Latest Blog Posts

In most historiographic accounts of European integration, the Maastricht Treaty marks an important step forward on “the long road to unity”.

As COVID-19 gripped the globe in March 2020, politicians suddenly started discussing the EU’s trade policies in a way that would have been deemed lunacy just a few months earlier.

Ever since Hungary and Poland started backsliding on democracy and the rule of law in 2010 and 2015 respectively, academics and practitioners alike have racked their brains over one central question: How can the European Union make noncompliant governments enforce European core values such as democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights?

This article argues that soft balancing offers a useful framework to interpret the EU’s approach, as well as to reconcile its geopolitical narrative with its lack of hard security instruments, and its self-perception as a principled security actor.

In recent years, political debate in many European countries and across the Atlantic has been characterised by the rise of populism, appeals to identity politics and frequent recourse to political myths.

With support from the UACES Microgrant, I was able to cover the cost associated with participating in the Central and East European International Studies Association (CEEISA) 2022 Bratislava Convention.

COVID-19 put health policy in the European Union (EU) high up on the political agenda. Since the pandemic hit Europe, heads of states, health ministers and experts have increased their collaborative efforts to mitigate its effects. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen announced closer collaboration among EU countries to “work together to detect, prepare and respond collectively” and proposed a stronger European Health Union.

What issue takes most of political representatives’ time and attention? Agenda-setting is important because there is no further political debate, policy formulation or decision over a particular issue without this stage of policymaking.

Anna-Lena Rüland The world has seen a fair share of democratic backsliding in recent years, for example in countries like Turkey, the Philippines and Russia. Science diplomacy is often seen as a means to continue some sort of engagement with such regimes. Although it sounds great in theory, we do not yet know how exactly […]

Almost a decade after the last major reform of the European fiscal framework, Eurozone decision-makers have recently engaged in a discussion about the revision of fiscal rules. The pandemic is said to have changed the landscape of European economic policymaking. It has forced policymakers to embrace expansionary fiscal policies to address the diminished economic activity […]