Ideas on Europe Blog

©European Union

May 2004 – that is a long time ago! Twenty years is a small step for mankind, but it is a remarkable period for one person. Anyway, I still remember what I did and what the atmosphere was in the society. Why? Because this time was very special, vibrant and unique.

I was about to complete my first year of doctoral studies in the political science programme at Masaryk University. The exact location is important – the faculty was new, established in the late 1990s – there were no real “social sciences” in Czechia before the 1989 Velvet Revolution. Everything had to be built up from scratch – political science and subsequently European studies. So, I remember that even that being admitted to the political science branch, already during the first year I moved – surprise, surprise! – to the newly founded Department of International Relations and European Studies. And started my first research and PhD project there.

Yes, my move was not an accident. Even though I graduated from political science, I was interested in the EU politics already there. My master thesis had been about the EU Council presidency – a detail no one cared about at that time – apart from me!

To be honest – there was no great knowledge on the EU prior to accession. Both the people and the politicians perceived membership as a goal, a potential gate to heaven. Once I read the biblical metaphor of the “EU as the land of milk and honey” – and this is, I think, a very accurate description of the atmosphere in Czech society at the time. The EU was first and foremost perceived as a way to modernize the country. Particularly in economic terms – the EU was seen as a river of quick and easy money that would change everything and would make people richer. There was a dream of having the same salaries as people in Germany, the same living standards. But no one talked about or even mentioned the duties, possible problems or challenges that such a membership inevitably is associated with. Because no one knew, or no one believed this was important.

The years after the accession was a kind of adapting to normality. Seeking for membership in a club is a different thing than being a member. This transformation happened both to Czech society and me personally.

People, as well as the politicians, had to absorb the first shocks. In particular, responsibility and activity – for example, the famous 2009 Czech EU Council Presidency, which the Czech government framed as “giving lectures and lessons to the EU”, but ended with the domestic collapse of the government and the change of prime minister in the middle of the presidency.

Or the famous EU funds which, as they were used in Czechia, quite quickly transformed into “toxic money” associated with corruption, scandals, and frauds. Both the people and the politicians started to realize – very slowly, sometimes without success – that the EU will not etake care of us”. We have to take care of the EU, as we are, more or less, the EU.

For me personally, the process was less dramatic but sometimes painful as well. Being a student and subsequently a young researcher operating mostly in a domestic context is something different than facing the EU context, EU-wide cooperation and EU-wide competition.

In a nutshell: “no pain, no gain!” I think that despite the bumpy road during the 20 years of the Czech EU membership, we are on today on a good track and the country – and I personally – benefit from the membership. It is not just about the new highways or hospitals built across the country. What I see is more cooperation, more communication, more openness and more willingness to take our own responsibilities.

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by Ana E. Juncos, Bristol University and Sophie Vanhoonacker, Maastricht University

EU Strategic autonomy: different trajectories in security and external economic relations

Global shifts in power distribution and successive international crises have challenged key ideas and policies underpinning European Union (EU) external action and led to the formulation of a new narrative in which geopolitical considerations have come back to centre stage. One of the main ideas put forward to deal with the increasingly unstable international environment is strategic autonomy (SA), understood as the capacity of the EU to act independently in realizing its strategic objectives and defending its interests and values. Although the SA concept was born in the security domain, it has gathered pace in the field of EU external economic relations. Puzzled by these different trajectories, our recent JCMS contribution  seeks to get a better understanding of why an idea originally born in the area of security and defence has become more embedded in the field of trade and external economic relations. We aim to solve this puzzle by researching the role and power of ideas and how they enable actors to push for policy change in a context of geopolitical uncertainty.

Using the analytical lenses of discursive institutionalism, we examine how policy entrepreneurs took advantage of international developments such as the Presidency of Donald Trump, the Covid-19 pandemic or the war in Ukraine to transform both the cognitive and normative beliefs of actors, and to what extent they have been translated into new EU policies. In a comparative analysis in the domains of EU security and external economic relations, we focus on three dimensions of ideational power: power in, power through and power over to understand the different trajectories of SA in these two policy areas. We argue that the ability of ideational entrepreneurs such as the Commission to push for this idea, supported by the coercive power derived from its exclusive trade competences, facilitated the adoption of this concept in the form of ‘open strategic autonomy’. By contrast, French President Emmanuel Macron was unable to persuade others to move towards a more sovereigntist conception of SA in the area of security and defence. Only in the case of defence capability development, where the Commission enjoys budgetary power and competences in industrial policy, has SA been able to take hold.

Hegemonic discourses – Power in Ideas

As a first step, we look into how the SA concept relates to prevalent hegemonic ideas at the EU level. While our analysis of EU strategic documents shows that the SA discourse indeed has challenged the predominant philosophies on how to best guarantee the Union’s prosperity in a rapidly changing geopolitical and geoeconomic context, it is still too early to speak of a paradigmatic change. The deeply ingrained neoliberal paradigm and the continuing controversies between Atlanticists and Europeanists have proven to be quite resilient. For instance, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been perceived by Atlanticists as clear example of the continued need to rely on NATO for defence and to maintain the close political and security ties with the US. By contrasts, the Europeanist camp has argued that the war in Ukraine has drawn attention to the weaknesses and dependencies of EU member states in matters of defence and the need to address those by strengthening SA. Hence, the ambiguity surrounding the concept remains.

Discursive Entrepreneurs – Power through ideas
The launching of new ideas is always accompanied with discursive interactions and struggles about the definition of problems and their possible solutions. In security and defence, we argue that the French President Macron, who has been the key discursive entrepreneur, did not manage to persuade others to follow a more sovereigntist understanding of SA. In line with French strategic thinking, President Macron has repeatedly emphasized the need for the EU to strengthen its capacity to defend itself and to act independently from others. Yet, other member states, particularly Central and Eastern European countries, have rejected this notion. This is well illustrated in the 2022 Strategic Compass with its emphasis on partnerships, but also explicitly noting that NATO ‘remains the foundation of collective defence for its members’. By contrast, in the area of trade, the European Commission has been more successful. Although the member states were also divided in the field of external economic relations, DG Trade cleverly coined the term Open Strategic Autonomy (OSA). This helped to build a bridge between those favouring a more protective EU approach and the so-called ‘friends of the internal market’.

Authority and Competences – Power over Ideas

As a third step, we examine the coercive capacity of policy entrepreneurs, i.e. the resources and/or competences that those actors have within a particular institutional context. Here our comparative analysis shows that in security and defence, where supranational institutions are relatively weak and every member state is a potential veto player, it has been more difficult to impose new ideas than in external economic relations, where national capitals have delegated competences to the EU. Despite several discussions at the highest political level, the member states did not manage to reach consensus on what to understand under SA in the security field. In the area of external economic relations on the contrary, a well-resourced  DG Trade did not only develop a new Trade Policy Review (2021) but also managed to move ahead with developing a whole range of new trade instruments aimed at promoting sustainable value chains, supporting the EU’s regulatory impact, enforcing trade agreements and ensuring a level playing field.

What have we learned?
Our comparative analysis shows that to understand the different success rates of the SA concept in the area of security and external economic relations, it does not suffice to merely study the external drivers of the EU’s geopolitical turn. We demonstrate that it is also important to pay attention to internal factors, such as the role of ideas. The study of discursive struggles about dominant paradigms, the role of policy entrepreneurs and their authority and competences is indispensable to better understand the EU response to the rapidly changing international context.

We conclude that although the debate about the reformulation of security and external economic policies took place in parallel, over time we have seen a ‘security logic’ being transposed to the EU’s external economic policies. Whilst the convergence of the two debates could positively impact coherence, it also brings risks. If one of the biggest defenders of free trade and multilateralism is increasingly reverting to a sovereigntist discourse and a policy of relative gains, this may negatively impact the openness of the global trade system and the EU’s international influence.

Ana E. Juncos is Professor European Politics at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol. Her primary research interest lies in European foreign and security policy, with a particular focus on EU conflict prevention and peacebuiding.

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.

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That’s right, and this second battle is a serious test for the promotion of democracy, not least in the post-war context.

However, measuring corruption’s impact and the success of reforms is notoriously difficult. What does, for instance, the revelation of corruption cases mean? Does it mean that corruption has become more widespread? Or does it mean that anti-corruption institutions have started to work more efficiently? There is a crucial need to distinguish facts from perception.

