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“There is a car chase in Budapest. The administration considers those who dare to get into cars as criminals.”

– Gergely Gulyás, Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff

‘Car chase’ could easily be the title of a movie in Hungary, with Gergely Karácsony, Budapest’s liberal mayor, as the lead.

To tell the truth, the Hungarian capital has never been friendly to cyclists. Cars are status symbols here, and the city has always favoured motorists. So, when Karácsony was elected in 2019, his actions to transform the city faced controversy.

But the fiercest attacks did not come from the inhabitants, but from the right-wing populist government, in an attempt to woo voters and make the opposition mayor’s life difficult. When Karácsony cycled to work, politicians attacked him for not driving. When he opened a bike lane or wanted to reform parking, he was called an “enemy of cars” – along with every cyclist in the city.

Just like that, Budapest has become an example of how politics can make enemies of cyclists – while the inhabitants suffer the consequences.

Cycling is deeply ingrained in Dutch culture, with over 23.4 million bicycles out of a population of 17.5 million. This has evolved over decades, starting in the 1890s when the flat terrain and compact urban areas made cycling a convenient choice of transport. Following World War II, the Netherlands prioritised cycle networks to connect cities, towns and rural areas.

In the 1970s, cycling advocacy groups emerged, and the government responded with significant investment in cycling infrastructure, and focusing on “slow traffic”. Cities and towns were designed with separated bike lanes, bike-friendly intersections, and traffic-calming measures.

In big Dutch cities, car-free areas and pedestrian zones are becoming more common. Amsterdam’s city centre has restricted car access with no major opposition. Generally, locals like it this way: at the end of last century, when cars threatened to take over, thousands protested against giving more space to four-wheels.

Nowadays, all train stations have huge bike parks for those who bike to take the train. Bike-sharing programs have also been implemented across Dutch cities, offering easy access to bicycles for short-term use. Individuals can easily rent a bike at a train station, use it to reach their destination, and return it at another location. It costs around 4.45 euros per 24 hours, which is usually reimbursed by employers.

Dutch companies often provide incentives for employees to commute by bike or public transport. Some offer tax benefits, reimbursements for bike expenses, or subsidised public transport passes. Cycling education is also integrated into the school curriculum, emphasising road safety and cycling skills from a young age.

The Dutch cycle more than 15 billion kilometres a year, with urban planners ensuring essential facilities (supermarkets, shopping and recreational areas, hospitals, schools and stations) are within cycling distance. However, the state secretary for infrastructure Vivianne Heijnen has emphasised the need for continued effort, as almost half of car journeys are shorter than 7.5 kilometres, a distance easily covered by cycling.

The video lasts fewer than 30 seconds, but has made the rounds on social networks. In Paris on Sunday 11 June, French Green MP Sandrine Rousseau did not hesitate to intervene in a scuffle between a cyclist and a cab driver on her way to the market.

These quarrels have become far too frequent in the French capital, where the number of bike journeys has increased by 79% between 2019 and 2022. The number of cycle paths has also boomed, but not at the same rate, and many drivers still have trouble sharing the road with cyclists, who sometimes risk their lives on the streets. The number of cyclists involved in accidents reached 1,611 in 2022, compared with 676 three years earlier.

In a couple of months, Paris’s roads should be less overcrowded. In a local referendum in early April, inhabitants voted in favour of banning self-service scooters, which Parisians have heavily criticized since their introduction in 2018.

It’s evening rush hour and time to pick up the kids from the kindergarten. So I climb into my cargo bike, which I bought last autumn with my wife.

Tallinn has never been a bike-friendly city, but the concept of three-wheeled cargo bikes is completely new. There were probably no more than a dozen of these bikes in the Estonian capital, when we joined the peloton. 

Our way home takes us through streets where bike and car lanes are not physically separate. Every day I feel how car drivers do not notice us on the road. 

Situations vary from trucks and delivery vehicles stopping on the bike lane to drop off goods at nearby shops and cafés to cars queuing in a traffic jam, and leaning to the right side of the road, where they steal space from bikers. While small bikes and electric scooters can ease past, a larger bike like ours must sit and wait. 

