The Treaty of Rome in 1957 did not mention industrial policy as a designated Community competence but its preambles declared a high degree of competitiveness an overarching goal, which indirectly laid the basis for a supranational intervention. Industrial policy has been a key pillar in the gradual reconfiguration of several national markets into one giant single market at the outset but it vanished in name during the decades of neoliberal restructuring.
On 23 June 2022, the European Union granted Ukraine and Moldova the coveted status of EU Candidate countries. For both countries, the acquisition of an EU Candidate status amid Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine is of high geopolitical but also symbolic importance. Nevertheless, Ukraine’s and Moldova’s path to EU membership is likely to be thorny, as they have much “homework” to do.
Although an increasing number of political decisions are taken at the European Union (EU) level, national politics remains the prime arena for democratic debate. This deprives the EU of a key source of democratic legitimacy, while showing how national politics are increasingly 'ruling the void'. In my article for JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, I argue that national political parties can provide a solution to both challenges by organisationally linking the national and European levels.
Since the release of the Lisbon Strategy in 2000, fostering science, technology, innovation, and human capital have been considered key ingredients of all subsequent EU strategies aimed at achieving a cohesive and competitive European Union.
As the attention of the European public opinion has turned to Ukraine, it is our duty and responsibility not to leave the accession plans for the Balkans fall into oblivion, writes Marilena Koppa. Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash. Nineteen years after the Thessaloniki Summit that offered an accession perspective to the Western Balkans, the […]
In most historiographic accounts of European integration, the Maastricht Treaty marks an important step forward on “the long road to unity”.
As COVID-19 gripped the globe in March 2020, politicians suddenly started discussing the EU’s trade policies in a way that would have been deemed lunacy just a few months earlier.
Ever since Hungary and Poland started backsliding on democracy and the rule of law in 2010 and 2015 respectively, academics and practitioners alike have racked their brains over one central question: How can the European Union make noncompliant governments enforce European core values such as democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights?
This article argues that soft balancing offers a useful framework to interpret the EU’s approach, as well as to reconcile its geopolitical narrative with its lack of hard security instruments, and its self-perception as a principled security actor.
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.
