This article places European welfare states squarely in today's European integration context and looks optimistically at social policy perspectives ‘top down’ from the European level. It has the needs of European policy makers in mind, and thus their interests in optimal policy mixes, lessons from national experiences and in a new institutional architecture that links EU member states more effectively into All-European corridors of reform efforts. The authors argue that the overriding need in welfare state reform is to identify new value combinations and institutional arrangements in national systems that are both mixed – in terms of solidarity and growth objectives – and virtuous, that is capable of producing advances on all necessary fronts. The authors recapitulate the EU's present social agenda – where the search for ‘new value combinations’ is seen to be most actively undertaken. They take up the nature of the ‘bottom up’ challenges to, and the adjustment problems of, the four different sets of European welfare states at length and also their differing needs for functional, distributive as well as normative re-calibration. They present core components of an optimal adjustment strategy that could reconcile growth with solidarity. Finally, they focus on different instruments that might further substantiate the role the EU could play in preserving and developing the ‘European Social Model’ in different welfare domains.

Between 1854 and 1881, the Ottoman Empire went through one of the most critical phases of the history of its relations with European powers. Beginning with the first foreign loan contracted in 1854, this process was initially dominated by a modest level of indebtedness, coupled with sporadic and inconsequential attempts by western powers to impose some control over the viability of the operation. From 1863 on, a second and much more intense phase began, which eventually led to a snowballing effect of accumulated debts. The formal bankruptcy of the Empire in 1875 resulted in the collapse of the entire system in one of the most spectacular financial crashes of the period. It was only six years later, in 1881, that a solution was found in the establishment of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration that would control a large portion of state revenues. The new system restored the financial stability of the Empire, but profoundly modified its rapports de force with Europe by imposing on it a form of foreign control that would have been unthinkable only ten or twenty years earlier. While bringing a much-needed stability to the flailing Ottoman financial situation and thus opening the way to economic development, the new system also radically changed the very nature of the process of integration, by introducing an imperialist dimension that had been lacking in the previous decades.

For many years, different patterns of the higher education system existed in various European countries. The patterns were not stable in each country, because pressures for upgrading of the ‘less noble’ sector tended to be strong. Altogether, it was justified, however, to characterize the situation in Europe as a ‘persistence of variety’. Many theories helped to explain a coexistence of inclinations for common approaches or specific options of individual countries. Most recently, though, pressures for convergence seem to have grown in Europe. Although the European Union advocates a respect for variety, some countries tend to adapt themselves to anticipated trends. In addition, efforts are undertaken in various European countries to adapt the programmes and institutions to an Anglo-Saxon model in order to preserve or strengthen their position in the wake of internationalization and globalization.

People like to say that energy and water are two problems, two vital commodities in short supply. Here I draw attention to the emerging literature and physics principle (constructal law) that provide the scientific foundation for sustainability. I show that the sustainability need is about flow: the flow of energy and the flow of water through the inhabited space. All the flows needed for human life (transportation, heating, cooling, water) are driven by the purposeful consumption of fuels. This is why the wealth of a country (the GDP) is directly proportional to the annual consumption of fuel in that country. This hierarchical organization happens; it is natural and efficient. Sustainability is the one-word need that covers all the specific needs. Sustainability comes from greater freedom in changing the organization – the flow architecture – that sustains life. Greater freedom to change the design (from water and power to laws and government) leads to greater flow, wealth, life and staying power, i.e. sustainability.

Suggestive or misleading interrogation techniques may have the effect that innocent people start to remember having committed a serious crime. Confessions are therefore not the best possible evidence, especially not when it is obvious that the interrogation contained elements of suggestion and deception. The problem is illustrated by a case that has become famous in The Netherlands, because two innocent men were imprisoned for about eight years, after obviously false confessions. The confessions were obtained during long and repeated interrogations in which various types of psychological deception were used. In the end, the amount of contradiction, and even of sheer impossibilities, made it clear that the confessions were false and the men innocent. Some of the literature on the creation of false memories is reviewed. It is argued that the practice of criminal investigation may elicit even stronger effects, because empirical research is constrained by ethical limits. The objective of criminal investigation seems to put no limit on what is deemed acceptable, even though we know quite well that the elicitation of false confessions is a serious risk. European agreements about criminal interrogation techniques may provide an effective protection against undesirable practices; but it will not be easy to convince the European legislators of this.

The ‘transnational turn’, which is challenging bounded views on national belonging, also opens up promising perspectives for memory studies. It fosters a rethinking and reconfiguring of national memories in the context of transnational connectedness. My sketch of seven types of transnational memories points to different empirical contexts in which states, politicians, jurists, activists, artists and scholars go beyond national borders and interests to conceptualise new forms of belonging, solidarity and cultural identification in a world characterised by streams of migration and the lingering impact of traumatic and entangled pasts.

It is a recurrent theme in sociolinguistics that besides fully documenting endangered languages, it is important to ensure somehow that they will continue to be used. The basic trope is that of ‘language death’, analogous to the extinction of species. But the analogy fails: languages do not die, although their users may abandon them, usually in favour of a more widely spoken language. Nor does linguistic diversity increase cultural diversity — or the equal treatment of language groups mitigate inequality between and within groups. In addition, promoting minority, local and immigrant languages, which are all too often ill-equipped for modern life, actually strengthens the position of the dominant language as the only common language of communication: the more languages are spoken, the sooner English will take over. This process can be seen at work both in post-Apartheid South Africa and in the European Union as it undergoes enlargement.

In this article, I argue that policymakers employed unconscious biases and racist beliefs in the formulation and the implementation of the current EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies (ʻEU Roma Frameworkʼ) and its corresponding national strategies. Using Critical Race Theory, I explore how these policies have reinforced the commonly held belief in the need to civilize and otherwise change the habits of the Roma, and consequently have further reinforced the power imbalance between the Roma and the dominant majority groups (hereinafter used interchangeably with ʻnon-Romaʼ). I analyse examples of Roma versus universal policies comparatively, emphasizing biases in formulation, implementation, and discourse. I show that the objectives of the EU Roma Framework and national Roma strategies toward Roma education involve ethnic presuppositions and are far less ambitious than the avowed Europe 2020 strategy; this policy mismatch will likely lead to further educational discrepancies post-2020. Finally, I conclude that policies focused on the Roma are doomed to fail if no prior and concurrent actions are taken to change prejudiced attitudes and the behaviours of non-Roma, in particular those biases influencing policy formulation and implementation.

In this article, we examine developments in HBO’s original European productions based on a quantitative overview of production from 2007 to early 2020. We supplement this overview with an analysis of the generic changes during the past decade as well as a practical producers’ approach to remakes. The intention is not to analyse the specific series’ content; rather, we scrutinize genre, talent and remakes through the perspective of the HBO brand and the creatives behind the series. The main empirical material for this article is interviews with key informants and an exploitation of online resources. Altogether, this establishes both a historical overview of the productions and an up-to-date idea of how the transnational institution considers its own local endeavours.