AGI

Europe & Eurasia

Reset

Banking Union: Another Step on the European Journey

The start of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) in the euro zone adds an important element to the euro’s financial ecosystem. It should help to restore trust in the system …

A World in Flux: German American Relations in a Changing American Order

This year’s AGI Annual Symposium is framed around the idea of “A World in Flux”: the relative decline of the West’s economic power; the  need to  adapt our work forces …

Dealing with a Violent Past and Reconciliation as a Challenge for Policymakers and Civil Society Actions Experience from the Church’s Reconciliation Work between Germans and Poles

Twenty-five years after the Kohl-Mazowiecki meetings and joint mass that inaugurated “official” German-Polish reconciliation after 1989, German-Polish reconciliation is viewed as an instructive example both in Europe (Polish-Ukrainian relations) and East Asia (Japanese-Korean relations).

The Russian Challenge: Beyond the Double Track

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s speech in Brisbane following the G20 meeting made headlines for two main reasons: for publicly confronting Putin in the toughest manner to date, and for signaling the …

The Swiss Apprenticeship System: Its Institutional Specificities and Strengths in International Perspective

If the U.S. aims to learn from the Swiss experience, it should seek ways to improve the reputation of work-based training programs through better linking the vocational and academic worlds of learning.

The Policy Trap: Is the Euro Crisis Back?

Now in the second half of 2014, the European economy has hit a rough patch, triggering renewed anxiety among policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic. Economists and politicians are …

Relevancy of Apprenticeships

During our apprenticeship tour of Germany, France, and the UK, I was impressed at the respect that the general population held for apprenticeship programs. One of our taxi drivers in …

Who Is an Apprentice?

While our focus in Europe has been on the broad structure of apprenticeship systems, we should not lose sight of the apprentices themselves. Many times we have been told “no …

Can Germany Reconcile the Western Balkans?

In April 2013, Serbia and Kosovo signed an agreement that enabled a rapprochement between the two sides, including an understanding that they will not block each other’s bid for European …

The Katyn Massacre: Half a Century of Lies and the Search for Truth

Borrowing institutionally from the German-Polish case, Polish-Russian reconciliation had been making small, tentative steps until the crisis in and over Ukraine. There is some effort to continue civil society interaction, …

First Impressions of French Apprenticeships

As part of the AGI site visit tour, my colleagues and I spent our first day in Paris getting an in-depth view of the French apprenticeship system. We started off at …

Post-Soviet Apprenticeship

After the hustle and bustle of the capital city, our train passed through the countryside. Small family farms with goats abutted a busy railway. Our destination also lay in between …