The European Court of Human Rights came to the conclusion that German child custody laws discriminate against single fathers. Until now, unmarried fathers needed the consent of the mother to get partial or even full custody of their children. But the latest decision was in favor of  a 45-year-old German father from Cologne who was trying to get  custody of his 14-year-old daughter since years. (more…)

The Swiss referendum against the construction of new minarets caused a lot of criticism from all over Europe. Debates started, whether referendums are suitable to decide on difficult topics. Could highly complex questions be answered by direct democracy or would it be better to count on expert knowledge? Is the Swiss referendum representative for a European Union where the population seems to fear the expansion of muslim religion?

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A few weeks ago, the University of Vienna attracted attention when students started to occupy the Auditorium Maximum while protesting against bad learning conditions, entrance restrictions, cut downs on the budget for higher education. In the meantime, more than 50 universities are affected by a big movement which especially disapproves the “Bologna Process“; but what went wrong? (more…)