European Union

The ability of Europe to remain competitive in the decades ahead will hinge on whether it can guarantee secure and affordable energy that enables its industries to grow, protects households from volatility and strengthens strategic resilience.

Sébastien Lecornu faces a make-or-break moment as he presents his policy agenda and 2026 budget, with looming no-confidence votes and Socialist demands threatening his government’s survival

Fights between governments, shipowners and NGOs supercharges final talks at the IMO

Cell-based burgers have been attracting attention for a while. Now, innovators say fish could be next to make a splash

Várhelyi’s meetings and public appearances are also proceeding as planned

Parliament's internal market committee will vote on whether under 16s should require parental consent for using social media applications on Thursday

The Commission has repeatedly pledged not to pursue the idea at EU level, mindful of potential retaliation from the Trump administration

Poland is updating its pharmaceutical security protocols to protect medicine supplies against regional hybrid attacks

Greek shipping leader warns that the Net-Zero Framework risks undermining the industry’s competitiveness and the IMO’s credibility if it's not revised

Length of video : 90'

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Length of video : 60'

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

The new draft rules would reduce the required amount of sustainability reporting and simplify due diligence requirements for companies.
Committee on Legal Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

The new draft rules would reduce the required amount of sustainability reporting and simplify due diligence requirements for companies.
Committee on Legal Affairs

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

To help air passengers, MEPs suggest maintaining the current right to compensation after a three-hour delay, plus unlocking new rights on free children’s seats and cabin luggage.
Committee on Transport and Tourism

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

To help air passengers, MEPs suggest maintaining the current right to compensation after a three-hour delay, plus unlocking new rights on free children’s seats and cabin luggage.
Committee on Transport and Tourism

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Opinion on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on information security in the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the Union
Committee on Foreign Affairs
David McAllister

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Written by Tim Peters and Jakub Przetacznik with Ana Luisa Melo Almeida.

Updated on 07.10.2025

In response to Russia’s full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine, which started in February 2022, the European Union (EU) and its Member States have provided unprecedented financial, military and humanitarian support to Ukraine. According to European Commission figures, Team Europe, consisting of the EU and its Member States, has made available around €173.5 billion in support to Ukraine. This support encompasses macro-financial assistance, financial support through the Ukraine Facility, humanitarian aid and military assistance from Member States and the European Peace Facility, as well as support to Ukrainian refugees in the EU.

The overall support for Ukraine provided by Team Europe is now larger than the support provided by the United States, except in terms of military support allocation, even though Team Europe has provided 83 % of the tanks and 61 % of the air defence systems given to Ukraine since the start of the full-scale war.

The disbursement of EU payments is conditional on Ukraine implementing the Ukraine Plan – an ambitious reform and investment plan drafted by Ukraine’s government and endorsed by the EU. The G7 have agreed upon a further €45 billion loan, with €18.1 billion of the whole amount to be financed by the EU. For that purpose, a Ukraine Loan Cooperation Mechanism has been established, which uses extraordinary revenues originating from Russian sovereign assets immobilised in the G7 member states to repay loans and associated interest costs. The European Parliament has repeatedly called for a full confiscation of immobilised Russian sovereign assets with the objective of making Russia pay for the destruction it has brought on Ukraine. The European Commission has proposed to use those assets for a ‘reparation loan’ to Ukraine.

Read the complete briefing on ‘State of Play: EU support to Ukraine‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

Team Europe financial, humanitarian and military support for Ukraine, February 2022 to September 2025, in € billion Bilateral and EU budget contributions to Ukraine by EU and non-EU Member States, 2022-2025, in € billion and as a % of GNI

AMENDMENTS 21 - 172 - Draft opinion Amending Regulation (EU) 2024/1348 as regards the establishment of a list of safe countries of origin at Union level
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Marco Tarquinio

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Written by Vasilis Margaras.

Towns and cities are home to nearly three quarters of the EU’s population. Many EU cities and urban areas constitute vibrant spaces of economic growth and innovation. However, they also face multiple challenges, such as building inclusive societies, tackling inequalities, addressing climate change and environmental degradation, and dealing with housing issues and demographic challenges. Cities are at the forefront of implementing EU legislation in several policy areas, including cohesion, and have been demanding a stronger role in shaping these policies and greater access to EU financial resources.

Cohesion policy has a strong urban dimension. Its support for sustainable urban development was reinforced in the current 2021-2027 programming period to help cities take an active role in designing and implementing policy responses to their own challenges. Cohesion funds invest more than €100 billion in towns and cities. For their part, cities are directly responsible for designing and implementing investments worth over €24 billion under the cohesion policy programmes.

The emergence of the Urban Agenda for the EU in 2016 and the beginning of participatory partnerships raised new expectations about the role of urban authorities in the EU decision-making process. The Pact of Amsterdam provided for urban partnerships focusing on key urban themes such as air quality, urban poverty and housing. However, progress in empowering cities within cohesion policy has been limited. Stakeholders evaluating the progress of the Urban Agenda for the EU highlight issues such as limited EU resources channelled to tackling urban issues, obstacles in achieving direct EU funding, a lack of effective long-term urban governance mechanisms in EU policymaking, and limited input of urban areas into EU policies.

