May 9, 2013 - The Heinrich Böll Foundation hopes that this collection of articles about the foreseeable changes in around ten significant areas of social life will provide a space for discussion around these issues. In keeping with the expanded level on which these new relations will play out, the contributions are intended not only for the Croatian public, but for all others in the EU who are interested in what the new member state brings with it. more»

The Commons as a Radical Democratic Project

- November 30, 2012 - Herein please find Danijela Dolenec's (Group 22) presentation at  the conference recently held under the title ''Economy of crisis capitalism and ecology of the commons''. Danijela coordinates activities of Group 22, a new emerging green-left think tank that is commencing its activities in Croatia.

Pdf here

Danijela Dolenec

Accession to the EU – time for change ?

- October 26, 2012 -  Green European Foundation and the Croatian Heinrich Böll Stiftung office are organizing the round table "Accession to the EU – time for change ?" taking place on Friday, November 26, in Novinarski dom, Zagreb.

Round table program here

Greeen Academy is under way

- August 26, 2012 - The full program of "Green Academy" and the agenda for specific working groups are available here.

You will be informed about the locations of working groups once you register at info-desk in Hotel Issa on Tuesday, 28th of August from 4,00 -7,30 PM. Those participants who arrive later in the course of the following days will be also informed about the locations at the info-desk where they will receive working materials.
Once you arrive to the island of Vis we ask you to first of all register in Hotel Issa (7 minutes walking distance from the port) where some of you will be accommodated. Part of the participants will be also accomodated in Hotel Tamaris and private apartments and informed about the details upon registration.

Green Academy begins on Tuesday, 28. August at 8:00 PM in the premises of ''Hrvatski dom'' with a key note lecture of Tine de Moor (Utrecth University) and introductory speeches.

Booklet with additional information about the program can be found here.

Public Media working group program
Digital Commons working group program
Education working group program
Water working group program
Urban working group program

 

 

Applicants selection

- August 9, 2012 - The list of applicants selected for this years Green Academy can be seen here

The outlines of the programme can be seen here

July 15, 2012 - The following articles have been published in the web-dossier ''Spotlight on Croatia'' in cooperation with HBS Brussels office

Prides and Prejudices - Confessions of an LGBTIQ Activist, by Mima Simić

In 1976, the year I was born, homosexuality in Yugoslavia was a crime punishable with up to one year imprisonment. Incidentally, this law referred only to “unnatural fornication between males”, whereas sex between women was not mentioned; either because it wasn’t recognised as a possibility or because male-free practices of any kind (social or sexual) are often not taken too seriously. Whatever the reason, lesbianism stayed out of sight and out of mind...click here for the full article

Local Voices Expressing Global Concerns: Academic Resistance in the Croatian Science and Higher Education Area by Karin Doolan

Public demonstrations in protest of neoliberalism and its effects on higher education have become a global phenomenon. The latest example is the student protest in Quebec which is both a revolt against tuition fee increases and the broader political and economic setting which encourages such a policy...click here for the full article

June 18, 2012 - The Heinrich Böll Foundation has compiled a dossier containing articles and interviews on the situation in Hungary since the right wing government came to power in April 2010. The driving goal behind the project is to analyze and interpret the changes in the domain of public life at 'half-time', two years before the next parliamentary elections.

Read dossier

May 4, 2012 -

Introducing

- May 6, 2012 - Michael Hardt, born in Washington DC in 1960, is a political philosopher and literary theorist currently based at Duke University, North Carolina 
Michael Hardt's recent writings focus primarily on deciphering various aspects of globalization through the style of writing he defines as eclecticism. His recent writings deal primarily with the political, legal, economic, and social aspects of globalization. In his books with Antonio Negri he has analyzed the functioning of the current global power structure as well as the possible political and economic alternatives to that structure based on new institutions of shared, common wealth.

Introducing

- May 6, 2012 - Geert De Pauw is the director of the Bonnevie community centre. Bonnevie works with residents of Molenbeek (Brussels), a poor neighbourhood, rich in cultures. The aim of the organisation is to improve the living and housing conditions of the inhabitants.

