The EuroNews has published the overview of 10 events that has changed the Europe in the last decade. Here are some of them.
The murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia (Malta, 2017)
Daphne Caruana Galizia, an investigative journalist, was murdered in 2017 and two years on the scandal has seen three senior cabinet ministers stand down and the country’s prime minister, Joseph Muscat, promise to quit in January 2020.
Three men are currently awaiting trial for the 53-year-old’s murder, but the authorities have not tracked down who hired them. Muscat’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, resigned after he was arrested by police over the killing. He has denied any knowledge of or links with the murder.
Herman Grech, the editor of the Times of Malta, told Euronews the case had presented many lessons that Europe now needed to learn, from the importance of independent media – which has “led the breakthrough,” he said – to the importance of keeping an eye on the institutions of all countries, “even the microscopic ones”.
“From a social perspective it reflected the way the masses turned a blind eye to cronyism and corruption as it fed off the altar of greed,” he said.
UK votes to leave the European Union (2016)
Brexit has cost two prime ministers their jobs, led to two elections in as many years and dominated British politics since a small majority of Britons voted to leave the European Union on 23 June 2016.
But while pundits at the time saw Brexit as the beginning of the end of the EU — with calls for a French ‘Frexit’, a Dutch ‘Nexit’, and so on — the opposite has in fact proved true, Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University, London, told Euronews.
“Brexit has actually made some Europeans, who’d maybe forgotten quite how important the EU was to them, realise its value,” Bale says.
“Poll after poll now suggest that fewer and fewer European Union citizens nowadays show any serious enthusiasm for the idea that their country should follow the UK out of the EU.”
The Paris Climate Agreement (2015)
When 195 countries signed the Paris Agreement on December 12, 2015, they made a promise to try and reduce the risks and impact of climate change. To do so, they volunteered to curtail their carbon emissions and work towards preventing a global average temperature increase of more than 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. The consequence of breaking said promise: none.
The good news: climate policy EU-wide and within member states has actually changed, Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute Prof Dr Richard J.T. Klein told Euronews. On top of that, he predicts the European Green Deal will transform many economic sectors that create greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite the US withdrawal from the agreement, European countries are determined to stay committed. According to Klein, the deal will likely mark an important point in changing the narrative in Europe. “Maybe we won’t so much pinpoint the Paris Agreement per se, but we’ll recognise the value of the policies and measures that the EU and its member states are and will be implementing in response to the agreement,” he adds.
Even though both the Paris Agreement and the European Green Deal are the right steps in the right direction, Klein also urges that “societies will need to increase their efforts to prepare for the impacts of climate change, which is equally urgent as reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, the European Green Deal remains silent about this part of climate policy.”
The #Metoo movement and women’s marches (Europe, 2017)
The #Metoo movement went global after sexual abuse allegations against Hollywood film mogul Harvey Weinstein became public in October 2017.
As European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly told Euronews: “The #MeToo movement was all about empowerment. It allowed women in Europe and elsewhere to speak up about their experiences of sexual harassment and know that the culture of silence and denial that previously existed was crumbling.”
It didn’t take long for the movement to become big in Europe. More than seven million women are estimated to have protested in women’s marches worldwide since then. But the impact hasn’t been the same everywhere.
Some countries, such as France, Spain and Italy, came up with their own version of the Metoo hashtag, such as #BalanceTonPorc in France and #Cuéntalo in Spain.
In the UK, defence secretary Michael Fallon resigned amid allegations of inappropriate behaviour. Meanwhile, the effect in some Balkan and Eastern European countries, as well as in Germany, has been limited in comparison.
All in all, O’Reilly says the biggest change was public awareness. “It also showed why it is so important to have women in positions of power,” she added. “For the first time we now have female presidents of both the European Commission and the European Central Bank – this is a strong positive message for younger generations of women.”
The migrant crisis (2015-2019)
While refugees and migrants have always attempted the sea crossing between Turkey and Greece and Libya and Italy in an attempt to reach Europe, during the first three months of 2015 the number of drownings in the Mediterranean rose to 1,687 from 60 a year earlier.
In April, an estimated 800 people were killed in a single shipwreck and the EU voted to expand its multinational sea rescue operation, Triton. Meanwhile, hundreds of boats crossed the Mediterranean, while refugees — many of them fleeing from the increasingly brutal war in Syria — walked towards northern Europe in their thousands.
Since 2016, crossings have fallen sharply, but a byproduct of the refugee crisis has been a surge in support for far-right parties in Europe, with leaders from Hungary’s Viktor Orban to the Alliance for Germany (AfD), to Italy’s Lega and Britain’s Brexit Party making opposition to migration a key electoral issue.
In 2019, the refusal to allow boats to dock and legal actions against NGOs carrying out rescues — along with agreements with countries like Libya and Turkey to prevent migrants from leaving for Europe — have had mixed results. Meanwhile, the deadly crossings continue.
For full article: EuroNews
*The information and views set out in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official opinion of the IPE Club. Neither the IPE Club nor any person acting on it behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein.
