Politics & Public Policy

Who sets the European Union’s policy agenda? The complex nature of the EU’s legislative process, combined with the lack of a clear hierarchy among the core EU institutions, means that it is hard to disentangle the policy contributions of different institutions and determine which one is ultimately responsible for the legislative priorities of the Union. […]

Theresa May and the shaping of the Brexit process With the provisional entry into force of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), the dust is far from settled on the Brexit process. And yet the culmination of the formal stages of talks on the terms of withdrawal and the future relationship – however ‘thin’ […]

After several systemic crises in a decade, emergency politics has taken hold in Europe. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and later the Covid-19 pandemic, governments have responded with exceptional measures. Along the way, they have accumulated extraordinary powers. We might be tempted to think that this form of politics is the natural […]

What is resilience and how do different disciplines and fields approach it? What does resilience mean in different sectors? And what does resilience involve in times of global pandemic? These are some of the questions addressed in a new open access book Towards resilient organizations and societies. A cross-sectoral and multidisciplinary perspective, edited by Rómulo Pinheiro, […]

Introduction Supposing that most member states of the current European Union have found a way forward to a political union on the right ideological basis as described previously (see Enlightened Europism), the last act of reformation remaining is to redefine Europe’s role in the world. The Republic of the United Europe (or RUE) must realise […]

Although the new Norwegian government appears more willing to discuss EU-related issues than previous ones, the question of Norway’s EU policy remains ambiguous, argues John Erik Fossum in this blog post.  On September 13, 2021 Norway held its parliamentary elections. In Norway, parliamentary elections take place at fixed dates, at a four-year interval. The total […]

A while back I wrote about the UK’s approach to the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) and Trade & Cooperation Agreement (TCA), arguing that this was driven by a lack of strategic intent, resulting in constant efforts to keep things up in the air. In so doing, the UK aims to avoid falling into any settled pattern […]

In May 2020, following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Commission proposed the creation of a novel recovery instrument, the Next Generation EU, aimed at ensuring a sustainable recovery across the EU. The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) constitutes the most massive area of the Next Generation EU’s resources amounting to €723.8 billion in loans (€385.8 […]

Brexit used to sit on the far side lines of politics. Indeed, the word ‘Brexit’ was only invented in 2012, and until the referendum, most people didn’t know what it meant. (Now it’s in the Oxford English dictionary.) Prior to 2011, tabloids such as the Daily Mail and Daily Express were more fixated on false […]

As part of this blog’s ongoing monitoring of the two treaties, we regularly produce a tracker of meetings of the various bodies that they have set up. These trackers are useful at a number of levels. Firstly, the level of overall activity provides an indication of the vibrancy of the treaty and the extent to […]