Current Affairs

Development assistance funding by international donors is rarely channeled through local actors. While there are strong normative and practical arguments to localize funding (i.e. directly channel funding through local actors), progress has been piecemeal as donors are largely left to their own devices to decide how/when/where and how much to localize.

The publication on Wednesday of a UK Command Paper "Safeguarding the Union" came largely out of the blue. For months the Secretary of State and budding author, Chris Heaton-Harris, has been talking with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) about returning to power-sharing in the Northern Ireland Executive.

The EU's response to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022 has been unprecedented, displaying rare unity among its member states, especially during the first four months following the invasion. The EU agreed on far-reaching economic and financial sanctions, the most severe sanctions ever imposed by the EU on a third country.

My two-day field trip to the United Nations Library & Archives Geneva, funded through a UACES-JMCT Scholarship, had the added benefit of being the site of the long-deceased League of Nations and was truly a wonderful location for one to conduct archival research at.

Globally, 2024 has already been hailed as “the ultimate election year” as citizens in over 60 countries are heading to the polls, including in the US. This year, Europe will see several parliamentary elections but also – of course – the elections to the European Parliament (EP). The latter will take place in the EU […]

On 13 December 2023 the new Polish coalition government, formally known as the ‘Coalition of October 15’, composed of Civic Coalition, The Third Way and New Left, was sworn in.

In late November 2023, Finland temporary closed all its border crossing points with Russia in response to the perceived ‘instrumentalisation of migrants’ by that country. This has been made possible by the recent amendments to the Finnish Border Guard Act that allow for border closure in case of a large influx of migrants, deliberately caused […]

Every year, the Austrian delegation of the European People's Party, a centre-right political group, donates a Christmas tree to the European Parliament. Grown in Mariazell, in the picturesque forests of the Styrian Alps, this carbon-neutral silver fir is transported to Brussels by train and displayed in the European Union's legislature as a symbol of hope and friendship.  

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Dr Nick Startin on euradio.

For our weekly editorial by UACES, the University Association for Contemporary European Studies, we have the pleasure to welcome Adrian Favero, from the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands.