Latest Blog Posts

For most of the UK’s five decades as a member of the European Union, Britain didn’t want to leave. On the contrary, most Brits wanted us to stay. What’s the proof of that? Well, apart from polling over the years, look at governments and general elections. From 1959 to 2016, every UK government and every […]

So, Rishi Sunak has today been crowned the second ‘unelected’ Tory Prime Minister in as many months.  Is the country ‘Ready for Rishi’? Well, the country has no choice. The new Prime Minister has been anointed by just 194 Conservative MPs. We don’t get a say. Although in the UK we don’t directly elect a Prime Minister, […]

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we have the pleasure to welcome again Dr Simona Guerra.

For our weekly "Ideas on Europe" editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we have the pleasure to welcome again Rebecca Dobson Philips, from the University of Sussex, in the UK.

With the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, scholars of EU foreign policy have become increasingly interested in the relationship between populism and foreign policy. Yet, we still know little about what happens to foreign policy institutions when populist parties join governments.

Security assistance is at the forefront of international engagement in “weak” or “fragile” states. Making so-called fragile states secure and stable is viewed by the international community as essential for dealing with the consequences of the transnational and diffuse nature of insecurity such as trafficking of arms, drugs and human beings and to prevent their […]

In her EU3D-funded master’s thesis, Marte Christophersen Haugen explored how Brussels offices representing regions work and interact at the European level. The results show that being from a non-member state or a geographical periphery does not hinder regions’ activity in Brussels. What matters, Marte argues, is a proactive presence and active networking as well as […]

Power politics is back with Russia and China challenging Western primacy in the arenas of international economy and politics, while threatening the Western-based liberal order. At the same time, Russia’s war on Ukraine has proven that countries across the global South are not bound to the West anymore. It became clear that these states reject […]

New British Prime Minister, Liz Truss, demanded that ‘no EU flags’ should be shown at the Prague meeting of European leaders on Thursday 6 October 2022. EU news website EURACTIV reported that the flags were kept away from the inaugural European Political Community summit at the demand of Ms Truss and the UK delegation. The […]

“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 […]