It begins with the realization that policy makers in systems that are characterized by large-scale corruption have rarely an incentive to conduct reforms on their own. The EU’s mission to promote such reforms revealed a certain divergence within its own ranks: there are Realists and Idealists, and each group has its own definition of success and method of evaluation.

The Realists, emphasizing geopolitical stability, caution against vocal criticism of reform failures, fearing it might bolster counter-narratives. For them, the sole existence of anti-corruption institutions is sufficient to speak of a success of their “reform advice”.

Idealists, on the other hand, view institutional reforms as the bedrock of geopolitical strength and the most potent weapon in the ongoing conflict with Russia. As a result, they call for openly addressing shortcomings of local anti-corruption institutions and see only the processing and conviction rate of corruption cases as a sufficient measure to speak of success.

This antagonism reveals the complexity of internal assessments. The dominance of the realist camp in the EU explains the way in which the EU approached reforms in Ukraine and the corresponding language of official documents, which lacked consistency and clear yardsticks over the years.

The multifaceted nature of resistance to reform was visible in 2020, with the Constitutional Court ruling on asset declaration transparency, no doubt the most important backsliding event during President Zelensky’s tenure.

Traditional views see backsliding as a phenomenon driven by the executive. But this case unveils a whole network of opposition spanning the judiciary and the legislature, which the executive later used for its own benefit. That’s when coalitions between Western actors and the Ukrainian civil society become essential. The battle against corruption demands a decentralized, collective front, which can bring about actual results by incentivising policy makers to become active.

The insights from recent years clearly advocate for a shift from passive declarations to active, committed engagement in real anti-corruption efforts conducted by Western actors.

This also touches upon the current debate on transferring Russian frozen assets to Ukraine. This approach might bring about moral hazard: Western actors might be tempted to disengage in the reconstruction due to the “easy fix” of these assets. Instead, these assets should serve as a partial refund mechanism for Western reconstruction aid given to Ukraine, which must, however, be conditional upon meeting institutional benchmarks first that would be elaborated and monitored together with Ukrainian civil society. This would bind Western actors to truly commit to good institutional outcomes in Ukraine and use their leverage to push policymakers in Kyiv to conduct the necessary reforms.

The integration of internal and external actors from the onset: any internal reform drive must be supercharged with external pressure to sustain it. The challenge hereby lies not only in implementing anti-corruption measures formally, but also in crafting a cohesive and realistic assessment of factual progress, one that bridges the gap between theoretical ambition and practical achievement.

The path to meaningful reform is fraught with challenges but illuminated by the potential for profound, transformative change. The insights received from Ukraine’s experience can serve as a beacon for future post-war reform efforts, guiding policymakers and international actors towards more effective cooperative reform strategies.

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© European Union 2024 – Source : EP

Whether these elections matter is a great question and one that often gets asked.

45 years after the first direct elections, it is still a key problem for the European Parliament that most people don’t know much about what it actually does. Instead, their main reference point is national politics.

As a result, many people vote to express their views about their national government’s performance, or to express their more instinctive political views. And many think there’s no real consequence: if you consider the European Parliament doesn’t do anything important, it’s your chance to get your general view, or simply your discontent out there.

Of course, you and I, Laurence, aren’t going to make the same mistake, because we both know that these elections do have consequences.

To start with, it’s up to them to approve the formation of the new European Commission. Even if everyone expects right now that Ursula Von Der Leyen will most likely continue for another 5 years, she still has to get the votes of a majority of those MEPs, as will all of the other 26 Commissioners of her team. Given that she has raised various question marks over the past five years, this might not be as simple as it appears.

Secondly, the fields in which MEPs get to co-legislate cover a very wide range nowadays, from regional development to agricultural spending, from environmental protection to international development, so your choice at the ballot box really counts.

And finally, MEPs help to hold the rest of the Union to account. The Parliament’s committees can scrutinise the work of other institutions and invite individuals to give evidence. By holding up a mirror to the EU’s work, they can improve the quality and legitimacy of what it does.

The centre-right EPP group, with lead candidate Von der Leyen, is set to retain its position as the largest in the new Parliament, bolstered by substantial representation in every member state. On the centre-left, the S&D group will most likely be the second-largest group, making the current ‘grand coalition’ with the EPP and the liberal Renew group quite probable.

However, polls suggest that we are likely to see more critical voices in the Parliament than before. Mostly this comes from the nationalist and eurosceptic right, but also in part from the far left. Remember how I said voters often chose parties as a function of how they see their national government? Well, one consequence of that is that populist rhetoric about how ‘politics is failing’ or ‘all politicians are the same’ gets an outlet here. We see similar kinds of arguments in pretty much every member state.

That’s right. At the same time, perhaps because Brexit was very messy, you hear fewer voices saying that leaving the Union is a good idea, but this doesn’t stop them criticising what the EU does and how it does it. Not without a certain inconsistency: the loudest critics are often the ones whose MEPs are the least present in the daily life of the Parliament.

The problem faced by the European Parliament are very similar to the problems in all democracies. Democracy lives through participation and engagement of citizens with those who make decisions on their behalf. And the first way to engage is to vote.

So the answer to the question whether European elections matter is: voting matters!

My message to the listeners: over the next three months, take a bit of your time to find out more about what parties say they will do for you and remember that your vote will have consequences.

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Let me start with going back to the economic crisis that struck the world in 2008. This crisis revealed deeper problems plaguing representative democracies and party politics, but also effected a profound change in EU member states’ political and economic systems.

One of the consequences has been the emergence of a new type of parties, movements and political leaders. These new parties are using appeals to both populism and technocracy, sometimes intertwining the two, as strategies to gain, hold and exercise power on behalf of ‘the people’. Their logic exploits what can be called clashes of sovereignty at the nation-state level.

Research has discussed EU democratic legitimacy from several different viewpoints. Some scholars have examined the transfer of key policy competencies in economic governance to the supranational level, especially since the Maastricht Treaty. In principle, national parliaments are supposed to exercise surveillance and accountability, on this share of authority, especially in economic policy, in order to provide legitimacy to democratic decisions, which should represent citizens’ interests.

The question is how well-equipped national parliaments are to do so. Their role has been changing, and the EU integration project has contributed to these transformations.

As a result, political systems and political parties are struggling to institutionalise popular sovereignty. In political science, this situation is best contextualized in a conflicts of sovereignty framework analysis. The framework identifies three main types of sovereignty conflicts: foundational, institutional, and territorial. What we are currently witnessing in Europe is an institutional conflict over where final authority lies.

Yes. In some other cases, it can also be between constitutional and popular sovereignty.

What these conflicts have in common is that they all came to the fore during the EU debt crisis in Southern and Eastern Europe. Events in Greece, Slovenia, Italy and Bulgaria, for example, show the degree to which institutional conflict has weakened the ‘institutionalization’ of political competition, and created a fertile ground for what is called a technopopulist logic – a new concept that describes a new way of doing politics.

The EU economic crisis was not only about clashes of sovereignty between the Troika and EU debt countries. It was also about how popular sovereignty is exercised within the EU, and it was underlaid by a crisis in party politics. All this results in different institutional conflicts of sovereignty.

Some European countries responded to citizens’ calls for more democracy by holding referenda. Many people think referenda enhance direct democracy because citizens can voice their opinions directly on a specific matter.

In Greece and Slovenia, states ignored demands for popular referenda. Instead, they introduced measures supported by supranational technocratic executives. Bulgaria and Italy organised two referenda to reform the institution of parliament. Both failed, but have substantially weakened parliaments in the face of national executives.

In all four countries, the clash between popular and parliamentary sovereignty has paved the way for “technopopulism”, and for the rise of political parties, movements and leaders, which combine appeals to populism and appeals to technocracy, to win elections. Both appeals, combined or not, constitute a challenge to traditional representative democracy.

The management of the Euro crisis brought politicians to pass policies through weak parliaments while at the same time invoking popular sovereignty to weaken parliaments even further.

Not in the immediate. Popular and parliamentary sovereignty remains trapped in a technopopulist loop, which not only reflects the new conflicts of sovereignty but exacerbates them, leading to an ongoing crisis and challenging pluralistic forms of representative democracy. It will be difficult to break the loop that reinforces the tendency of government “for the people” rather than “by the people”.

