During its Council Presidency Finland is trying to follow the same policy that Bulgaria so skilfully followed in 2018 - to be a Presidency that is an ''honest broker'' and tries to find best solutions and compromises for all the Member States. For Finland, as part of the Nordic family, promoting equality and fairness is a key priority, says Paivi Blinnikka, Ambassador of Finland to Bulgaria in an interview to Europost.

The whole idea of lead candidates put forward by political parties no longer seems suitable to us. We are looking for more clear-cut consensus figures that can ensure the formation of coalitions and facilitate the pursuit of policies promoting a strong and united Europe, says Iskra Mihaylova, MEP, Vice-President of the Renew Europe group in the European Parliament, in an interview to Europost. 

My hope is that the solution will be a second referendum. That finally politicians on both sides will understand that the only way out is to ask the British voters again, after three years of heated debate and with much more information available: “Do you still want to leave the European Union?” or “Do you want to think again and perhaps stay?”, says Giles Merritt, Founder and Chairman of Friends of Europe, in an interview to Europost.

It was made clear that the European citizens cannot be won over with messages calling for exiting or destroying the EU, says Ingrid Shikova, Professor in EU Policies, in an interview to Europost.

I think the increase in voter turnout is a very clear sign of a growing - albeit slowly - European demos. In the elections of 2014, 5-6 years after the economic crisis started, voting numbers dropped. Over the last five years, something has definitely shifted this trend in the opposite direction. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is Brexit, because the people see how difficult it is for a country to survive outside the EU, says Tomi Huhtanen, Executive Director of Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, in an interview to Europost.

Spitzenkandidat process is something that is taking place in the Brussels bubble, it is not really felt on the ground. People don't know who the “Spitzenkandidaten” are. It's not because they vote for the French centre-right EPP that they necessarily support Manfred Weber as Commission President. There is no real pan-European demos, so politics is national, says Pieter Cleppe, Head of the Brussels office of Open Europe, an independent policy think tank, in an interview to Europost.

Beyond the recurring ambiguity between Soft and Hard Power, Cultural Diplomacy is used in a big range of diplomatic activities, not only because it is effective in normal international relations, but it is particularly suitable in situations of high tension between Heads of State, where any other diplomatic tool has failed, Prof. Federica Olivares says in an interview to Europost. 

The Europeans have a very large defence budget - about €180bn to €190bn a year, which is the second largest collective military budget in the world, but much of the money is wasted because you have for example five different fighter aircraft, four different main battle tanks. You have a helicopter which is produced in 26 different versions, says Dr Jamie Shea, Senior Fellow at Friends of Europe and former NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges, in an interview to Europost.

I do not think we would be ever able to say we are safe. There are still a lot of breaches, still a lot of vulnerabilities, and at the same time the world is getting more and more digital. For example, there are new things floating into the world, as the Internet of Things or the Internet of Toys, and they are in even worse state, when it comes to security, than websites, says Mary-Jo De Leeuw, award-winning cybersecurity expert and co-founder of the Women in Cyber Security Foundation, in an interview to Europost.

We have been warning from the very start that Mobility Package 1 runs counter to the basic European values and the concept of the Single Market. In no way does the proposed approach to the issue resolution help in boosting the Single Market, on the contrary - it only undermines it. More than that, the EU is not getting any stronger when the states of the EU periphery are pitted against those of the centre, says Ilhan Kyuchyuk, MEP from MRF, Vice President of ALDE, in an interview to Europost.