europeCould Brexit be a turning point for Europe? With the wheels coming off the project of European integration, how will EU leaders react? And what does the future hold for the 28 (soon to be 27) member bloc?

Debating Europe, with our partners at the Kuldiga Centre Secondary School in Latvia, recently hosted a student debate with two Latvian politicians: Latvian MP Lolita Cigane, and a deputy of Kuldiga city council, Ruta Karlovica.

The topic of the event was “Europe, today and in the future”. Students asked questions about the refugees crisis, Brexit, the economy, and education. By all accounts, the speakers appreciated students’ interest in the processes of contemporary European politics.

For our Latvian readers, the video (in Latvian) is posted below:

What does the future hold for the European Union? What direction should the EU take, now that Britain has decided to leave the project? Let us know your thoughts and comments in the form below, and we’ll take them to policymakers and experts for their reactions!

IMAGE CREDITS: CC / Flickr – Rock Cohen
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48 comments Post a commentcomment

What do YOU think?

    • avatar
      jthk

      EU is not an empire, it is a union for collective security so as to avoid the recurrence of the devastating world wars that have almost destroyed Europe.

    • avatar
      jthk

      China has many corrupted government official too. No one believe China has no future. Please give real evidence to support the allegation that UE states have “so many”corrupted politicians in UE states. Isn’t Europe states are among the most advanced democratic states that respect the rule of law and government is under the scrutiny of politicians, the public and the media. Are you suggesting all these core values and mechanism of democracy not working in Europe? If this is so, it is not EU that has no future but the whole Europe.

  1. avatar
    Nando Aidos

    What do we want its future to be? Or are we to go buy some Tarot cards and learn to read them? :o

  2. avatar
    nando

    What do we want its future to be? Or are we to go buy some Tarot cards and learn to read them?

    • avatar
      Joseph

      We must do for world peace intercontinental through the Angel service the donation of all talent by the world peace speaker his excellency the president of. .. … … ….

  3. avatar
    Ivan Burrows

    .

    ‘If’ the EU has a future it will be full of the same misery, mass movement & mass unemployment that you have now.

    Fortunately I cannot see a future for it.

  4. avatar
    Fernando Nabais

    No future – EU politicians govern against the will and interest of European people. EU is a union of obscure lobbies, not a union of european people.

    • avatar
      jthk

      EU politicians are governing for the collective interest of European people. Not individuals. The danger of democracy is that individuals holding their one vote and asking for ones own narrow interest. How can limited resources satisfy everyone? This is just impossible. It appears that people of the advanced democracies have wrongly interpreted the word “demo”, it means “people” not “individual”. It is about the collective. While we are asking for individual well beings, we have to ask what we have done and can do for the collective as well.

  5. avatar
    Jimi Sowa

    Future of UE is death and totally disaster. The faster – the better. After death of UE – the future of Europe will be fantastic.

  6. avatar
    Luchian Mdm

    As Nando Aidos said the future depends on the choices to be made. ..We need to SAVE the EU from the mistakes which lead to its demise(if still possible considering those who lead the EU are surrounded only by employees who applaud to all their mistake due to fear of losing their eu well paid jobs and therefore the people in charge think they are on right track…while it is the track of distruction and dissolution). I hope the EU bureaucrats in charge of the EU manage to correct their fundamental mistakes (such as 1 main error importing members of a death culture actually mental disease called religion of terror for virgins in paradise to be raped -6 century monsters who do not belong to the future of mankind with their cult called the most retrograde force in history by Winston Churchill to be banned in eu until reformed with no request for jihad and violence and 2 main error. Implementing corporation full authority against eu nations through TTIP) and take the European continent towards REAL UNIFICATION with a) united army, b) united fiscal policy, c) increased environmental protection (outlawing deforestation), d)support of european natality through subsidies granted to familty with children who obtain good results in school at studies which are important to the EU in order to consolidate and educate future workforce , d)defending the borders and not importing terrorists or sharia future abuser of women and eu citizebs e) defending of EU markets from Chinese dumping procedures AT ALL cost f) future unification of markets with us without offering their corporation the right to sue eu nations for not obtaining profits due to eu laws.

  7. avatar
    Stefania Portici

    prima di tutto il rispetto . Rispetto dei popoli , rispetto delle diverisità culturali e sopratutto rispetto del dolore. Non si può fare satira nelle sciagure , non fa ridere , nè riflettere . Questa vignetta su una tragedia , su un lutto nazionale lo trovo di cattivo gusto , non aiuta l’integrazione .

    first of all respect. Respect for people, respect for cultural diversity and especially the pain. It can not do satire on disasters, not funny nor reflected. This cartoon of a tragedy on a national mourning is in bad taste. It does not help integration http://www.ilmessaggero.it/primopiano/esteri/charlie_hebdo_vignetta_terremoto-1942512.html

  8. avatar
    Vinko Rajic

    Two options : 1. Good : EU is going to become similar to US , STOP Arab immigration and remove “Christians” from government , also EU citizens are going to sign under atheists and STOP supporting religious spiders . 2. BAD : The EU is going to collapse . Christians and right wing going to win elections , democracy is going to become similar to democracy in Turkey by many ex. EU members . Arab migration to Germany is going to continue . Possibility for civil war by some ex.EU members between Arabs , indigenous people and atheists .

