Latest blog articles

  • SMECC stands for School, Minimum standard, Education, Child-friendly policy and care-Continuum. Imagine SMECC as a flat drawing of a house. The regulatory backstop is the minimum standard in family litigation for competent parenthood – far on the horizon, however, a necessary fundament of human...

  • Asylum seekers usually do not cross borders with a bag of documents. They have lost their personal belongings or have been confiscated by smugglers. Oral statements are therefore the only proof of origin. (Dutch only) 

  • The difficult thing about the Brexit referendum and the events that followed in the United Kingdom is that the instrument of a referendum, in all its simplicty, may have undemocratic consequences... This blog is only available in Dutch. 

     

  • How should we describe last week's situation, when the Canadians headed home after the Walloons torpedoed CETA? ... This blog is only available in Dutch. 

  • Brexit_EU

    Far from calm waters

    They say that one cannot have one’s cake and eat it – a rather well-known adage which the proponents of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union were determined to disprove. This article is only available in Dutch.

  • When Germany opened its borders for 1 million refugees, Australia allowed 12 000 asylum seekers into the country. This is just a fraction compared to Merkel´s quota, especially when we look at the size and population. With 22 million inhabitants and a land of the size of North America, you would...

  • In September 2015 for the second time this year, after a first mobilization of more resources in June 2015 already,[1] the European Commission announced additional financial assistance of €801.3 million from the 2015 EU budget to tackle the current refugee crisis in the European Union (EU).[2]

  • It took quite a while before the European countries realized and recognized that the influx from asylum-seekers via the Mediterranean Sea and Turkey into the European Union is not just a matter of controlling the outside borders of the Union, but also a humanitarian and human rights issue. Some...

  • I am sure you have heard that the Bulgarian government built a fence on the Bulgarian – Turkish border and that the ‘refugee crisis’ put the national asylum system to the test. What about the Bulgarian integration policies? Did you know that currently refugees in Bulgaria face ‘zero’ integration...

  • Refugee crisis and migration may obviously have a lot of different sources. The current refugee crisis in Europe is obviously strongly related to the war in Syria. However, quite often migration and hence a stream of refugees, can also be caused by natural disasters, even by climate change. Some...