A first text version of this contribution has been published on The Loop, the blog of ECPR, the European Consortium for Political Research.

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A bit of tricky one, this. It partly explains the hiatus in posting of late, although that might also be down to the rubbish weather.

As we move towards a General Election, interest has naturally turned towards what a Labour government might look like and do. And EU policy is a recurring question.

On the one hand, the party played down the issue. It’s not that salient among voters; the party worries its views might dissuade swing voters; and the Conservatives will make full use of an ‘will of the people’ argument on any big changes in relations.

On the other, the relatively distant trading relationship with the EU is a deadweight cost to the economy, instinctive sympathies for close relations exist throughout the party leadership and there’s an incentive to demonstrate how to ‘make Brexit work’ is more than just about tone.

Which leaves observers in a position of some uncertainty.

I have yet to speak to anyone who thinks there is a more developed and ambitious EU policy within the party, awaiting the moment it can be unleashed, presumably after a crushing election victory.

At the same time, the piecemeal and hopeful approach of what we already know appears to be not fully fit for any constructive purpose. As Tim Shipman noted last week, it’s not enough to say that you’re not the Tories and hope everything falls into your lap. Both the EU and its member states have already secured their key objectives in the TCA/WA treaties, so the UK needs to have a more compelling sell if changes are to ensue.

All of which is a prelude to a graphic-in-progress.

Here I’ve try to gather all the public elements of Labour’s EU work in the post-Johnson period. That includes speeches substantively about the subject (although all of these drift off into broader framings to various degrees), policy statements and interactions with relevant people.

It’s a limited overview, since there are various other things going on that I’m aware of, but can’t easily substantiate. However, there’s nothing that suggests any significant divergence from the broad picture presented here: lots of getting-to-know-yous, warm words, but minimal policy development beyond that.

At a guess, the intention is to get a few (relatively) simple wins – on SPS, on security – and then to leave more involved options for the fabled second term. Of course, those more involved options are also the ones that need more time to negotiate, so whether anything significant could be wrapped up in time is a moot point right now.

But that is to miss the wider point, namely that while there is an agenda of strengthening the UK’s profile as a key partner, within which EU relations sit, the starting point is one of minimising spending of political capital, rather than a strategically-grounded reassessment.

That’s understandable from a political management perspective, but it runs the risk of leaving a Labour government underpreparing for handling any future bumps in the road, foreseen and unforeseen. Just as the Major government found that reactive European policy had its limits in the 1990s, so too might Starmer discover that leaning-in is the less politically-costly option in the long run.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic126

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How to align research and innovation with values, needs and expectations of society? During the past ten years, researchers, policy-makers and funders in Europe have developed and supported the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) approach to address societal aspects of research and innovation early on. This approach aims to go beyond risk management and have a broader focus on the purpose of research and innovation. It involves a range of anticipation, reflection, engagement, and action mechanisms to involve society and foster interdisciplinary collaborations to shape research and innovation towards socially beneficial goals. Importantly, in the RRI approach responsibility does not just refer to responsible conduct of individual researchers but aims to facilitate responsible processes and governance arrangements across the whole research and innovation system.

To build such a system, it is important to provide relevant training opportunities for researchers and stakeholders. Some of the major research funders such as the EU Framework programme and UK research councils have supported the development and delivery of RRI training activities, which play a crucial role in raising awareness and developing culture that puts societal aspects at the core of research and innovation. Two recent collaborative publications in the Journal of Responsible Technology share a number of good practices of RRI training.

Researchers in the EU-funded Human Brain Project (HBP) have developed a dedicated RRI capacity development programme (Ogoh et al 2023). The HBP (2013-2023) was one of the largest international collaborations ever that brought together around 500 researchers from over 100 universities and research centres from some 20 countries. Over ten years, the project received approximately half a billion Euros from the EU Framework Programmes. An integrated RRI team of social scientists and humanities researchers in the HBP worked alongside neuroscientists, computer scientists and engineers.

Continuous collaboration in this case allowed the development of the RRI capacity development programme in close consultation with researchers and stakeholders. The programme included 17 modules on a range of topics such as data governance, dual use, and diversity. Moreover, it developed online training resources, lectures, and videos.

Many participants of online and in-person training were eager to learn about and reflect on societal aspects of their work. Often, they told us that this much needed training has been missing during their university education, which typically had covered ethical aspects rather narrowly in terms of ethics approvals. However, assessing the impact of RRI training is far from straightforward. Counting training sessions and participants as well as reading evaluation forms gives some indication of interest and satisfaction. At the same time, it is much more challenging to assess some of the core aspects of RRI such as reflexivity, changing culture and increased sensitivity towards societal expectations.

In the UK, RRI training is integrated in the centres for doctoral training. A recent editorial (Stahl et al 2023) presents a variety of examples of how RRI training is organized and assessed in the context of these centres. This collaborative publication provides rich information and reflection on aims, content, and challenges of teaching RRI. It addresses questions such as: What kind of skills, attitudes and competencies do researchers need in the context of RRI? Should they be required to have a relatively detailed understanding of methodologies of foresight or public engagement? Or should they rather be willing and able to continuously reflect on and address social and ethical aspects of their own research?

The editorial demonstrates a broad range of approaches and methods to RRI training and assessment across diverse disciplines and universities. While having RRI as part of doctoral training is an important step towards its institutionalization, it is rather limited on its own. To be impactful, it needs to be part of a broader transformation of the research and innovation system including policy, reward system and funding.

Ogoh, G., Akintoye, S., Eke, D., Farisco, M., Fernow, J., Grasenick, K., Guerrero, M., Rosemann, A., Salles, A. & Ulnicane, I. (2023). Developing capabilities for responsible research and innovation (RRI). Journal of Responsible Technology, 15, 100065. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrt.2023.100065

Stahl, B. C., Aicardi, C., Brooks, L., Craigon, P. J., Cunden, M., Burton, S. D., De Heaver, M., De Saille, S., Dolby, S., Dowthwaite, L., Eke, D., Hughes, S., Keene, P., Kuh, V., Portillo, V., Shanley, D., Smallman, M., Smith, M., Stilgoe, J., Ulnicane, I., Wagner, C., & Webb, H. (2023). Assessing responsible innovation training. Journal of Responsible Technology, 16, 100063. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrt.2023.100063

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Original date of publication on the UACES Ideas on Europe platform: 27 January 2016

The grandness of the EU Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy lies in its potential to render the existing conundrum of various EU strategies into a more orderly set of strands with a clear vision regarding their mutually complementary role.

Strategies are inbuilt in EU’s genome. These policy documents define EU’s aims, approaches in tackling challenges and addressing common issues.  EU Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy (hereafter – EUGSFSP) is being designed with an aim to “enable the Union to identify a clear set of objectives and priorities for now and the future. On this basis the European Union can align its tools and instruments to ensure that they have the greatest possible impact”. The EUGSFSP refers to other existing initiatives, which should be streamlined according to the needs of this particular strategy. This short overview of several EU’s strategies is aimed at providing a broader context on how the EU Global Strategy of Foreign and Security Policy fits in the existing conundrum of EU strategies. Consequently, it provides few suggestions for consideration in the context of the EUGSFSP drafting and implementation process.

EU strategies are designed, coordinated and their implementation is overseen by Directorates-General of the European Commission, as well as European External Action Service. It is a common practice that prior to the drafting process a public consultation takes place. Then, during the drafting process of a strategy states come together to identify areas of mutual interest, where they see the added value of a joint action. It could be termed as the “business as usual” practice.

Broadly speaking, these policy documents are being discussed on two levels. The European level encompasses inter-service consultations and public consultations, as well as the European Council and its working groups. The national level is characterised by working groups which gather all national (and in certain cases subnational) entities involved in the implementation of the relevant strategy.

Overall, EU strategies vary in structure, level of details in terms of the implementation process, approach on measuring achievements, as well as vagueness or concreteness of goals. For example, DG MARE coordinates the EU Maritime Security Strategy (hereafter – EUMSS) which excels in its detailed approach towards actions to be pursued. One of DG REGIO’s facilitated strategies is the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (hereafter – EUSBSR), which, as its name suggests, has a regional focus and is characterised by broad descriptions of policy areas, getting closer to implementation once the flagship projects are explained. The European External Action Service is leading the EU Central Asia Strategy, which since 2007 defines a tailored approach to each of the five countries involved. These are just three examples of a much wider pool of EU strategies dedicated to regional matters or a specific policy area.