Often, drivers don’t look into the wing mirror to see if a bike is coming. This is where it gets dangerous for us.

On the narrow bike lane, I have developed my own kind of passive-aggressive reaction to help drivers learn and get used to paying attention to us. Sometimes I knock on their window when driving past. Then I give a long, cold glance straight into the eyes of the driver. I even ask the kids to wave to the driver.

It is not the drivers’ fault that they are not accustomed to sharing the road with vehicles such as ours. The real problem lies in the municipality, which hasn’t developed adequate biking lanes.

But I take it as my small task to nudge for change. Day by day. Step by step. Eventually the drivers will accept us as a natural part of the traffic.

Beware the time trap. The idea of having more time for oneself is extremely appealing, but be wary of those who turn this into private time. We need more social time. We do need to engage more with politics. Let our sofa not be our fate.

“Italy is a Democratic Republic founded on work”, the country’s Constitution says. As a fact, Italy is founded on precarious work. For decades, our social tissue has been lacerated by precarious contracts, and prime minister Giorgia Meloni made the situation even worse with her “labour day decree“, curtailing limitations to temporary jobs.

Since the pandemic, work from home has also spread. Even those who have a stable contract are now working as though they are hired on performance-based pay. Colleagues meet less; their ability to resist inequality at work is weakened. In Rome, food delivery workers sleep on grassy roundabouts between jobs. Rights slip away from us. Slavery is now 2.0.

Will the four-day week really bring back a balance between the 99 percent and the increasingly rich one percent? It depends on the meaning we give to our free hours. Speaking to crowds protesting against plans to raise the retirement age to 64, French left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon said we should not merchandise our lifetime. I do agree, but should we conclude we just need more “private time”, as Mélenchon calls it?

We should also resist the privatisation of time: we are deserting cinemas and shared cultural experiences because everyone has their own Netflix. We are no longer joining parties because politicians have given up representing us. Instead of going to restaurants, we order meals with an app. Do you feel freer or lonelier? Let’s take back our time together. Let’s go back to union meetings. Let’s take back politics. Let’s get angry about climate change. Time is worth nothing if we don’t take back hope.

“Rather than make this banner, I’d rather prepare a lesson. I can’t afford to go on strike and not get paid. But I can’t afford to not strike in the long term either.”

These are the slogans held up by a teacher on strike for almost a month, showing the dilemmas faced by frontline workers in the Romanian education system.

The majority of teachers are so underpaid they are forced to take second or third jobs. Often, they work as a maths or biology teacher in the morning, and deliver food on a bicycle in the afternoon. That is why the biggest teachers’ strike in 20 years, which involved 300,000 people, kicked off in May. The strike was halted in mid-June, when the government partially accepted the demands.

Prison workers have also stopped work for higher pay, and health workers have gone on a Japanese strike in recent days, wearing a white stripe as a sign of protest.

Zemorda Khelifi, a member of green party Europe Ecologie les Verts (Europe Ecology The Greens), is vice-president of the Lyon metropolitan authority. From September, more than half of the city’s 9,600 local civil servants will be able to adopt the four-day week, if they wish.

Why has the Lyon metropolitan authority decided to carry out this pilot scheme? 
This trial fits in with the way ecologists see society, where quality of life, health and the environment are paramount. Ideally, we would like to reduce working time to a 32-hour week [instead of 36], but that’s out of our control. On the other hand, we hope to make our jobs more attractive at a time when we are finding it hard to recruit.  

What benefits do you hope to gain from a four-day week?
Trials carried out abroad, notably in the UK, Portugal and Iceland, have shown an improvement in the physical and mental health of workers, leading to a reduction in sick leave for employees. This should also have an impact on gender equality in the workplace. 80% of our part-time staff are women. By switching to a four-day week, they will be able to go back to full-time work if they so wish and receive full pay, while retaining a day off.