May 6, 2012 - Mayo Fuster Morell works as a postdoc fellow at the Berkman center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.developed. She does research in the field of the Internet and politics; social movements (Global Justice Movement, Free Culture Movement and recent mobilization wave of "indignated" in Spain); online communities; common-base peer production; and public policies and specializes in online methods and action-participation research.

Introducing

- May 6, 2012 - Costas Douzinas is a Professor of Law at Birkbeck, University of London, London.  He is well known for his work in Human Rights, Aesthetics, Postmodern Legal Theory and Political Philosophy.  He is also a founding member of the Critical Legal Conference, and managing editor of Law and Critique: The International Journal of Critical Legal Thought and the Birkbeck Law Press

Introducing

- May 6, 2012 - Vinod Raina is an Indian educationist and a member of drafting of the Right to Education Bill. He resigned from his job at Delhi University to work on education reforms in India. A theoretical physicist, resigned his job from Delhi University in 1982 to work full time at grass roots in the areas of education and rural development.

Introducing

- May 6, 2012 - Saki Bailey is an IUC Faculty Member and Lecturer in Human Rights & International & Foreign Legal Research and also the Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Political Economy & Law in Torino. Her work experience includes property, immigration and environmental law in the private sector and immigration law and development work in the government and nonprofit sector.

Introducing

- May 6, 2012 - Brigitte Kratzwald is Social scientist and political activist living in Graz, Austria, whose research topics are welfare state and public services, democracy, european union policies and social movements. Her current theoretical work is focussed on alternatives to the capitalist system of reproduction, especially solidarity economy and commons.

Introducing

- May 6, 2012 - Alan Toner is an intellectual property and communications researcher, lost between New York, Florence, Berlin and Dublin. His current field of interest is the newly created European Observatory on Counterfeiting and Piracy, and its first major project: the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED 2), which will propose new criminal sanctions for IP offenses. He is also interested in ACTA and supports the work of the people from Knowledge Ecology International, La Quadrature du Net, the FFII and Michael Geist.

Introducing

- May 6, 2012 - Segolene Pruvot manages the activities of European Alternatives in France and coordinates Transeuropa Festival. She is interested in issues such as democracy in Europe, feminism and equality and urbanism. Ségolène actively participates to transnational activities and campaigns of European Alternatives and develops activities of the organisation in Paris, such as regular salons discussions and the TRANSEUROPA Festival.

December 21, 2011 - The new issue of our magazine Agenda is out

July 29, 2011 -

Hereby we announce the program of The Green Academy 2020 “CRISIS OF POLITICAL IMAGINATION AND TRANSFORMATIVE POTENTIAL OF GREEN POLITICS”. The academy will be hosted on the island of Vis from the 21st till the 26th of August 2011 by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Green European Foundation with the support of a number of local partners. During five days the programme will host more than 150 people including twenty foreign lecturers and thirty participants hailing from the South-eastern Europe region.

To look through the program click here.

The program will take place in the Hotel Issa in Vis (a twenty minute walk from the port). The organizers will notify all participants about information regarding their accommodation.

Below we introduce some of the confirmed speakers in the program of Green Academy 2020 which will take place on the island Vis from 21 to 26 August 2011.

Rolf Holub

- July 29, 2011 - We introduce Rolf Holub, Green Party representative in the Carinthian parliament whose party first drafted the document (already in 2007.) on mismanagement and criminal misdealings in the Hypo bank. more»

Paul Hockenos

- July 29, 2011 - We introduce Paul Hockenos, journalist, writer and consultant renowned for covering the collapse of communism.  more»

Introducing

- July 29, 2011 - Introducing David Bollier, an activist and theoretician who explores the commons as a new paradigm of economics, politics and culture. more»

December 21, 2011 - The new issue of our magazine Agenda is out

One Step Forward and Two Sideward Regional Analyses of Climate Policy in 2010 and the Cancun Climate Conference (COP 16)

- January 28, 2011 -  Hereby we provide common HBF climate analysis of COP 16 in Cancun. For more click here

The Balkans: Energy Independence or Energy Interdependence?

- November 19, 2010 - In a globalised world, energy independence can not be achieved. Successful energy policies require inter-sectoral co-operation, supervision, and long-term public policies concerning employment, the environment, and investment. Ana-Maria Boromisa more»

From a group of spiders to a pack of starfish

- September 24, 2010 -

Instead of relying on huge capital investments, the Croatian government might focus on increasing the proximity of energy sources to its end users. A greater use of decentralized energy sources, such as efficiency technologies and renewable energy would have various positive effects.

