Role Of European Union Research Articles

The Arab Spring: Finding Common Ground through Values

This article provides an overview of the European Union's role following the turmoil in the Arab world, which is causing significant changes to the geopolitical balance of power in the Middle East. The article analyses the refashioned European strategy towards its southern neighbourhood, a strategy aimed at promoting sustainable stability and economic development, deep democracy, high standards in human rights, gender equality, social advancement, religious freedom and intercultural dialogue. There is no real and lasting stability without a true community of values.

The European Union as a Leader in International Climate Change Politics

1. Introduction: European Union Political Leadership in International Climate Change Politics, Rudiger K.W. Wurzel and James Connelly 2. The European Union as a Global Environmental Policy Actor: Climate Change, John Vogler 3. The Role of the Commission of the European Union - Creating External Coherence From Internal Diversity, Pamela M. Barnes 4. The European Parliament and Climate Change: From Symbolism to Heroism and Back Again, Charlotte Burns and Neil Carter 5. The Council, the European Council and International Climate Policy: From Symbolic Leadership to Leadership by Example, Sebastian Oberthur and Claire Dupont 6. The United Kingdom: A Paradoxical Leader, Tim Rayner and Andrew Jordan 7. France's Troubled Bids to Climate Leadership, Joseph Szarka 8. German Climate Change Policy: Political and Economic Leadership, Martin Janicke 9. The Netherlands: a Case of 'Cost-Free' Leadership, Duncan Liefferink and Kathrin Birkel 10. Poland's Climate Change Policy Struggle: Greening the East? Karolina Jankowska 11. Spanish, EU and International Climate Change Policies: Download, Catch Up, and Curb Down, Oriol Costa 12. Business: The Elephant in the Room? Wyn Grant 13. Environmental NGOs: Taking a Lead? Rudiger K.W. Wurzel and James Connelly 14. A Green New Deal: Framing U.S. Climate Leadership, Guri Bang and Miranda A. Schreurs 15. Towards a New World Order of Climate Change: China and the European Union's Leadership Ambition Xiudian Dai and Zhiping Diao 16. Conclusion: The European Union's Leadership Role in International Climate Change Politics Reassessed Rudiger K.W. Wurzel and James Connelly

The Future of the EU's Security Role in a Transformed East Asia

This paper starts by arguing that the European Union (EU) had only a very limited role in post-WWII East Asian security because of (1) great power dominance in the region and (2) numerous weaknesses internal to the EU. However, we claim that despite current difficulties the EU’s 'capabilities-expectation gap' is being overcome as the East Asian region is entering a transformation stage. Furthermore, we argue that the EU will continue to strengthen and that its security role in East Asia will increase in the future. The result will likely be that the Union, along with allies, will emerge as a more important actor in some critical regional security issues, including sea-lane protection and the North Korean situation. First, we employ Power Transition Theory to discuss the changing regional power structure - conditioned by the relative decline of U.S. dominance vis-a-vis China - which provides opportunities for the EU to involve itself in East Asian security affairs. We focus particularly on the EU’s ability to promote East Asian regionalization. Second, we show that institutionally the EU is approaching a position wherein it can make greater (although limited) CFSP/CSDP engagements, especially via cooperation with the U.S. and some regionally important countries in East Asia. Moreover, its growing interests in East Asia will compel it to develop a more unified will to use its CFSP/CSDP instruments - in particular those associated with peace-keeping/peace-making and humanitarian operations - and overcome the capabilities-expectation gap.

The European Union's role in the Palestinian Territories: state-building through Security Sector Reform?

The aim of this article is to shed light on the distinctive role of the EU in Security Sector Reform (SSR) in the case of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs) and examine how SSR has contributed to the overall state-building project. Following the Oslo Accords, the EU engaged actively in the state-building project in the OPTs taking a number of initiatives on the ground. Since then security has been a key issue in all Israeli–Palestinian agreements and has also became synonymous with Palestinian statehood. The article draws upon literature on state-building and SSR and its central aim is to examine the distinctive initiatives that the EU has taken in order to help the Palestinian Authority (PA) reform both its security and judiciary sector as part of its broader state-building strategy towards the OPTs, as well as provide explanations on why these policies had limited impact.

