The new EU member candidates, as well as those who have had this status for a decade, present the Union with an opportunity to decide what kind of club it should be.

It is not the first time in EU history that the enlargement perspective is confronted with the need for integration deepening.

Joining the EU requires not only that candidate countries fulfil a certain number of conditions, but also that EU countries feel ready to welcome new members.

It is time to admit that while Russia remains an empire and has nuclear weapons, it will always be an existential threat to democracies.

In the July/August issue of Intereconomics, Ilona Sologoub argued that increasing the cost of war would limit the ability of an authoritarian state to wage a war. Here, Charles D. Coleman comments on this statement and offers clarification, followed by a reply from Sologoub.

From the standpoint of the focus of this article, we need to find a better way to compensate the losers from globalisation so that voters re-engage through the democratic process with openness and benefit from the potential for increased prosperity that this holds.