Doesn’t the inevitable lengthening of the working day run the risk of undermining its intended effect? 
That’s obviously a risk. But it will also make it possible to reduce commuting times, which have risen sharply in recent years. According to a survey we carried out in 2021, 50% of our employees have to travel more than thirty minutes between home and work, and 10% have to travel for longer than an hour. Having an extra day without work should also, at the very least, make up for this. It’s also important to remember that this is a voluntary experiment, and we’ll be assessing its effects and staff satisfaction after six months.

Germany is still divided, at least when it comes to the country’s attitude towards the concept of a four-day week. According to a recent survey 62 percent of the inhabitants of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) oppose a four-day working week on full pay, but with reduced working hours. In the territory of the ex-West Germany, a majority is also against it, but to a lesser extent: only 54 %. 

The most common reason for this scepticism is the fear that it will be too hard for companies to delegate the same duties in fewer hours. Apparently, the experience of the economic model of the GDR or the aftermath of its breakdown have made people more suspicious towards experiments with the organisation of work.

I can remember their fatigue all too well. Our parents’ generation subordinated their entire lives to work. They always filled their free time with a list of activities – partly out of financial necessity, and partly because they could not come up with idea how to spend it. Leisure was seen as something for losers, who didn’t care about anything in life. That is why they, who were the first generation to get a whiff of capitalism, entrusted their lives to money.

Working hard, and overhours, was the only way to get by. Consequently, some of us got to know our parents poorly and still miss them. My peers, people aged 25-30, with different points of view and life experiences, all say the same: their parents worked too long hours, and, when bringing up their children, gave too much emphasis to the importance of achieving financial stability.

For our parents, luxury was constituted by all the preys of juvenile capitalism. To fully enjoy it, one had to play by the rules dictated by the free market economy. On the other hand, our generation is slowly writing our own definition of luxury. Its basic ingredient is not financial freedom, but free time. And how much of it an employer can guarantee us may be the scale which determines the labour market, or even turns it upside down.

The four-day working week becomes an inevitable perspective. It is not a mere whim of a lazy neo-liberal society, but a solution with tangible benefits for companies, bosses, subordinates, the inexorably changing climate and the economy itself. Beyond these categories, there is something else. That one extra day of the weekend is also an opportunity given to the next generation. A chance to no longer miss the chance to see anyone, to have the strength to nurture relationships and build a healthy society.

Helping corrupt officials avoid punishment, “burying” laws, enjoying an inexplicably luxurious lifestyle on his modest state salary are just a few things of which Ukrainian judge Pavlo Vovk is suspected.

In 2010 ― at the age of only 31 ― he headed the District Administrative Court of Kyiv, an entity responsible for solving disputes with state officials and structures. This court decided whether a law adopted by the Ukrainian parliament could be put into practice, or whether a decision to ban a political party financed by Russia was legal. Vovk could influence such cases and, according to state prosecutors, he took advantage of his position.

Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities published several tapped recordings of Vovk’s conversations. They are full of phrases such as “I’m totally for any lawlessness in the Ukrainian court system” and others which imply he can act on the wishes of this or that top politician.

Pavlo Vovk admits these recordings are true. But he says the accusations are no more than an attempt at revenge. Ukrainian anti-corruption bodies are trying to influence the court, because many of the cases they started have been stuck there. When asked why, he said: “I am strong, and the court is independent.”

“Vovk” means “wolf” in Ukrainian, which was a gift for headline writers, who titled articles “Living by wolf rules” or “Wolf justice”. His court was popularly called “the justice shop”. For years, he was notorious and untouchable.

Despite all the hatred, protests and legal suspicions against him, Vovk kept his post until late 2022. Different presidents ― Victor Yanukovych, Petro Poroshenko, Volodymyr Zelenskyy ― answered questions about him and his court with vagueness and a lack of decision. He seemed to be too influential and useful. Finally, on 9 December last year, the USA imposed sanctions on Vovk “for soliciting bribes in return for interfering in judicial and other public processes”. After this, the war-torn and West-dependent Ukrainian state finally gave up Vovk ― by disbanding the court.

Now part of Vovk’s routine is attending hearings against him. These cases are also stuck in the judicial system.