European Union State Aid, public subsidies and analogue switch-off/digital switchover

This article considers the European Union's (EU) role in the media and communications field concerning analogue switch-off/digital switchover. It focuses on the EU Competition Directorate's approach concerning the application of the State Aid mechanism with regard to those Member States who have used public subsidies for digital switchover. Therefore, this analysis considers how the Directorate has sought to balance its market-driven set of rules with the need to be adaptable to the Member States' specific requirements. In turn, this account will discuss how the demand to achieve the 2012 completion deadline, alongside the requirement to release analogue spectrum to realize a digital dividend, impacted upon the EU's principles of competition. Finally, this analysis will reflect on how the employment of State Aid in relation to digital switchover refers to a wider debate concerning the EU's neo-liberal agendas against Member States' interests to promote their national cultures.

European Security Policy: Strategic Culture in Operation?

With the Lisbon Treaty in place and the European Union increasingly involved in crisis management and stabilization in places near and far, this Special Issue examines whether European security behaviour is evidence of an actual strategic culture. Contrary to prevailing scholarship on the subject, this volume demonstrates that strategic culture, as an analytical tool and force on European strategic goals and conduct, is far from conclusive. Ostensibly, the development of a security culture was a major lever by which the European Union's principal planning document, the European Security Strategy of 2003, tried to guide the European Union's role in international security. This volume revisits the trajectory of the concept of strategic culture and examines its application in a variety of circumstances, especially operations in Africa and the Balkans, including joint operations with NATO and the United Nations. The contributors to this Special Issue find that strategic culture is a useful tool to understand EU's operations, not in the sense of a ‘cause’, but as a uniquely European normative framework of preferences and constraints. Classical notions of strategic culture must be adapted to highlight the specific evolution of Europe's strategic culture. Though at variance over the extent to which security and defense missions have promoted a shared strategic culture in Europe, the authors in this Special Issue reveal a growing sense that a strategic culture is critical for European ambition as a global actor. Should Europe fail to nurture a shared strategic culture, its ambitions and the normative framework that underpins it will unravel.

The Transition of Egypt in 2011: A New Springtime for the European Neighbourhood Policy?

As we have witnessed in the first few weeks of 2011, the Tunisian and the Egyptian people have promoted a fundamental change in government and leadership within their countries. In the case of Egypt, the direction and likeliness of a deep societal democratization process are still unclear. The role and ability of foreign actors such as the European Union (EU) and its member states to support this process have so far not been shaped into a new political strategy of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). Before the Arab revolutions of 2011, the foreign policy of the EU towards the Mediterranean countries was often characterized by the dilemma between the EU's stability and democratization goals. The change from the EMP to the ENP was assumed to imply a reorientation of EU foreign policy goals from a normative long-term oriented democratization to a strategic short-term stabilization of authoritarian systems on the Southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. This ambivalence of EU foreign policy is due to the environment of authoritarian rule and restrictions it has had to act within during the last few decades. The article will first give an empirical overview of the ENP policy towards Egypt. The empirical results show a multilayer policy of the EU, containing different goals and working with a combination of interest-based and normatively oriented tools. In this respect, the ENP towards Egypt mirrors the ambivalent objectives and ideas of the EU's role in the Southern Mediterranean. Secondly, the article will survey the first EU initiatives and actions after the revolution in Egypt. It will analyse the short-, medium- and long-term steps of the EU to support the starting process of democratic and economic transition and compare them with the existing ENP policies in order to identify commonalities and changes in the EU approach. The normative questions on the democratic power of the EU will be discussed in this context.

The External Legitimacy of the EU in the South Caucasus

This article delves into the external legitimacy of the European Union (EU) in the South Caucasus by analysing the perceptions of the EU's image and role as held by the Armenian, Azeri, and Georgian governments, the public, and political parties. It tests the academic claims regarding the EU's 'difference' by scrutinizing key official documents, drawing on surveys, and relying on in-depth semi-structured interviews. Consequently, it reveals the variations among the three South Caucasian states in terms of their current and potential future visions of the EU. By showing that the Union is seen as comparable to others, like the United States and Russia or intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Council of Europe (CoE), and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), this article ponders on the potential future perception of the Union provided the needs, interests, demands, and aspirations of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Most importantly, it probes into the proportionality of the EU's policy in the South Caucasus, ponders on its ramifications as a result of the boost in its external relations foreseen by the Lisbon Treaty, and offers policy advice for the Union to meet the expectations of its 'neighbours'.

The European Union's ‘Home Affairs’ model and its European neighbours: Beyond the ‘Area of Freedom, Security and Justice’?