The reason why EU strategies are described as a conundrum is that they are far from being unique in terms of issues they are addressing and geographic areas they are aiming at covering. Here are few examples of overlapping responsibilities. Both the EUMSS and the EUSBSR aim at strengthening the cross-sectoral cooperation and synergies between information, capabilities and systems of various authorities in domains of maritime surveillance, preparedness for emergency situations and marine pollution. Moreover, the EUMSS has its own external dimension (called “Workstrand 1”), which defines actions to be undertaken in cooperation with the third parties. Similarly, EUSBSR encompasses cooperation with non-EU countries. In addition, the Strategic Review “The European Union in a changing global environment: A more connected, contested and complex world” covers regions which have already their specific EU strategies in place, such as the previously mentioned EU Central Asia Strategy.

Why is it worth pointing out these commonalities? The success of EU tools and instruments lies in their complementary nature. When it comes to the EUGSFSP, it would be advisable to go beyond the “business as usual” practice outlined above and render the existing EU strategic conundrum in a more orderly jigsaw. Namely, the EUGSFSP would explain the role of other relevant EU strategies and clarify their unique contribution to attaining the EUGSFSP goals. Such an approach would also help to pool the existing expertise for more coordinated actions and streamline initiatives taken under various EU frameworks, as well as avoid duplication of activities.

However, such an endeavour demands additional coordination of input and effort both from European and national levels. On the European level, it requires brainstorming regarding the future inter-service coordination of various strategies in order to increase the overall awareness of various EU strategies among different divisions of EU institutions. On the national level, it requires extended consultations. These discussions should not be limited to the so-called “usual suspects”, such as authorities dealing with foreign affairs, defence and military matters. It should incorporate inputs from other governmental bodies involved in the national steering of different EU strategies. All in all, if the EUGSFSP really is aimed at being grand, these suggestions might help to render the EUGSFSP impressive and overarching not only in words but also enshrine it in its nature and scope.

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Original date of publication on the UACES Ideas on Europe platform: 11 April 2016

Do you have at work one of these lovely collaborative brainstorming boards? I do. Here is my inspirational (inspirational / management) quote. In short, I have taken the liberty to add a new twist to the widely used Altshuler’s quote.

The impressive photo of F-22 was retrieved from Defense Industry Daily.

In case you find this collage inspirational and worth having in your office area, then feel free to download the JPG file.

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Original date of publication on the UACES Ideas on Europe platform: 15 October 2019

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Foreword

The outlined science diplomacy research project is presented with a full appreciation of Adler-Nissen’s concise observation that ‘over the last 50 years, European states have come to view their nations as anchored so deeply within the institutions of the EU that their diplomats merge the promotion of national interests with those of the Union and states begin to speak with one voice’. ‘Science diplomacy’ is a term coined approximately ten years ago in order to launch a more in-depth discussion on the relations between science and diplomacy in shaping international ties. European Union (EU) is no stranger to science diplomacy. However, the overall pool of scholarly examined case studies remains rather thin. There is room for more insight into how individuals in various professional circles practice science diplomacy. This article provides an outline of how an analysis dedicated to the EU science diplomacy in the Southern Neighbourhood with a particular focus on Morroco (MA) and Tunisia (TN) throughout the time frame of 2014 – 2017 would contribute to the overall examination of science diplomacy, as well as establish ties to other topical theoretical strands of EU studies.

Science Diplomacy as a Component of the EU’s Structural Diplomacy

Since science diplomacy is not a term which would be widely integrated into the EU documents, the practices of this form of diplomacy, including those that are sometimes described as ‘public diplomacy’ or ‘academic exchange’ become the logic subjects for further examination. The implicit science diplomacy is understood as policies and implementation measures which are not called ‘science diplomacy’ but correspond to the basic definition of one of the three taxonomies of science diplomacy. ‘Diplomacy for science’, meaning, diplomacy exerted to establish cooperation agreements either between governments or certain institutions allowing one or several of the parties involved to benefit from ‘foreign science and technology capacity in order to improve the national capacity’ (Šime, 2018, p. 4; Van Langenhove, 2017, p. 8), is worth exploring in the European Southern Neighbourhood Policy context throughout the selected time frame of 2014-2017.

The novelty of such a choice or research project is its endeavour to enrich both the academic and policy expert thinking on the evolving ‘diplomacy for science’ understanding in the EU setting and embed it in a wider theoretical framework of structural diplomacy. In order to acquire a more nuanced understanding how the institutional set-up influences the perspectives of EU-based actors towards cooperation with the peer institutions located in the selected countries the actor-centered institutionalism is chosen as another theoretical building block. It implies analysing activities of certain entities as the causal link between macro-level processes and the governance regulations (Marks, 1996, p. 23).

Structural diplomacy, being an instrument of structural foreign policy, is a process of dialogue and negotiation by which actors in a system seek to influence or shape sustainable structures in the various sectors in a specific geographical area (Keukeleire & Justaert, 2010, p. 3; Keukeleire, Keuleers, & Raube, 2016, p. 200). Structural diplomacy and structural foreign policy are worth employing, firstly, due to a full appreciation of the funding schemes managed by key institutions representing the EU (namely, the sectoral Directorates-General of the European Commission), which ensure practical implementation of its defined external relations, such as the multilateral or bilateral agreements, corresponding funding programmes (Keukeleire, 2003, pp. 31-32, 49-50).

Secondly, the choice of structural foreign policy is motivated also by the acknowledgement that it is implemented with milieu goals (Keukeleire, 2003, p. 46) or endogenous local contexts (Keukeleire & Delreux, 2014, p. 30; Keukeleire & Justaert, 2010, p. 8; Keukeleire et al., 2016, p. 204) in mind, associated with support for evolution of long-term structural changes with permanent results (Keukeleire & Delreux, 2014, p. 28; Keukeleire & Justaert, 2010, p. 3; 2012, p. 2). In the Southern Neighbourhood, as some of the key context-specific traits the efforts directed towards promoting stability (Börzel & Lebanidze, 2017, p. 23) and state-building (Börzel & van Hüllen, 2011, p. 6) should be mentioned.

The research project is not preoccupied with the earlier identified democratisation-stability dilemma (Börzel, Dandashly, & Risse, 2015, p. 7; Börzel & Lebanidze, 2017, p. 23; Börzel & van Hüllen, 2014, p. 1040). Instead it focuses on the stability-enhancing activities stemming from the ‘volatile dynamics of change’ (Bouris & Schumacher, 2017, p. 293), namely, the geopolitical developments which EU’s envisaged ‘ring of well governed countries’ (Barbé & Morillas, 2019, p. 5) or (later on rephrased as) ‘ring of friends’ (Börzel & van Hüllen, 2014, p. 1035) transformed into ‘the ring of fire’ (Blockmans, Kostanyan, Remizov, Slapakova, & Van der Loo, 2017, p. 136; Bouris & Schumacher, 2017, pp. 85-86; Gaub & Popescu, 2015, p. 5), leading to a full awareness about a policy problem and the overall acknowledged urgency to address such instability of the EU neighbourhood via dialogue on certain assistance measures. It is worth adding that the severity of the situation has been commented with even grimmer assessments that the EU’s choice of promoting ‘resilience’ was directed more towards stabilizing ‘itself’ (Barbé & Morillas, 2019, p. 8), thus shifting more towards the internal dimension of the ‘intermestic sphere’ (Bremberg, 2010, p. 170) characterising the Mediterranean space.

Furthermore, due to the continuous instability risks posed by the youth bulges (Gaub, 2019, p. 11), higher education and research sectors are selected from the whole panoply of ‘intermestic affairs’ (Barbé & Morillas, 2019, p. 13) in order to acquire a more nuanced insight into the practical developments supporting the above discussed policy goals.

Mare Nostrum’s Community of Practices

The proposed science diplomacy research project follows the whims of the ‘practice turn’ in EU studies (Adler-Nissen, 2016). It supports the arguments of Adler-Nissen and Didier Bigo (2011, p. 251) about Bourdieu’s relevance in exploring the individuals as ‘liaison agents’ who shape the characteristics of international ties by mediating and refracting elite policies (Adler-Nissen, 2016, p. 11). Thus, the aim is to look beyond the elite diplomatic circles in order to explore how the high-level discourses are echoed in the working-level routines of EU funded higher education and research cooperation.

