Latest blog articles

Written by Yu Yan & Michael Faure.

The Chinese word “economy” is originated from a famous idiom called “经世济民” (jing shi ji min), which suggests that a prosperous society is not only about economic success but also about the financial well-being of the general population. Microinsurance (the...

Jean Monnet (1888-1979) is, in some ways, an unlikely person to be honoured by having a university hall called after him. Indeed, Monnet left school at the age of sixteen, never obtained a university degree, and indeed never started university studies. He grew up in the city of Cognac as the son of...

How do we guarantee access to COVID-19 vaccines and therapies, and secure health-related human rights for all? We’ve heard a string of promises in the race for new vaccines and therapies.

It’s been almost a month since the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed the way we live and work. Now that we are more used to, in a manner of speaking, the extraordinary measures to curtail the rampant spread of the virus, it’s time to seriously consider, and openly discuss, this crisis’...

Globally the majority of health-related R&D is invested in medicines with substantial guaranteed returns, yet what is missing is extensive R&D targeted at diseases overwhelmingly prevalent in developing countries. This threatens long-term availability of medicines and treatment options for these...

Recently it was brought in the news that families of Americans killed by ISIS in Belgium and France sued twitter for allegedly failing to keep members of the terrorist organisation of its platform. Lawsuits concerning American victims who were killed in Europe raise a number of interesting and legal...

Nuclear accidents such as the one in Fukushima; or potential nuclear incidents/accidents in Belgium nuclear plants such as the one close to Maastricht in Tihange. One of the questions that always arises in the context of a nuclear accident of the Fukushima type is why nuclear operators are largely...

Published on LBM. As the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11 has shown, terrorism can lead to large-scale damage, massive property damage, thousands of cases of personal injury, pain and suffering and enormous consequential damage, including billions in lost profits. Can the security industry be...

Published on LBM. To an increasing extent many EU Member States are victim of a variety of natural disasters, including heavy rainfall, flooding, earthquakes, volcano eruptions and tsunamis. A major problem is that after every new natural disaster politicians often have the tendency to play Santa...

Refugee crisis and migration may obviously have a lot of different sources. The current refugee crisis in Europe is obviously strongly related to the war in Syria. However, quite often migration and hence a stream of refugees, can also be caused by natural disasters, even by climate change. Some...