Policies and discourses that construct the European Union (EU) as an ‘area of freedom, security and justice’ (AFSJ) present threats to EU citizens as mainly being of cross-border nature. They produce a binary opposition of a safe ‘inside’ (that is the EU territory) set against an unstable and threatening ‘outside’. Neighbouring Eastern European countries belong to the ‘outside’; they are presented in the EU's official discourse as the zones of origin and/or transit for risks to the EU's public order and security. The ways in which security threats are construed, as well as the EU's role in mitigating or eliminating those threats, have significant implications for relationships between the EU and its European neighbours. The formulation of foreign policy relies upon discursive representations of identity, and it is a specific boundary-producing practice that co-constitutes both the ‘foreign’ and the ‘domestic’ (Campbell, 1998). From this perspective, the EU's discourse on the external dimension of the justice and home affairs emerges as one of many ways through which a common European identity is being forged. The construction of the AFSJ establishes the EU as a territory with a special ‘home affairs’ model and distinguishes the ‘inside’ from the ‘outside’.

Realist-normative power Europe? Explaining EU policies toward Lebanon from an IR perspective

This article seeks to explain the relationship between the European Union (EU) and one of its Middle Eastern neighbors: Lebanon. By conducting an in-depth empirical single case study and engaging in competitive theory testing, this article shows that the EU in Lebanon behaves at the same time as a normative and a realist power. This article challenges both the scholarship on the EU that sees the EU as a normative power as well as scholarship that focuses on structural neorealism to explain the EU's role in its neighborhood. This article adopts an approach that is different from the mainstream approaches in two ways. First, it focuses on the entire set of policies that the EU has implemented or not in Lebanon. Second, it provides an in-depth case study centered on the interaction between the EU and Lebanon, while also looking at the regional dynamics and at the domestic tensions within Lebanon. By doing so, it shows that the EU is a ‘realist-normative’ power in the specific case of Lebanon. Thus, these two frameworks are a false dichotomy and the argument shall be tested on other cases to make it generalizable. This suggests that the constructivist-realist divide coexists in practice.

The European Union's role in the G8: a principal–agent perspective

This article examines the role of the European Union (EU) in the Group of Eight (G8) framework. We suggest that the EU in the G8 constitutes an unusual form of delegation because the principal–agent (PA) relationship is characterized by considerable degrees of informality and ambiguity. The main argument advanced in this article is that the European Commission, the agent, despite being structurally disadvantaged at the outset, managed to emancipate itself within the G8 over time. This process of agent emancipation has been reinforced, above all, by the flexibility and informality of the G8, the evolving European integration process, and the growing Commission capabilities, standing and entrepreneurship. Although the Commission has managed to move considerably beyond the original PA design intended by the principals, member states' incentives to rely on the Commission also increased over time. We argue that the Commission itself was able to manipulate these incentives, which is most evident in the sub-case of the Commission's successful quest for attaining the Western aid co-ordination mandate for Central and Eastern Europe.

The European Union, multilateralism and the global governance of the Internet

Whilst the global governance architecture of the Internet has evolved at pace in the last 10 years, the European Union's (EU) role and influence in its development has been relatively understudied. This article contributes to closing this gap in the literature through an exposition of how the EU has sought to shape the emerging environment for Internet governance in the context of its quest for ‘effective multilateralism’. It identifies the type of multilateral governance that the EU has projected for the Internet globally and analyses how it has sought to do this through its interaction with key global Internet fora. It argues that the EU's own self-defined role as a leader with a clear, preferred model for Internet governance contrasts with several constraints and contradictions faced in becoming an effective multilateral actor in this area.

A liberal grand strategy in a realist world? Power, purpose and the EU's changing global role

The European Union (EU) is one of the most unusual global political actors, and it inspires numerous scholarly debates about its power and purpose. One of the most important such debates involves the role of material versus non-material/ideational power resources – or hard versus soft power – in understanding the EU's ‘actorness’. Given the increasingly wide range of EU policy competencies, and the increasingly complex demands placed on the EU, this article embeds this debate in the larger context of grand strategy. It first argues that the EU's efforts as a global actor do conform to three basic components of grand strategy: physical security; economic prosperity; and value projection. Second, it analyses the content of the EU's grand strategic goals at three levels of analysis: intra-EU; regional (or neighbourhood); and global. Finally, it analyses the EU's implementation of its (largely liberal) strategic goals, particularly in terms of how they might compete with those of other global actors, such as the United States (US).