The theoretical configuration taps into an earlier identified potential of new institutionalism to offer theoretical integration opportunities (Scharpf, 2000, p. 762). Due to the fact that both structural diplomacy and actor-centered institutionalism have several commonalities with most reflections on the future EU ‘diplomacy for science’, stronger ties to both schools of thought would allow accelerating the conceptual honing of this strand of the EU science diplomacy. In addition, adding a practice theory theoretical component to this constellation tallies well with the focus on implicit science diplomacy developments following the actor-centered institutionalism’s approach to ‘interaction-oriented policy research’, where ‘actors and their interacting choices, rather than institutions are assumed to be the proximate causes of policy responses’ (Scharpf, 2000, p. 764). The conscious or unconscious practitioner of science diplomacy is placed in the limelight.

Communities of practice are understood as ‘like-minded groups of practitioners who are informally as well as contextually bound by a shared interest in learning and applying a common practice’ (Bremberg, Sonnsjö, & Mobjörk, 2019, p. 626). Thus, the research project is founded on a theoretical assumption that EU funded project managers share certain common traits in their working habits which are aligned with the requirements defined by the EU funding schemes. The research project seeks to draw some generalisations what such a community of practice delivers vis-à-vis the overarching goals set in the key policy documents.

Scoping the Empirical Field

In Bourdieusian terms, the EU is considered as the transnational field which is characterised by certain permanent institutions (Bigo, 2011, p. 248) – Directorates-General of the European Commission and other services – which through the funding programmes (as the practical implementation means of the EU strategic frameworks) creates certain ad-hoc institutions – projects – aimed at accomplishing specific tasks by a defined set of consortium members within a limited time frame.

In order to render the empirical examination comprehensive, yet not too vague or overstretched, the roles of four EU institutions – European External Action Service (EEAS), Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD), Directorate-General for Education and Culture (DG EAC), Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR) – would be put under the magnifying glass in terms of exploring the projects funded by their overseen programmes. Those would be the EU-MA and EU-TN Annual Action Programmes overseen by DG NEAR (as integral parts of the European Neighbourhood Instrument 2014-2017), Erasmus+ of DG EAC and the Framework Programme administered by DG RTD. Projects’ coordinators are the selected community whose practices in terms of perspectives on and experience in cooperation with MA&TN-based institutions are worth exploring in order to get a better understanding what judgements and lessons learnt form certain basis of the EU ties with the EU Southern Neighbourhood in higher education and research sectors.

The outlined EU institutions would be analysed with an awareness of one policy area requiring the engagement of several Directorates-General (Glover & Müller, 2015, p. 33; Šime, 2018, pp. 10-11), which does not necessarily translate into frequent policy innovations and new policy constellations due to the overall policy inertia and a general preference of status quo characterising multi-actor policy systems (Scharpf, 2000, pp. 768-769). Since none of the four EU institutions has been tasked to pursue science diplomacy, let alone diplomacy for science, the chosen conceptual constellation allows elaborating on the EU’s multiple voices (da Conceição-Heldt & Meunier, 2014), namely, what role EU-based research and higher education institutions acting as Lead Partners or Coordinators of EU funded projects play in the overall EU implicit science diplomacy exerted in relations with MA&TN throughout 2014-2017.

Priorities of EU Institutions in Short

The DG NEAR’s European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI) 2014-2017 defines three priority sectors, none of which entail clear references to research, science or innovation. The EU puts emphasis on ‘socio-economic reforms for an inclusive growth, competitiveness and integration; strengthening fundamental elements of democracy; sustainable regional and local development’ (European Commission, 2018). The thematic focus of the EEAS on building the societal resilience in the European Southern Neighbourhood and DG NEAR pursued three priority sectors are not treated as the EU dialogue and practical cooperation with MA&TN lacking any component of science, research or innovation.

The leverage to such lack of domain-specific prominence is DG RTD and DG EAC continuous engagement of MA&TN in initiatives funded by the Framework Programmes and Erasmus+. It allows placing the ENI 2014-2017 initiatives and resources allocated to their implementation via EU-MA and EU-TN Annual Action Programmes as the benchmark to test whether research and higher education-related engagements funded by other EU programmes offer more opportunities. Those would be DG RTD’s Framework Programmes’ funded measures, such as BLUEMED and Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions, especially in view of the comparative difference between the chosen cases. Namely, TN is an associated country of Horizon 2020 but MA does not enjoy the same status.

In order to enhance the structural dimension of the empirical analysis, the acquired data on the EU funded projects, where MA&TN are involved would also explore their segmentation, whether certain sciences were benefiting more from the EU offered cooperation and learning of good practices than others, thus potentially contributing more to the capacity building in certain sectors of socioeconomic value to both countries.

Moreover, the depth of analysis would not stop only at the examination of the statistical landscape of project engagements. Through the exploration of Coordinators and Lead Partners’ assessments of the engagement of MA&TN institutions in specific projects, a more nuanced understanding would be obtained about MA&TN capacity of learning and strengthening their research and higher education institutions via project engagement. Therefore, the research project aims at exploring not only the scope and science domain-specific coverage of MA&TN engagement in the EU funded measures, but also to analyse whether the experiences obtained through the implemented projects have been judged by the EU-based managers responsible for the project implementation, namely, to bring tangible benefits in the capacity-building of MA&TN-based research and higher education institutions.

This line of enquiry into the perspectives widely shared among the selected community of practice follows the conceptual logic of diffusion, especially its dependence on recipients, which, along the lines of the bounded rationality, are presumed to follow the ‘instrumental rationality or logic of consequences’ (Börzel & Risse, 2012, p. 5), as active shapers of results (Börzel & Risse, 2012b, p. 204). Thereby, strengthening the research potential and building capacities of research and higher education sectors in the Southern Neighbourhood is not just a matter of the EU’s proactiveness, but also depends on the responsiveness of MA&TN institutions to use the whole set of cooperation opportunities and ensuring the sustainability of project results.

Keeping the Focus on the EU

According to the new institutionalist logic of a bounded rational actor (van Lieshout, 2008, pp. 8-9) pursued along with the established social norms and values (Maggi, 2016, p. 22), the research project would explore what role the EU engagement both in the bilateral and multilateral dialogue on science, cooperation with MA&TN in this domain, play in the overall EU’s attempt to enhance resilience in its southern neighbourhood.

In order to keep a healthy level of focus and nuance ‘the target country perspective’ (Keukeleire & Justaert, 2010, p. 19) and three conceptualisations of alignment (Keukeleire et al., 2016, p. 205) – the value brought by an engagement in the EU funded projects of MA&TN researchers and higher education staff as seen from their own perspective – are kept outside of the scope of this specific suggested analysis. Instead, the emphasis is kept on exploring the perspective of EU-based institutions on their ties with the peer institutions in two selected countries of Southern Neighbourhood.

Methodology

Besides the acquisition of earlier described statistical data on projects implemented throughout 2014-2017 with the financial support of three EU funding schemes, the semi-structured interviews will give a new impetus to the research on the recent rediscovery of the value of Jean Monnet method in Northern Europe in advancing the EU goals (Ekengren, 2018). The selected method of interviews follows, the logic elaborated by Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot: ‘Not only is language the conduit of meaning, which turns practices into the location and engine of social action, but it is itself an enactment of doing in the form of ‘discursive practices’’ (Adler & Pouliot, 2011, p. 6). The interviews serve as a way of exploring how project managers are walking the talk.

Self-censorship and self-legitimation (Adler-Nissen, 2016, p. 15) presented by the interviewed Coordinators and Lead Partners of EU funded projects and their narrated overall contextualisation (Adler-Nissen & Kropp, 2015, p. 164) of MA&TN engagement would be a good source of comparative insight between working-level deliverables and framework goals set in key EU policy documents and promoted among the EU’s high level representatives.

