Law & Justice

Turkey has faced significant challenges in achieving democratic governance since the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923. Although Turkey transitioned to democracy in the 1920s, it has experienced setbacks, including recent declines in democracy and moves towards autocracy. Turkish political history differs from its neighbours and Western European countries in that there is a […]

Rather than rake over the current indulge-fest that is the will-they-won’t-they of the Sunak deal with the EU over the Northern Ireland Protocol (although you can read my thoughts elsewhere, here and here), I notice it’s the time of the month to check back in on retained EU law (REUL). Long-standing readers will know that […]

I am participating in the University of Tartu Course “Digitaalse sisuloome alused” (Foundations of digital content creation) from 2 January to 26 February 2023. The participating students received the task to post a link to a website with their uploaded content. I was thinking of posting the link to my blog on Ideas of Europe […]

“We send the EU £350 million a week. Let’s fund our NHS instead” proved an effective – if misleading – slogan for the Leave campaign in the 2016 UK referendum on EU membership. While this may simply suggest a “very British” variety of Euroscepticism, its implications arguably prove further-reaching, with learning for other countries (and […]

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

Despite taking significant steps to comply with the Copenhagen criteria after receiving the candidate-country status in 1999, Turkey has also been undergoing such a process of de-Europeanization, gradually moving away from European norms, values, and policy demands in various policy areas, including gender policy.

Europol’s mission and characteristics The European Union’s (EU) body for law enforcement, Europol, was created in 1999 and has its headquarter in the Netherlands, Den Haag. The agency’s role is to help EU member states in combatting the smuggling of migrants. In that task, the agency is one of the main actors in EU policy-making. In its […]

Brexit has Putin’s fingerprints all over it. We’ve increasingly been suspicious of this for some time, but the evidence is mounting. Motive is the key incentive for any crime. There have never been any benefits for Britain doing Brexit. Not even one. Any apparent motive for leaving the EU was based on a pack of astonishing, […]

If the EU did not exist, it’s highly likely that the countries and continent of Europe would now be in a far worse situation. For hundreds of years, European countries were more used to resolving their differences by violence, war, and subjugation. There was no easy, let alone democratic, means to decide the running and future […]

After the EU referendum, many of us were suspicious about the role of Russia in clinching the narrow ‘win’ for Brexit. Evidence was mounting that there had been deep involvement and interference by Russian ‘agents’ whose aim was to destabilise the EU by enabling Britain’s departure from it. It was no secret that Russia’s Prime Minister/President, […]