/25.05.15/.- José María Aznar has welcomed this morning the participants in the third FAES Middle East and North Africa Visitor Program, with whom he has conversed and reviewed the big challenges faced by the region, and has encouraged them to lead the defence of democracy, freedom and human rights in their home countries.

/15.04.15/.- The Director of International Policy of FAES Foundation, Rafael L. Bardají, addresses in this analysis the questions raised over the framework agreement reached on April 2 by the G5+1 and Iran on its nuclear program, and  states that the different interpretations offered by Washington and Iran point to ‘essential differences still unresolved’.

On April 2, negotiators from the five permanent members of the Security Council of the UN, plus Germany and the EU representative on the one hand, and the Iranians on the other, finally reached a framework agreement on which to build a final agreement on the Iranian nuclear program. The White House rushed to announce the benefits of this framework agreement, while the Iranian leadership did the same.

The second cease-fire in Ukraine (Minsk II) between the Government of Kiev and the pro-Russian separatists, signed after marathon rounds of negotiations between the presidents of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany, has not achieved the goal prematurely announced by François Hollande: to give a final solution to the conflict in south-eastern Ukraine. In fact, Minsk II was based on the same assumptions as the previous treaty (Minsk I), the main purpose of which was to stop the war, given the high number of fatalities. 

The last elections to the regional parliament of Thuringia of September 14 are having more important consequences for German politics than expected at first. Despite the predictable victory of the candidate of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) and current Minister-President of the region, Christine Lieberknecht, with 33. 5% of the vote – a 2. 2% increase on the 2009 elections – the strong emergence of the party Alternative for Germany (AfD) with 11 seats has led to the departure of the Liberal Party (FDP) from Parliament. The FDP has lost the 7 seats it had won on the last term, which has complicated the formation of the future regional government, to the point that it could imply the CDU moving to the opposition in the Thuringian Landtag for the first time. 

MARIO RAMOS VERA: El alma del mundo (Roger Scruton)VICENTE DE LA QUINTANA: La derrota de Azurmendi (Ensayo y error.Una autobiografía. Las memorias de un vasco proscrito, Mikel Azurmendi)PILAR MARCOS: Patria (Fernando Aramburu)EDUARDO INCLÁN: La voluntad del gudari. Génesis y metástasis de la violenciade ETA (Gaizka Fernández Soldevilla)ALFREDO CRESPO: El engaño populista. Por qué se arruinan nuestros paísesy cómo rescatarlos (Axel Kaiser y Gloria Álvarez)JUAN TOVAR RUIZ: National Insecurity: American Leadership In An Age of Fear(David Rothkopf)GERARDO DEL CAZ: Evitando la trampa de Tucídides (Easternisation. War andPeace in the Asian Century, Gideon Rachman)ANTONIO RUBIO PLO: A Rage for Order, The Middle East in Turmoil, fromTahrir Square to Isis (Robert F. Worth)

Europe is in the throes of two simultaneous crises: on the one hand, it is suffering from a political crisis, a crisis of leadership, one that has led to constitutional failure; on the other, it is suffering from a loss of identity, a phenomenon that results in cultural relativism. Marcello Pera, Speaker of the Italian Senate and Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Pisa, delivered a conference entitled “Strength of Identity” during the course of the FAES Campus 2005, a paper which the FAES Foundation is now publishing. Also known as the co-author of the book Senza Radici (“Without Roots”) alongside Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Professor Pera urges European culture to proudly recall and reaffirm its origins and its universal democratic principles: freedom, equality and tolerance. In this respect, Europe must recognise the intrinsic value of a civilisation, Western civilisation, that has given the world so many universal ideas. “Europe must be aware of the moral superiority of a series of values that have prevailed over centuries and that have produced beneficial results wherever they have become established”.