Ready to Look Beyond the ‘Golden Carrot’

To conclude, the outlined science diplomacy research project is crafted to take a fresh look at the earlier findings on the EU Southern Neighbourhood. It avoids the blind following of the assessment of Keukeleire and Justaert (Keukeleire & Justaert, 2012, p. 2), as well as Börzel and her colleagues arguing for the crucial role of the ‘golden carrot’ – EU membership (Börzel & Schimmelfennig, 2017, p. 278; Börzel & Hüllen, 2011, p. 7), namely, that the EU external action has less of an influence vis-à-vis those countries to which it cannot offer EU membership as the ultimate reward. A more nuanced insight into the stabilising efforts exerted via capacity building in higher education and research might offer some new food for thought, whether this assessment is still valid in the contemporary setting.

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Chris Bryant, Labour MP for the Rhondda, was one of them.

Along with 46 other Labour MPs, he defied the 3-line whip imposed by his then party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and voted AGAINST the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill.

From 31 January to 1 February 2017, MPs debated whether to support the Second Reading of the Bill to give the then Prime Minister, Theresa May, the go-ahead to notify the EU of the Article 50 notice-to-leave.

With the support of 182 whipped Labour MPs, the government overwhelmingly won, with a total of 498 MPs voting FOR the Bill, and 114 MPs voting AGAINST.

(The government didn’t need Labour’s support to win the vote, but Labour’s endorsement gave a boost to Theresa May’s Brexit – a Brexit which, at that stage, had no assessments, no details, no plan, and only the endorsement of a mere 37% of the electorate).

Most Parliamentarians before the referendum were against Brexit.

But the referendum result cowed most MPs into supporting Brexit, even though the referendum was supposed to be an advisory poll only.

The referendum itself was a deeply flawed exercise, not only because just 37% of the electorate supported Leave – a percentage which wouldn’t have been sufficient for Brexit to have gone ahead in many other democracies across the world.

But there were also other flaws in the democratic credentials of the referendum result – such as that half the countries of the UK, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, along with Gibraltar, voted strongly to remain in the EU.

In addition, many people directly affected by the outcome of the referendum were refused a vote.

They included around three million citizens from the rest of the EU who had settled in the UK, and over three million Britons living in other parts of the world who were promised a vote, but then the Tory government broke that pledge.

Not to mention that every reason given to leave the EU was based on misleading information, as many more voters now realise and agree.

Today, some seven years later, even some of those 114 MPs who voted against triggering the Article 50 notice-to-quit now accept and support Brexit.

But the public does not.

Polls consistently show that a majority of voters consider Brexit to be a mistake, and they would now vote to rejoin the EU.

• Watch 2-minute video of Chris Bryant’s anti-Brexit speech


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MPs overwhelmingly backed the bill, supported by the Labour leadership under Jeremy Corbyn, by 498 votes FOR, to 114 AGAINST.

Ken Clarke was one of the 114 MPs. He was the ONLY Tory MP to vote against triggering Brexit.

He felt that remaining in the EU was in the country’s best interests, and as an MP, he considered it was his duty to vote accordingly, and to defy his party’s 3-line whip.

He had never felt beholden to the referendum result and in his brilliant speech, delivered with hardly a glance at his notes, he lucidly and persuasively explained why.

Ken Clarke, former Chancellor and leadership contender, is a traditional Tory who – unlike contemporary Conservatives – strongly backed Britain being a member of the European Community.

For over 50 years, he said, his party – the Conservatives – was in favour of the European Union. That suddenly changed, however, on 23 June 2016 with the referendum vote.

But he had not changed in his conviction.

He concluded:

“I personally shall be voting with my conscience content in this vote.

“And when we see what unfolds hereafter as we leave the European Union, I hope the consciences of other Members of Parliament remain equally content.”

How could any MP who voted for Brexit remain content today, witnessing the enormous damage that is now unfolding as a result?

• Watch 10-minute video, ‘The Anti-Brexit Hero’

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Dear Colleagues,

As you’ll know, the UACES office is going through some changes. I will be writing to you shortly to introduce our new Executive Director, but in the meantime I want to give our collective thanks to Melina Dieckgräber, our Digital Communications Manager.

Melina joined four years ago, when we were about to do some significant work on our online and communication presence. Of course, it  turned out we were also about to be spending a lot of time working from home, thanks to Covid. Melina not only adjusted with aplomb, but helped UACES to navigate the online world in ways that continue to enrich our work and (we hope) your experience. Add to that her excellent work in and around our events and it’s clear we’ve had a colleague who’s been a great part of the office and our community.

Melina will be taking up a new post as Communications Manager at Newcastle University, where we wish her the very best in the next stage of her career. She will be moving to the position in mid-February.

Stepping into a new role as Digital Communications and Marketing Officer, I’m delighted to welcome Katie Kilbourne, who many of you will get to meet at our conference in Trento or at the Graduate Forum Conference in Amsterdam in June. Katie’s got lots of experience from the charity sector, and as a European Studies graduate provides us with a handy example of all those transferable skills we teach our students!

And since we don’t do our office staffing changes by half, I can also welcome Sinclair Scotchmere as our new Finance Officer. Sinclair will be working remotely for the office, handling various financial functions, so you probably won’t get to meet him, but you may well see his name around our financial documents.

Ollie Pilkington isn’t left out in all this change, with a new title of Events & Membership Manager to reflect some growth in his responsibilities.

At which point I run out of people in the office. As always on these occasions I am reminded that UACES is exceptionally fortunate to have uniformly brilliant people working for us: I might get the glamour of writing a Chair’s message, but without the people managing and running all the things that you read about in this newsletter that would be meaningless. My deep thanks to the entire team, whether they are coming, going or staying.

Prof Simon Usherwood, UACES Chair

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by Giselle Bosse (Maastricht University)

The EU’s response to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022 has been unprecedented, displaying rare unity among its member states, especially during the first four months following the invasion. The EU agreed on far-reaching economic and financial sanctions, the most severe sanctions ever imposed by the EU on a third country. The EU also provided military support to Ukraine through the European Peace Facility for the first time in its history. In another unprecedented move, the EU has implemented the Temporary Protection Directive, granting Ukrainian nationals and permanent residents the temporary right to live and work in the EU. Moreover, Ukraine and Moldova have been offered EU candidacy status. The EU’s rapid and determined response was unexpected in many ways, given member states’ previously diverging interests vis-à-vis Russia and on security and defense, significant differences on migration, and their general reluctance to expand the Union, or even grant candidate status to applicant countries. In my recent article in JCMS, I examine how the EU’s forceful response on such high-salience and contentious issues can be explained.

What we do(n’t) know so far about the EU’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine

The emerging scholarly debate recognises the unexpected and unprecedented rapid and determined response by the EU to the invasion, but few works examine the factors that facilitated agreement among member states. The main driver of the EU’s response is seen to be the sheer fact of a full-scale military invasion launched on the European continent, and the resulting threat to the fundamentals of European security. Yet, security considerations did not drive the EU’s responses during the first four months following the invasion. The EU’s most powerful member states Germany and France, whose role is considered essential to EU joint action by realist scholars, did not initially perceive the invasion as a direct threat to their national security and were later absorbed in domestic discussions on redefining their national foreign policy, which curtailed their ability to drive the EU’s response.

Approached from a different angle, the EU’s forceful response was possible because of a collective commitment to norms linked to international law and the principles of sovereignty and self-determination. Scholarship on the EU’s response to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea demonstrated that, back then, member states accepted the political and economic costs of sanctions against Russia due to such a collective commitment. These norms were clearly visible again in 2022, as the EU has emphasised Ukraine’s ‘territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence’. However, in contrast to the EU’s ‘soft’ response to Russia’s war against Ukraine in 2014, which did not include broad economic sanctions against Russia, the EU’s response in 2022 was tougher and cost member states substantially more.

Which additional factors may have led the EU to a more rapid and determined response in the first four months following the invasion?

How the EU’s response to the war in 2014 influenced the EU’s response in 2022

Against this background, my article asks in what kind of changed context the EU’s 2022 decisions became meaningful and rational, allowing for agreement to emerge among the member states on a set of unprecedented measures. The article contends that, given the dramatic change in context following the 2022 Russian invasion, key understandings, rationalities and norms invoked by the EU in response to the 2014 war took on new or fundamentally different meanings in 2022, inter alia propelling key actors in the EU to admit to previous misjudgement with regards to justifying policy choices in 2014. In short, I argue that in order to fully understand the EU’s response in 2022, it is essential to look back at how the EU reacted to the Russian war against Ukraine which started back in 2014.

