Global & International

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.

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.

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 […]

There is a widespread consensus in the literature that the European Union’s (EU) Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) is dominated by the Council of the European Union (hereinafter: the Council) and the European Council. The EU Treaties secure the privileged position of the Member States in this policy area through the Council/European Council and […]

Mitchell Young While, as the name of this blog reflects, knowledge has become a central concern in European policymaking internally, it has not made the same inroads into the EU’s external policy discourses. This neglect of knowledge in the field of international relations is not limited to the EU, but given the European policy context, […]

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we have the pleasure to welcome Miriam Mona Mukalazi, from the University of Düsseldorf, in Germany.

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome John Seaman from the French Institute of International Relations (or IFRI) in Paris.

Inga Ulnicane ‘… Europe is a unique aspiration. […] It is an aspiration of a world full of new technologies and age-old values’, Ursula von der Leyen, then incoming President of the European Commission, wrote in her political guidelines in 2019. Since then questions of new technologies and European values have been at the forefront […]

The question of whether and how Ukraine joins the EU ranks relatively low on the list of priority topics right now, for reasons that are both too obvious and too horrific to discuss right now. However, it is still a question that demands attention. The rapid return of the Commission’s preliminary questionnaire by the Ukrainian […]

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we have the pleasure to welcome again Dr Natasza Styczyńska, from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow.