AR2000 weighs 150 tonnes, is 25 metres high from the seabed and has rotors 20 metres in diameter

The far right are likely to make significant gains in this week’s European elections

THIS week’s European elections (Thursday 23 May) are being billed as among the most important for the future course of the EU, and the wider politics of the continent, in decades.

The established power brokers are in crisis, the far right is on the rise, but is there much evidence of more progressive developments across the continent?

Bearing in mind the complexities of politics across Europe and the unreliability of polling, we can trace some key developments.

‘Captured States: When EU Governments are a channel for corporate interests’ challenges “nationalist rhetoric” which sees “blaming the EU ‘appartus’ alone” as a sufficient explanation of EU corporate power

Governments across the EU, as well as the EU itself, have on Monday [4 February] declared Juan Guaido President of Venezuela, citing the need for democracy driven by protest – something they have not been so keen on closer to home

“PEOPLE are on the streets, people want change.”

That was the statement, made without a hint of irony, of French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, about why the French Government was now backing the coup in Venezuela. 

Vox is rooted in the Falangist traditions of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship of Spain, which ended after his death in 1975

VOX is the first party of the far-right in Spain to win seats since the end of the Franco era. Who are they, and what do they stand for? CommonSpace explains the key things you need to know.

Ben Wray examines what’s behind the emergence of far-right in Spain as an electoral force, the first breakthrough for Falangists in the post-Franco era

THE regional elections in Andalucía, the largest region of Spain on its southern coast, on Sunday [2 December] has seen the far-right finally arrive on the Iberian Peninsula as an electoral force, with nowhere in Europe now free from the scourge of fascism’s revival.

Common Weal director Robin McAlpine argues that while unionists don’t want any comparison to be made between Scottish independence and Africa’s decolonisation process, a recent conference on the Canary Islands has convinced him that there are real and meaningful connections and parallels

IT IS an absolute rule when debating Scottish independence that it is never compared to the decolonisation process in Africa. As with all the debating rules of Scottish independence, this rule is set by the unionists.

The European Network Against the Arms Trade have issued a joint statement on the new European Defence Fund. CommonSpace re-publishes it here.