How the ‘rupture’ of the Russian invasion led to changed understandings, rationalities and norms forging consensus among EU member states

The article examines the main lines of argumentation used by key EU actors involved in decision-making on the EU’s responses to Russia’s war against Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 respectively, drawing on 18 semi-structured interviews with high level diplomats from EU member states, the European Commission and the European External Action Service between January and September 2015, and between June and November 2022.

The empirical analysis shows how key understandings, rationalities and norms invoked by the EU in response to the 2014 war took on new or fundamentally different meanings in 2022. For example, in 2022, there was a recognition that 2014 marked the begin of a continuous Russian war against Ukraine, in contrast to the understanding in 2014 that the events presented ‘not a war as such’. The argumentation in 2014 included that any solution to the ‘conflict’ must avoid the risk of escalation by Putin while peace being ‘worth a try’. This argumentation also embedded a number of speech acts vis-à-vis Russia, such as threatening tougher sanctions or isolation in case of further escalation, committing the EU to some further course of action in the event that Putin would choose to further escalate the ‘conflict’ to a war or full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

On this basis, and recalling the need to stay credible in light of the EU’s previous warnings against further escalation by Russia, the European Commission in 2022 successfully generated agreement among member states in favour of tough sanctions. That agreement was inter alia facilitated because the a priori rationality underlying the dominant approach used in 2014, centred on ‘not provoking Putin’ and ‘giving diplomacy a try’, was invalidated by the 2022 invasion. In addition, an invocation of duties towards suffering fellow-Europeans in Ukraine, and the re-conceptualisation of the EU’s spatial identity to include Ukraine as ‘one of us’ (as opposed to the framing as ‘European neighbour’ used in 2014) enabled those actors arguing in favour of unprecedented measures to gain the ‘higher moral ground’ in discussions among the member states.

This is not to deny the clear limitations of the EU’s response in terms of military support or guaranteeing Ukraine’s eventual EU membership. However, considering the EU’s previous enlargement fatigue and that Ukraine is neither (yet) a member of the EU or NATO, the EU’s invocation of moral duties towards Ukraine does constitute a significant change compared to the EU’s previous approach.

Outlook: The gradual withering away of ‘lessons learnt’ and EU moral duties towards Ukraine?

Since June 2022, EU member states have shown increasing signs of disagreement and subsequent sanctions packages have been ‘softened’ by numerous derogations. The decision to open accession negotiations with Ukraine (and Moldova) in December 2023 demonstrated the EU’s continued commitment, but also exposed divisions between the member states, which have also delayed the promised €50 billion funding programme for Ukraine. It remains to be seen in how far the ‘lessons learnt’ in 2014 and the EU’s moral duties towards Ukraine as ‘one of us’ will still play a role in EU foreign policy-making as the ‘rupture effect’ of the Russian invasion gives way to ‘Ukraine fatigue’, amid declining support for Ukraine by European publics, and with the EU’s attention shifting to the Israel-Gaza war.

Giselle Bosse is Associate Professor and Jean Monnet Chair in EU External Relations at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University. Her research focuses on the EU’s Eastern Partnership, EU relations with Ukraine and Belarus, EU democracy promotion and the role of norms and values in EU international relations.

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A year before the EU referendum, I gave a speech at a media conference in Germany. The topic was how some newspapers and politicians in Britain are spreading hatred and lies about migrants and refugees.

I cited the ‘8 Steps to Genocide’ compiled by Genocide Watch and asked if Britain was on Step Three, defined as:

‘One group denies the humanity of the other group.’

I hoped to be wrong.

But today, Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, calls refugees “illegal”. As did all the previous Conservatives Prime Ministers of this millennium.

Conservative Home Secretaries refer to them as an invasion. Katie Hopkins referred to them as cockroaches.

British newspapers – not all, but many – have spent years demonising migrants, whether they’re so-called ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’, embedding a nasty culture of xenophobia into the DNA of the nation (which for sure led to Brexit).

The Daily Mail published a despicable MAC cartoon with an angel apologising to the recently deceased TV star, Cilla Black, for the long queue into heaven caused by ‘illegals.’

They are not ‘illegals’. No human is illegal. They are mostly desperate refugees fleeing from war, torture, and subjugation.

Of the estimated 117 million displaced people in the world today, only a relatively tiny number risk their lives, at huge cost, to get here in makeshift boats. Most often they have compelling and heartbreaking reasons, such as that they already have family here.

Instead of addressing a world-wide refugee crisis, our political leaders prefer to turn the other way and send those refugees away, to yet another unsafe country. But that solves nothing.

If the European Court of Human Rights once again rules against deporting refugees to Rwanda, the government has threatened to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, putting all our human rights at risk.

Claims that ‘legal’ migrants are taking British jobs and reducing wages are entirely unfounded. The truth is that Britain needs millions of migrants because we have millions more jobs than Britons to do them.

Today, I feel Britain is heading in the wrong direction. If we might have been on Step 3 in 2015, on what step is Britain now?

My post here does not in any way suggest that genocide is or will happen in the UK, only that the steps to genocide can be insidious and that, as stated in my video of 2015, the UK might already be on Step 3 of ‘The 8 Steps to Genocide’.  

This is primarily because of the way migrants and refugees are so degraded by the Press and the UK government. Of course, as I stated in my speech, I hoped to be wrong.

Step 3 of the 8 steps does not refer to genocide happening, only how the demeaning of one set of people could lead us in the wrong way. This is a warning from history that we must be careful.

• ‘The 8 Steps to Genocide’ – 13 minute video. 



Those two words summed up the sincere, solemn feeling and resolve of a world shocked, numbed and reeling from the discovery that so many had been so callously rounded up and brutally murdered in what we now call the Holocaust.

Not for anything they had done. But simply for who they were.

Mostly Jews, but also gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled…and others, many others.

Millions. Murdered. With the goal to wipe them out. Men, women, children, babies. Mass murdered. Destroyed. Deleted.

Never again. That was the response. Never again. Never again.

In acknowledgement of the most horrific war and genocide the planet had ever known, the world rallied to find a way forward so that such wicked crimes against humanity could never happen again.

The United Nations. The International Court of Justice. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The European Convention on Human Rights. The European Union.

All established in direct reply to the war, and all to achieve the same aim: peace.

This was the resolve of those who endured and survived the terrible atrocities of the fascist regimes that blighted the planet during the long years of war and madness.

Never again. Those were the words of our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents.
That was the intent of the planet’s leaders following the eventual crushing of the world’s barbarous enemies. Never again.

POST-WAR GENOCIDE

Since the end of the Second World War, the words ‘never again’ have been cast in stone and stamped on our memories. But the atrocities that the post-war generation so sincerely wanted to prevent happening again, have happened again. And again.

Churchill described the mass murders of the Nazi death camps as, ‘A crime without a name’. But it now has a name. It’s genocide.

And it’s a name that’s in frequent use because it’s a crime that’s too frequently committed.

• 8-minute video: ‘Why Britain joined the EU’



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On the contrary, we were grossly misinformed.

Legally, informed consent means that consent has been given with full knowledge of:

• the risks involved,
• the probable consequences,
• and the alternatives.

– During the referendum we were not fully aware of all the risks of Brexit, especially as ‘Leave’ did not define what kind of Brexit we’d get.

– During the referendum who really understood the “probable consequences” of Brexit? Would so many voters have opted for it had they fully realised that it would make us poorer, with increased costs of living, and so many barriers to trade with our nearest and most important neighbours?

– During the referendum we were not told about the different Brexit alternatives. Brexiters were only given the option of one meaningless, undefined word: ‘Leave’.

Because voters didn’t and couldn’t give their informed consent for the Brexit we got after the referendum, one day there will need to be a new democratic opportunity to reconsider the decision to leave the EU.

And when that happens, we need the people to be properly informed, so that next time they can truly give their INFORMED CONSENT.

• Who voted for Theresa May’s Brexit? 3-minute video

• £350m a week – the biggest Brexit lie. 2-minute video

• Newspaper lies and Brexit – 2-minute video

• If only David Cameron said this – 2-minute video

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During the Christmas break, the UK got rid of all its Retained EU Law (REUL). But not really.

