supporting host countries in implementing our shared OSCE commitments. We are particularly proud of the achievements of the two flagship projects in the region – the OSCE Academy in Bishkek and the OSCE Border Management Staff College in Dushanbe – and hope to see them continue their important work and evolve further in the coming years,” said Special Envoy Hakala.

During her meetings with civil society in the three countries, the Special Envoy discussed the OSCE’s engagement on crucial issues such as the rule of law, human rights, democratic reforms, gender equality, and youth inclusion. During its OSCE Chairpersonship, Finland has consistently highlighted the role of civil society, including at the Helsinki+50 Conference, which was held in July to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act.

Unlike when the U.S. held unipolar power, times have changed as China and the BRICS countries begin fashioning a non-militarized, multipolar world. 

Kritiker warnen vor einer Aushöhlung der richterlichen Unabhängigkeit und einem möglichen Zugriff der Exekutive auf die Staatsanwaltschaft.

China is willing to stand with non-Western partners firmly, but remains determined to avoid Cold War-style alliances.

Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2025 - EP

After evacuating thousands of Thais from Israel in 2023, the Thai military is thinking more about how it could get citizens out of other hotspots.

The International Deep Space Exploration Association (IDSEA) signals China’s ambition to become a central node in the architecture of space governance

Taliban women willingly uphold and enforce the regime’s harsh ideology, fully embracing the strict roles assigned to them.

Ausgangspunkt ist ein Polizeibericht, der im Juni bei der Menschenrechtskammer der Staatsanwaltschaft eingereicht wurde und sich mit „den Handlungen der israelischen Armee im Gazastreifen gegen die Zivilbevölkerung“ befasst.

By Mari Carlson (University of Helsinki)

The European Green Deal marked a bold attempt to confront the environmental crisis – not merely through environmental policy, but across the full spectrum of internal and external governance. Trade policy, in particular, underwent an unprecedented wave of greening. Yet before the ink had dried, the Covid-19 pandemic and successive geopolitical shocks plunged the Union into deeper turbulence. This sparked a profound reorientation of the logics guiding EU trade policy.

In this shifting landscape, EU farmers found themselves caught between a liberalised trade regime and a rising tide of environmental regulation. As geopolitical tensions mounted, farmers across the EU protested what they perceived as unfair competition, compounded by a lack of adequate protective measures. At the same time, trading partners accused the EU of veering towards green protectionism, casting doubt on the legitimacy of its normative trade posture.

In my recent article for the Journal of Common Market Studies, I explore this contradiction. Was EU agricultural trade policy becoming more unilateral and geopolitically driven under the European Green Deal, potentially levelling the playing field for EU farmers? And if so, why were farmers still contesting it?

Legitimising Trade through Environmental Othering

Under the European Green Deal, the EU’s agri-food trade policy underwent a comprehensive normative overhaul, backed by a robust enforcement toolkit. This was not simply a technical adjustment in trade mechanics. It marked a deliberate strategic shift, driven by the perception that global governance had failed to adequately respond to the environmental crisis.

The European Commission actively elevated the Union’s environmental agenda, asserting its leadership on the global stage. It portrayed the EU as a principled guardian of sustainability, legitimising its trade posture through normative ambition rather than market logic. Central to this strategy was what I term environmental othering. Trading partners were not depicted as bad trade actors but as environmentally irresponsible ones. This reframing enabled the EU’s environmental agri-food trade measures to appear morally justified rather than protectionist.

To reinforce its normative stance, the Commission leaned heavily on the EU’s reputation for high food safety and animal welfare standards. Moreover, the EU’s new sustainability model was presented as a global benchmark and the solution to the global environmental crisis, while marginalising other countries’ food systems by portraying them as unsustainable or in need of improvement.

In this way, the environmental crisis was framed as a shared global threat, but one that subtly positioned others as inferior. This logic of depoliticisation, previously seen in EU climate adaptation discourse, was repurposed within the trade-agriculture nexus to justify assertive and unilateral action.