Read the complete briefing on ‘A new urban policy agenda for the EU: Addressing cities’ current challenges‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

By Thomas Conzelmann and Sophie Vanhoonacker (Maastricht University, The Netherlands)

Trade and foreign investment have become politicized in the current international system. The unilateral imposition of tariffs across the global economy by the second Trump administration is a good illustration: tariffs are not used to address unfair trade practices but as an instrument to exert political leverage and restructure international relationships. As a large, integrated and open market, the EU is clearly vulnerable to such actions. EU decision-makers have also increasingly become concerned about the takeover of European critical infrastructure and technology champions by third countries. Chinese investments in European ports are a key example. Both developments have led observers to speak of a “geo-economic world” in which the EU must defend its interests and its “economic security” (European Commission, 2024; Herranz-Surrallés et al., 2024).

How can the EU live up to the challenges of this geo-economic world? One response is the adoption of new EU policy instruments such as the EU Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI) and the EU Investment Screening Framework (ISF). The ACI, also referred to as Europe’s ‘trade bazooka’ allows the EU to adopt punitive measures against countries attempting economic coercion. Commission President von der Leyen and French President Macron explicitly mentioned it as one of the European cards in reaction to Trump’s “Liberation Day”. To address vulnerabilities from foreign direct investment (FDI), the ISF establishes common standards and a procedure for the coordination of member state’s screening of FDI that may carry risks for public order and security. The instrument is currently under review (Doppen et al., 2024).

Existing research has studied the evolving discourse around the “economic security” of the EU and the potential effectiveness of new economic security instruments. However, little is known about the institutional consequences of this new development. What does it mean for the EU if the boundaries are blurred between its trade policy, with its strong role for the Commission, and its security policies, with the predominance of the Council? What is the role of the European Parliament? Is a new institutional balance emerging in this field and how can we explain it? These questions are the focus of our recently published research in the Journal of Common Market Studies. We address them by looking at the ACI and the ISF as two prominent new economic security instruments of the EU.

Is a new institutional balance emerging in the EU?

The EU’s institutional balance is an elusive concept. We use it as a descriptive term for the actual balance of powers between the EU institutions. Specifically, we discuss four analytical dimensions, which are the right of initiative, coordination procedures, decision-making, and implementation arrangements laid down in the ACI and the ISF. To assess whether a “new” balance is emerging through these new instruments, we use trade defense instruments under the Common Commercial Policy (CCP) and sanctions under the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) as benchmarks.

Our research shows that in both the ACI and the ISF the roles of Commission and Council overlap along all four analytical dimensions. In both instruments, the right of initiative is shared between the Commission and the member states, and both instruments foresee a close procedural cooperation between both sides. A good example of this is the ISF procedures, in which national authorizing bodies notify ongoing FDI screening cases to the Commission and must take comments by the Commission or other member states into account. When it comes to decision-making, both instruments rely on comitology, albeit with important inroads into Commission competences. In the ACI, a unique format has been agreed, in which the Council, through QMV, has to approve implementing decisions by the Commission. This extraordinary step was the outcome of intensive institutional haggling, and was accompanied by a declaration in which the Commission, the Council, and the EP underline their intention not to set a precedent with these arrangements. Finally, both procedures foresee a joint implementation of decision between the Commission and the member states. The role of the EP, which is a co-legislator in the area of trade, remains limited. Although it played an active role in the adoption of the new instruments, it did not seek to enhance its own role beyond that of being informed.

It is difficult to classify the emerging institutional arrangements in the ACI and ISF as clearly “intergovernmental” or “supranational”. Elements of centralization co-exist with pockets of national control and coordination requirements between the different levels. What we see is a hybrid between the procedures in trade defence and in sanctions respectively, leading to a new institutional balance in a field that will only grow in importance over the coming years.

Explaining the changing institutional balance

We show how these findings are the outcome of different factors. In both the ACI and the ISF, the Commission, the EP, and the member states defended their ‘institutional self-interests’. However, these logics intersected with two other developments. First, the member states in the Council were far from sharing a common position. In both cases, one group of member states pushed for joint gains through supranational coordination and credible deterrent instruments, while others prioritized sovereignty concerns. Second, the actors were clearly aware of the institutional experimentation process they had entered. Questions arose about the compatibility of the new instruments with international legal requirements and the consistency of the EU legal order. The “no precedent” declaration mentioned above that was issued together with the ACI is the clearest example of this.

Who are the winners?

Whether the new institutional balance is a victory for the Commission or for the Council depends on how we look at it. Using the CFSP as a benchmark, some observers see the ACI and the ISF as leading to a consolidation of power in Brussels. In their view, both allow the Commission, and to some extent the EP, to enter the security field, an area of Council competence (Freudlsperger et al., 2024; Vlasiuk Nibe et al., 2024). The new instruments are thus seen as a first step from which the Union can “fail forward” and establish more stringent regulation later (Jones et al. 2021). When taking the usual decision-making process under the CCP as benchmark, both the ACI and the ISF imply decreased powers of the Commission. The member states have made inroads into Commission implementing powers (ACI) and have preserved important national prerogatives (ISF). Our research shows that both these perspectives are one-sided. In reality, the ACI and the ISF are characterized by a complex form of collaboration which cannot be easily pigeonholed either as intergovernmental or supranational. With further economic security instruments currently under consideration (outbound investment, review of the dual-use goods regulation), more debates about the right institutional balance in this area will emerge in the coming years.

Thomas Conzelmann is Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University. His research focuses on the politics of leverage in global affairs and the EU’s policies in a geoeconomic world. https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/t-conzelmann

 

 

Sophie Vanhoonacker is Professor in Administrative Governance at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University. Her research focuses on the institutional aspects of EU External Relations and administrative governance in the area of foreign and security policy. https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/smrl-vanhoonacker

The post The European Union in a geo-economic world: Towards a new inter-institutional balance? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.