The financial crisis gives an opportunity to define a new society in Europe. Antonio Gramsci once said a crisis is when the old is dead, but the new not yet born. A new European socialism will be based on freedom, economic security, equality and democracy. By Stefan Collignon

French government is spending a lot of diplomatic energy to secure Michel Barnier as the EU commissioner for the single market in a possible future team led by Barroso.

With a simple and rather modest understanding of how things are supposed to work when acknowledging the inseparable link that exist between political decision-making and the economy and vice versa, recent orientations of decisions having been made in different member states of the EU are worrying, and rightly so.

European history indeed sadly proves that economic depression can lead to tragic social exclusion, hatred, violence and persecution.

Whether or not the ECB will allow the Baltic countries in, we have at least the obligation to the people of Latvia to give them the means to continue to live: at the moment it looks too much like the IMF is only giving means to survive to the financial institutions, and the EU is too busy looking out for its luckier members.

With the financial collapse of September 2008 begins the development of a major systemic crisis. Samir Amin analyses the implications for the North/South global divide

The financial crisis calls on us to imagine alternative ways of living. European Alternatives launches its ChangeUtopia! series of events throughout Europe, starting with the question of poverty in a global world.

There seems to be a fundamental paradox in the current dialectic of globalisation and the numerous public debates surrounding it. We are constantly reminded of the inescapable supranational interconnectedness of contemporary economical reality. At the same time, however, a gaze at the political landscape seems to return us to a déjà of competition between states, imperialist ventures, and a tribal conception of the national interest.