The entry into force of the Retained EU Law Act at New Year’s Eve meant that all that “Retained EU Law” got relabelled as “assimilated law”.

As I discussed in my previous post, the Act also resulted in a proscribed list of acts being repealed. This moved things on, but far less than had been the original intent of the Act’s creators.

Now we have a further development, in the first Parliamentary Report on REUL, as mandated by the Act. This fun piece of surveying not only sets out progress, but also – for the first time – planned outcomes.

Before we get to any of this, it’s worth noting the updating of the REUL Dashboard, now in its third year of operation and still throwing up surprises.

Chief among these is the addition of over 1700 further pieces of REUL, taking the total up to 6757. For reference, the original dataset in June 2022 had 2417 items, or 36% of the current total.

The biggest additions in this latest update come at DESNZ, DEFRA, Treasury and DfT. Given this is the sixth occasion that totals have changed, it would be reasonable to assume it won’t be the last time.

However, the new figures show substantially more repeals than I’d anticipated last month (1369 actuals against 906), as well as more amendments (759 actuals against 647) and replacements (39 against 16). Only expirations was lower (62 against 75), which again makes little sense, given the Act shouldn’t have affected this: data errors are the probable cause here.

This means 67% of REUL is unchanged, with another 20% being repealed. As you can see in the two charts below, the Act’s passage is noticeable in the overall pattern of change, especially given the massive movement on overall volume.

We therefore have the somewhat ironic situation that while there has never been more change to REUL/assimilated law, we also have never had more identification of items of REUL/assimilated law, nor more listing of unchanged items (well over 4000).

This is precisely why there had been so much opposition to the Act during its creation: no one could be confident about what this mysterious category actually included, so to automatically sunset ‘everything’ would have undoubtedly produced massive unintended (and likely also not-immediately-noticed) consequences.

This point is a necessary function of the Report too.

Government has now stepped well back politically from trying to get rid of all REUL. One might argue this is just a reflection of technical realities, since it was always very likely that some part of REUL would remain obviously useful, but it is still only now that a more formal (if quietly spoken) statement has spelt that out.

The table below comes from the Report, setting out the end-point vision, wherein about 3000 items will be kept unchanged, another 1000 will be reformed, and over 2000 items revoked or removed.

The table is important for several reasons.

Firstly, it suggests that – barring a small handful of cases – there has been a more systematic evaluation across the piece of what to do. That has not obviously been the case previously when the nominal political objective was to get rid of everything. The test of whether this stands up will come in six months’ time, when the next report arrives: if we again find changes in volume or outcome, then we might be less confident that the datasheet on the Dashboard site holds up.

Secondly, it simultaneously points to continuing confusion. A glance at the categories used here will show that they don’t match those used in the Dashboard, which itself gained the classic “errrm” category of “TBC” this week. While one can argue ‘reforming’ isn’t so different from ‘amending’, ‘replacing’ seems to sit vaguely between ‘reforming’ and ‘removing’, and quite why tax legislation needs its own line is beyond me.

Trivial as this might sound, it does show there still isn’t a consistent language across Whitehall, which will make it that much harder to pursue any systematic agenda. Again, the next Report will tell us more.

All this said, we can now project out to the end of 2026, using the same charts we used earlier.

Again, we note that we end up with more pieces of unchanged (if assimilated) REUL at the end that we originally thought existed, plus the speed of chipping away at the pile will have been pretty consistent across the entire period, whatever the political messaging.

Of course, this all feeds into the question of progressive divergence from the EU, an issue that will become more relevant over time and especially as and when any new British government wants to rebuild ties with the Union.

But maybe we can leave that dilemma for another day.

Full data is, as ever, available here.

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Today, according to numerous polls by different pollsters, Rejoiners outnumber Brexiters by a significant margin – certainly bigger than the small margin for Leave in the referendum.

So, why don’t the Tories or Labour want to offer us, ‘the people’, a new democratic opportunity to reconsider Brexit?

Isn’t it a key purpose of democracy to give voters opportunities to change their minds?

Brexiters say we must wait 40 years for a new vote on Brexit, but that doesn’t make sense.

After the first referendum in 1975 – in which ‘Remain’ won by a landslide – there was another democratic opportunity to vote the UK out of the European Community just eight years later.

It’s now eight years since the 2016 referendum.

• 4-minute video: Brexiters-R-Outnumbered



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My two-day field trip to the United Nations Library & Archives Geneva, funded through a UACES-JMCT Scholarship, had the added benefit of being the site of the long-deceased League of Nations and was truly a wonderful location for one to conduct archival research at.

The research I conducted in Geneva was focused on material from the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). My research project is Scandinavia in Global Politics: Staffing International Organizations and Seeking Influence (1970-2020). Thus, the aim of my trip was to find out more about the Scandinavian states’ (in my thesis this is defined as Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) activities in the two UN sub-agencies stated above in the 1970s and early 1980s.

The archival evidence demonstrated that the Scandinavians, especially Sweden, were the funders of the first resort for ad hoc projects within UNCTAD. The archives also showed that UNCTAD staff were careful to add a gender component to their funding bids in an effort to placate and gain the financial support of the progressive Scandinavians. The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) were also involved in multiple projects to educate and train individuals from the Global South in areas such as Port Management and Industrial Planning and much more than any other Western aid agency within UNCTAD. This ties in with Sweden’s support for the Global South’s New International Economic Order (NIEO) agenda in the 1970s and early 1980s and the pivotal, albeit doomed, role that the Scandinavian states played in supporting the NIEO agenda in the West, especially within the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

In addition, the archives helped to trace the early efforts of the Scandinavian states to combat air pollution, which led to the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP). Altogether, the evidence found at the UN Archives in Geneva has proven vital for the development of my research project (forming the basis for two chapters) and as hugely complemented the several dozen semi-structured interviews I have done with both Scandinavian and non-Scandinavian practitioners.

More about the UACES scholarship: The scholarships are travel bursaries designed to provide mobility to existing postgraduate students so that they can undertake research in another country.

The post My Research at the Archives of The United Nations Office at Geneva – A Field Trip appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The UK government had previously delayed the new Brexit controls five times, concerned about the impact on British businesses.

Since Brexit, the EU already has border controls and checks for imports from Great Britain.

But this doesn’t affect Northern Ireland. Why? Because uniquely Northern Ireland is still in the EU’s Single Market for goods.

Following the Northern Ireland Protocol, amended by the Windsor Framework which came into effect on 1 October 2023, Northern Ireland exclusively enjoys full market access to both GB and the EU.

Whilst England, Scotland and Wales must endure Brexit border controls for goods exported to, and imported from the EU, those controls don’t apply to Northern Ireland.

Last February, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak waxed lyrical about the benefits to Northern Ireland of being in the EU’s Single Market for goods.

Speaking at the Coca-Cola factory in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, Mr Sunak said his new post-Brexit deal put Northern Ireland in an “unbelievably special position”.

The Prime Minister said the new Windsor Framework meant creating “the world’s most exciting economic zone” with international companies “queuing up to invest” in the region.

Mr Sunak said the Windsor Framework means, “Northern Ireland is in the unbelievably special position – unique position in the entire world, European continent – in having privileged access, not just to the UK home market, which is enormous… but also the European Union Single Market.”

“Nobody else has that. No one,” said Mr Sunak. “Only you guys: only here, and that is the prize.”

So enthusiastic was Mr Sunak in his talk to workers in Northern Ireland about the benefits of the EU Single Market that anyone would think he’s an ardent Remainer.

But of all the post-referendum Tory Prime Ministers, Mr Sunak is the most Brexity.

After his effervescent Single Market promotional talk in Northern Ireland, Downing Street was at pains to point out that his comments should not be seen as endorsing EU Single Market benefits for the whole of the UK.

The PM’s spokesman said the British people had made their decision in the referendum in 2016, but Northern Ireland needed access to both the UK and EU markets because of the Good Friday Agreement and “to avoid a border on the island of Ireland, which nobody wants to see.”

Can you spot the flaw?

Mr Sunak wildly enthusing about Single Market benefits for Northern Ireland, but not endorsing those same benefits for the rest of the UK, which must suffer detrimental barriers to trade with the EU, our biggest export and import market in the world.

• 1-minute video: Why Brexit is bonkers

• Related post:  New Brexit border controls

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