Geopoliticising Agri-Food Trade in the EU’s Strategic Turn

The transformation of EU agri-food trade policy reflects a broader strategic shift in how the Union approaches trade governance. Under the logic of open strategic autonomy, trade policy is no longer primarily guided by economic principles or the pursuit of the common good. Instead, it is shaped by geopolitical imperatives, normative ambition, and long-term strategic foresight.

This geopoliticisation of trade is steadily displacing multilateral cooperation and long-standing commitments to trade liberalisation. The Commission’s deployment of enhanced enforcement mechanisms, sanctions, and unilateral sustainability-linked measures signals a decisive departure from its historically cooperative posture.

My analysis explores how the Commission has sought to normalise and depoliticise contentious trade measures, even when these risk contravening multilateral trade rules. The deployment of legally targeted justification strategies does not necessarily reflect confidence or assertiveness. Rather, such narratives serve to mask internal tensions and pre-empt external contestation. By presenting its actions as both legally sound and environmentally principled, the Commission consolidates the EU’s normative stance while sidestepping direct confrontation with trading partners.

The boundary between trade and foreign policy is steadily dissolving, as strategic interests reshape the rules of engagement. Within this shifting terrain, the EU’s role as a firm supporter of multilateralism grows increasingly difficult to sustain. My analysis argues that the Union’s revised approach to agri-food trade risks accelerating global fragmentation and entrenching a broader trend towards rising unilateralism.

While the EU’s assertive turn has elevated its profile as a geoeconomic actor, the persistence of farmer resistance exposes unresolved domestic contradictions. These tensions reveal that the Union’s external ambitions are not always underpinned by internal consensus, particularly when domestic stakeholders feel marginalised by the pace and trajectory of change. Moreover, when policy shifts remain largely discursive rather than materially transformative, their impact on sectoral realities tends to be limited.

Level Playing Field or Uneven Terrain?

The European Green Deal is not the first instance of the EU seeking to level the regulatory playing field in agriculture. For nearly three decades, it has championed the integration of multifunctional objectives, including sustainability, biodiversity, and food security, into the architecture of trade rules. As multilateral negotiations faltered, the Union pivoted towards bilateral agreements, offering a more pragmatic channel for advancing these aims. Yet such deals often came at a cost: the more regulated party, typically the EU, faced pressure to concede unless its counterpart agreed to raise standards, a concession that seldom materialised.

Agricultural cost structures vary significantly across countries due to differences in climate, labour costs, subsidies, and regulatory frameworks. These disparities make uniform liberalisation structurally implausible. Neoliberal trade logic assumes that markets can reallocate resources efficiently, but this overlooks the strategic, environmental, and social dimensions of agriculture.

This imbalance continues to fuel claims of unfair competition, especially as the European Green Deal was raising environmental ambition without securing equivalent commitments from trading partners. At the heart of this tension lies a fundamental incompatibility between the agricultural sector and the neoliberal trade regime. Agricultural markets are shaped by distinct cost structures and strategic imperatives that resist the logic of liberalisation.

As the EU strengthens environmental and health regulations and reasserts food self-sufficiency as a national security priority, the traditional trade paradigm becomes increasingly untenable. Even as the Commission pursues more assertive and geopolitically attuned trade policies to advance broader foreign policy objectives, these efforts fall short of addressing the domestic and global pressures that continue to destabilise the system. Farmers, burdened by compliance costs, and civil society groups, demanding stronger global sustainability norms, both continue to challenge the legitimacy of the neoliberal trade model. The level playing field, while rhetorically powerful, remains a utopian concept – one that obscures deeper asymmetries in global trade.

Mari Carlson is a doctoral grant researcher in the Doctoral Programme in Sustainable Use of Renewable Natural Resources at the University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on EU trade and agricultural policy through the lens of geopolitics and environmental sustainability. Her work is funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

Website: https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/mari-carlson

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