  9. avatar
    Vinko Rajic

    Two options : 1. Good : EU is going to become similar to US , STOP Arab immigration and remove “Christians” from government , also EU citizens are going to sign under atheists and STOP supporting religious spiders . 2. BAD : The EU is going to collapse . Christians and right wing going to win elections , democracy is going to become similar to democracy in Turkey by many ex. EU members . Arab migration to Germany is going to continue . Possibility for civil war by some ex.EU members between Arabs , indigenous people and atheists .

  10. avatar
    Faddi Zsolt

    I am a child. I have a vision. I watched Star Trek series too often. In Star Trek Universe there is a World without money and without borders. Every person on Earth and in the Universe is an independent individual. Even the Drone, too. I think that humanity can only survive when wealth is available for every person on this planet equally. So THEY speak, too.

  11. avatar
    Ivan Burrows

    .

    The same misery, mass unemployment, mass migration and theft of democracy it has always given.

    The only thing left is for the people to bury the EU & let it go into the history books as just another European antidemocratic ideology alongside Nazism, Fascism & Communism that was defeated.

  12. avatar
    Andrej Němec

    It all depends on the next steps undertaken by both the EU establishment and Member States. In particular, being Donald J. Trump the likely next US president, and being him a good friend of Russia the EU should start considering accession for Russia. With Russia, the EU would be stronger than ever. And it would dominate the World together with USA.
    Better Together…

  13. avatar
    Borislav Valkov

    EU is failing if it continues to support the state segregation(and power- distortion) in it’s members. Yesterday Luxembourg’s foreign minister decided as an emperor of EU that Hungary should be kicked out of EU.

  14. avatar
    Borislav Valkov

    EU is failing if it continues to support the state segregation(and power- distortion) in it’s members. Yesterday Luxembourg’s foreign minister decided as an emperor of EU that Hungary should be kicked out of EU.

  15. avatar
    Dimitris Orfanoudis

    “”The future is unpredictable””” If we are taking under consideration what kind of geopolitical games goes on from China to Euroasia middle east and Russia the future seems to be very DIM……

  16. avatar
    Dimitris Orfanoudis

    “”The future is unpredictable””” If we are taking under consideration what kind of geopolitical games goes on from China to Euroasia middle east and Russia the future seems to be very DIM……

  17. avatar
    José Bessa da Silva

    It’s end, fortunatly. Even Luxembourg is now trying to kick Hungary out of the EU. A “union” they claim…hahaha…What a ridiculous institution!

  18. avatar
    José Bessa da Silva

    It’s end, fortunatly. Even Luxembourg is now trying to kick Hungary out of the EU. A “union” they claim…hahaha…What a ridiculous institution!

  19. avatar
    Enric Mestres Girbal

    European army? what for. There is the NATO to protect (hahahaha) the east side and the Mediterranean navy fishing inmigrants….

  20. avatar
    Brian Flanagan

    The end of this undemocratic bunch of losers telling everybody what to think and how. The eu produces not One cent towards its costs.

  21. avatar
    Julia Hadjikyriacou

    A more social EU that takes care of the people before corporations within the EU and outside the EU. Tax the mega-rich. Abolish poverty. EU-wide benefits and minimum wage.

  22. avatar
    Osmen Ajruli

    BREXIT was not the will of people. To bad that they got out of Eu. It was just a political STRUGLE that took wrong direction.. As the Future of Eu BREXIT should not be a example.

  23. avatar
    Silvio Bosco

    It holds the only hope for the European do not fall again as prey of a sovereign national State/regime madness

  24. avatar
    Bob

    I dont believe in eu
    Its like fake friendships to me

    • avatar
      jthk

      Hostility and suspicious destroy the development of friendship and cooperation.

  25. avatar
    Joseph

    I belive in UE.
    Let do something for UE… World peace intercontinental again through Angel service the donation of all talent by the world peace speaker his excellency the president of…

  26. avatar
    jthk

    EU is a very innovative idea that seeks to prevent the recurrence of the third devastating war which will be a nuclear war. However, European people have been misled by the so-called Declaration of Human Rights and putting all sorts of individual desire as their own right, and wrongly see democratic election as a way to acquire political power and control over others. It is very clearly many people are putting the means (election) to the end (collective security). Rather than using the political process of democratic election as the means to to achieve collective security, more democracies are doing the contrary, manipulating election to grab political power while sacrificing collective security and endangering lives, as we have seen in the US handling of Covid-2019 at the midst of the presidential election, as we have seen the Brexit when the US has started a world-wide trade war and a great power confrontation with China…a moment of great instability in the global political economic environment.

  27. avatar
    jthk

    The future of the union is holding on the successful anti-pandemic and recovery of economic growth. This issue, EU cannot rely on the US but the cooperation of the Euroasian states, which means well beings of the people should be top of the agenda, while cease to manipulate populism and radicalism, and stop dividing peoples and countries…we are in a global system.

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