Politics & Public Policy

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.

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 […]

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 […]

Opinions on the European Union (EU) cannot easily be put on the commonly used left-right spectrum. Take the Yellow vests, for example, who are explicitly Eurosceptic but do not affiliate themselves with specific political leanings, or take the constituencies of pro-EU parties, who are by far not always enthusiastic about the EU.

This post originally appeared on the UK in a Changing Europe website. As a strapline for Labour’s EU policy, ‘make Brexit work’ has a lot going for it. An echo of ‘get Brexit done’ – which served Boris Johnson and the Conservatives so well in 2019 – it both highlights how un-‘done’ Brexit is, and […]

Dr Marta Hoffman is an assistant professor at Jagiellonian University and, subsidised by EUHealthGov, participated in the 2022 annual conference of the European Consortium for Political Research’s Standing Group on European Union. Below, Marta summarises the core argument made in her presentation, which addressed the relationship between the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe […]

This week’s second reading of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill moves the UK one step closer to a significant aggravation of the relationship with the EU. With no Tories voting against the Bill – partly because it was presented as a technical exercise – the government is pushing on with a faster committee stage. However, […]

Brexit is based on blatant mistruths and lies. Every reason given to leave was a stinking falsification. When, one day, there is a public inquiry into how our country was conned, there will be gasps into how conniving, cunning politicians managed to get away with it. Lies, lies and more lies. That’s how Leave won. […]