The EU

Will Berlin finally acknowledge that economics is a social science and not theology? How to escape the pandemic? For some – the Italians Mario Draghi and Paolo Gentiloni or the French Emmanuel Macron and Thierry Breton – the pandemic has called into question the previous economic policy equilibria and so they are asking for the […]

The European Neighbourhood Policy and its Eastern Partnership are key strategic policy frameworks for European Union external action. However, after little effective transformation and many unanticipated consequences, the EU admitted in 2015 that its once prized policy was overly ambitious. In response, it was scaled back to an incentivized reward mechanism for good government behavior, […]

After the referendum, and before Covid, I sat down at one of my favourite eating places to enjoy a vegetarian curry. Hot stuff! But more heated was the discussion that took place afterwards. Brexiters to the left of me; Brexiters to the right of me. I was outnumbered, but I put up a good fight. Here’s […]

As I noted in an earlier post, if the first priority in establishing the Withdrawal Agreement and the Trade & Cooperation Agreement was the legal text, then the second has been their implementation. Part – a very visible part – of that has been the politics of getting that done, from domestic arrangements and infrastructure […]

Introduction The reforms previously introduced aimed to construct a solid political and fiscal union upon enlightened ideological foundations (see Enlightened Europism), creating strong frames for the Republic of the United Europe (or RUE) to introduce a fair and just social system by redefining the role and authority of the state. The capitalist state – mainly […]

Multinationals have taken advantage of tax benefits for a long time. Leading the fight against multinationals, Margrethe Vestager, Vice-President of the European Commission and DG-Competition Commissioner, has been referred to as “Silicon Valley’s dragon slayer”. The idea that large companies can finally be held accountable by Vestager has gained her a worldwide reputation as a […]

As I mentioned last week, the focus so far on the Trade & Cooperation Agreement (and, to a lesser extent, the Withdrawal Agreement) has been on the legal aspects. Part of that has been driven by the growing realisation among non-legal scholars (like me) that there’s not merely a need to read the fine print […]

Today’s political reality of populist movements, geopolitical competition and disinformation has inspired an emerging scholarship on politicisation in EU external policy. Yet most of these recent contributions on EU external policy focus on politicisation processes within the EU. Comparatively, little research has been done on how actors based in and/or representing third countries contribute to […]

Priya Vijaykumar Poojary The current political shifts in the form of increasing populism, the resurgence of nationalism, structural racism, and the pandemic are altering global political environments. These shifts are occurring in tangent with the internationalization of higher education as we witness new regional higher educational models (both intra- and inter) and increasing cross-border academic […]

Welcome to EUatOU, my new blog that continues my previous work at Surrey on EU-UK relations, euroscepticism, Brexit and anything else European-y that takes my attention. I’m now based at the Open University in the Department of Politics and International Studies, as well as the next Chair of UACES from September 2021. But you’ve not […]