Thought

"The point is not to force [libertarianism] into Serbian culture but to recognise the elements that are compatible with it here … and then see how those ideas are best adapted to Serbia," Cekarevac, Libek's executive manager, says.

Europe's latest "renaissance" was supposed to have started with the collapse of the communist regimes in the East, right after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Despite the magnitude of this development as a political event, however, it did not have a major cultural impact for the simple reason that the experiment of "real socialism" had run its course and was already considered over.

Political theorist Albena Azmanova, who teaches at Kent University's Brussels School of International Studies, will deliver a lecture titled "Populism and the Transformation of Capitalism," at the Athens Concert Hall on Thursday, March 7.

In the pre-election period that Greece has entered, one hears plenty of grand declarations from politicians. Some, for instance, are about how to defeat neoliberalism, and others concern safeguarding the endangered European culture.

Alexis Tsipras has issued a call to arms "to all those who define themselves as belonging to the progressive wing and who recognize that the great issue of our age is to avert the rise of the extreme-right in Europe and also to deal with neoliberal choices and neoliberal policies." The prime minister's effort to give an ideological slant to the pre-election period is understandable, given that

Where in the political spectrum do you place a politician who dreams of tanks when he thinks about foreign policy?

In which political family would you say that someone who boasts of Skopje being "a 20-minute job" for a platoon of tanks belongs?

A prominent Turkish-German lawmaker told local media on Jan. 14 she has recently received death threats from neo-Nazis.

The leader of the centre-right European People's Party in the European Parliament, Manfred Weber, expressed confidence in Conservative leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Saturday, saying an electoral win by New Democracy next year will "sideline populists" and restore Greece's credibility in Europe.

The European Union is confronted with a major crisis. The European project that consolidated peace and affluence in Western Europe in the decades following the Second World War is now coming under increasing pressure, while its significance is being seriously questioned with the rise of populist movements.

Ever since the advent of the neo-liberal agenda in the early 1980s, privatization has been presented as a panacea for all economic problems. Proponents have consistently talked about the benefits of reducing government size and personnel to ease the burden on national budgets and improve the overall economy.