Frieden – Ponto – Grassroots Think Tank für Europa- und Außenpolitik

Rethinking the Future: EU Enlargement as Guarantee for Security and Democracy?

15. October 2023

Text by Lara Steiner Currently, the European Union faces a time of fundamental change and unprecedented challenges. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has altered the geopolitical presence and consequently initiated reassessments of the EU’s future. To ensure transnational security and the viability of democracy on the continent, it is indispensable for the EU to amend…

Sudan: The Potential Price of Peace

23. July 2020

Ponto-Team

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Der Grosse Soukh in Omdurman © Jan Pospisil Fifteen months after the revolution that ousted long-term dictator Omar al-Bashir in April 2019, it becomes increasingly evident that Sudan’s two parallel transitional processes of democratisation and peacemaking contradict one another and follow different political logics. The second year after the removal of the Bashir-regime…

Loyalty over geography: Re-interpreting the notion of ‘Useful Syria’

29. October 2018

Ponto-Team

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As the offensive to reconquer Idlib was put on hold, it is useful to recall that the notion of ‘Useful Syria’ as geographic reference to the population-rich axis of Aleppo-Homs-Damascus, as well as the coastal areas of Latakia and Tartus, does not accurately reflect the regime´s intention of reconquering all of Syria. This makes the…