Mak Dukan more»

"Business as unusual -Roadmap to green economy", an international conference

- September 14, 2010 - Heinrich Böll Stiftung Croatia is organizing "Business as unusual -Roadmap to green economy", an international conference which will take place from September 24, to September 26

More info here
See the agenda

How to get there

May 11, 2010 - Lunch Debate 14 April 2010

"Croatia at the doorstep of the European Union: a worrying lack of enthusiasm?"
Speakers: Dejan Jovic, University of Stirling (UK) and Zagreb, chief political analyst for the president of Croatia; Josip Kregar, professor Faculty of Law, University Zagreb and vice-president of the Zagreb City Assembly; Dirk Lange, European Commission, DG Enlargement, Directorate B, Unit Croatia, Head of Unit
Moderator: Vedran Horvat, Head of Office in Croatia, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Zagreb
 
You can download reports by Josip Kregar and Dejan Jović here

May 5, 2010 - Expert round table: Climate change and new migration flows: climate migration impacts on EU migration and asylum policy

Around 20 experts and activists from climate policy field and immigration and asylum policy took part in the HBS expert talk on climate migration which was held on 23rd of April 2010 in Zagreb in premises of Goethe Institute Croatia. Lack of coherence and coordination between these two policy settings and lack of recognition of climate migrants as the new category in the international legal framework were, in adittion to discussion on security and solidarity, two most important departure points of the discussion.

more»

March 29, 2010 -

While Bologna reforms might not have been the cause of underfunding in higher education or of the disregard for wider social implications of massification in higher education, it has done very little in alleviating these problems. A brief look at the process has shown it to be driven primarily by the concerns which revolve around competitiveness on the global market, which is why most progress is reported in the area of structural and administrative reform. The real substantive reforms, which should lead to improved quality and academic mobility, have not been tackled in many countries

Danijela Dolenec more»

Icesave but you pay: the (im)potence of people power

- March 15, 2010 - 'At this point readers familiar with Croatia’s accession journey to the EU will remember that a recent bilateral territorial dispute with Slovenia blocked its negotiation process with the EU. Another country that is using the EU card in bilateral disputes is Greece, which is blocking the accession of FYR Macedonia. While in academic literature the EU is usually portrayed as Janus-faced, with an intergovernmental and a supra-governmental side, when it comes to crucial interests of member states, it repeatedly fails the test of unity.' Danijela Dolenec more»

Elections for the third Croatian president are the primary motive, but also an occasion for the Heinrich Boll Stiftung, a green political foundation, to induce a political discussion about the development of political culture in the country by portraying the elections on the new Croatian office website.

During the next few weeks our web pages will offer you the chance to read reviews, analysis and commentaries of authors that will mainly focus on social and economic conditions which surround these elections.

more»

European future after black-red past?

- January 14, 2010 -

Still, it remains to be seen how two big political parties – HDZ and SDP – now significantly affected by the outcome of the presidential elections - will resolve their internal disputes and what will change within the electorate. Even more, it remains to see how new directly elected president will emancipate himself from his party background. 

Constitutional reforms announced for spring, continuation of the accession negotiations with the EU and decisive fight against the corruption now remain among first priorities. Country is now facing momentum where a whole society needs to be much more involved in pursuing reforms, not only State alone. In this context, integrative function of the new president can have a crucial role, outreaching broader support for the advocated change.

Vedran Horvat more»

Presidential elections as a turning point - Croatia (once again) between Europe and the Balkans?

- January 3, 2010 - However, despite the significantly low voter turnout in the first round (44%), the voters have, in addition to the general lack of confidence in the parties, perhaps estimated the relative insignificance of these elections with regards to the representative function of the future president. The results speak not only of the crisis of representative quality in society (as well as democratic deficit), but also of deep cracks in the parties themselves, which are far greater than mere fraction differences.

 

Vedran Horvat more»

Who is going to get whom?

- December 14, 2009 - Some hundred years ago, Vladimir Illyich Lenin, precisely, as well as cynically, formulated the basic problem of politics with the famous question "Who - whom?". Žarko Puhovski more»