The Goods Structure of Trade between Polish Regions and the European Union (1)

The Goods Structure of Trade between Polish Regions and the European Union (1) The goal of this article is to present the structure of trade between Polish regions (voivodships) and the European Union. The research is a dynamic analysis making it possible to compare the time before and after the expansion of the European Union. The timeframe of the discussed issues relates to 1999-2007. Attention is paid to the scale and diversified nature of the changes to the goods structure of export and import activities undertaken by Polish voivodships to (from) the European Union. The analysis is preceded by the characteristics of the European Union's role in trade of specific regions. Finally, the degree of intra-industry specialization is evaluated as is the trend in changes to the trade between Polish regions and European Union countries.

Christopher Rowan. The Politics of Water in Africa: The European Union's Role in Development Aid Partnership. London and New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2009. International Library of African Studies, no. 24. xiii + 203 pp. Glossary. Abbreviations. Notes. Tables. Photographs. Appendixes. Bibliography. Index. $85.00. Cloth.

Christopher Rowan. The Politics of Water in Africa: The European Union's Role in Development Aid Partnership. London and New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2009. International Library of African Studies, no. 24. xiii + 203 pp. Glossary. Abbreviations. Notes. Tables. Photographs. Appendixes. Bibliography. Index. $85.00. Cloth.

The Promotion of the Rule of Law in the Western Balkans: The European Union's Role

The principle of the rule of law is a well-established notion at the core of modern constitutionalism and the undisputed building block of democratic governments. This principle is characterized by the breadth of its scope, the difficulty to strictly define its content, and the increasing possibility of a more or less broad interpretation. This explains the wide-ranging debate on the rule of law which has been developed over time with significant contributions from several disciplines, including philosophy, constitutional law, and international law.

The European Union at the Human Rights Council: speaking with one voice but having little influence

The Human Rights Council (HRC) was supposed to address the shortcomings of the former Commission on Human Rights (CHR), but it is already suffering similar shortcomings. Some critics of the Human Rights Council have singled out the European Union's (EU) role as particularly disappointing. This article argues that while there is evidence that EU member states are acting cohesively within the HRC, and more so than they have done in United Nations (UN) human rights bodies in the past, the EU's influence in the institution is still quite limited. It speaks with one voice and EU voting cohesion is impressively solid, but has had little influence on the agenda or outcomes of the HRC. This reflects in part the fragile place that human rights have in EU foreign policy-making.

The politics of water in Africa: the European Union's role in development aid partnership

Acknowledgements Acronyms 1. What of Water? 2. Friends or Foes? 3. Development or Dictatorship? 4. The partnerships between Lesotho and Brussels and Mozambique and Brussels: a study 5. Reflections 6. The Next Step 7. The Current Position: After the Midterm Review Conclusion Bibliography Appendices.

External democracy promotion in Ukraine: the role of the European Union

The article explores the role of the European Union in promoting democracy in Ukraine over the past decade and a half. It looks at both European Union (EU) policy and domestic factors and draws on the relevant experience of the Central and East European countries and the EU's role in their political transformation. The article argues that the EU's impact on Ukraine's democratization has so far been limited due to both the policy of the EU and domestic factors in Ukraine. In the early 1990s the EU chose not to treat Ukraine as one of the Central and East European countries, which determined the subsequent choice of policy instruments and reinforced the ambiguity of Ukraine's orientation. The EU has also failed to make its policy values-based, and a Russia-first policy persisted for a long time. Weak conditionality and socialization are other elements that have characterized the EU's policy towards Ukraine. As far as domestic factors are concerned, political competition was rather weak in Ukraine prior to 2000, and it was only in 2004 that it allowed the change of authority via elections. A lack of elite consensus on both the basic rules of the game and the country's overall orientation is another factor that has weakened the EU's impact on Ukraine's democratization. As long as the EU and democracy are not the only alternatives that Ukraine may consider, the EU's impact will remain limited.

Just How Special is Turkey in Europe?

Turkey-European Union Relations: Dilemmas, Opportunities, and Constraints. Edited by Meltem Muftuler-Bac, Yannis A. Stivachtis Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008. 352 pp., $75.00 hardcover (ISBN-10: 0-7391-2447-1/ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-2447-5). Turkey's application for membership in the European Union (EU) disappeared from the headlines in 2007 and 2008, as conflict between secular and political authorities distracted attention inside the country and the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty cast a chill over the Union as a whole. Popular debate over EU enlargement came to the fore again, however, with the August 2008 armed conflict in Abkhazia and South Ossetia followed by the Russian invasion of Georgia. Worried about the implications of extending NATO guarantees further to the East, policy analysts and pundits across Europe reasoned that the best way to shore up the states on Russia's borders is to offer them the chance at EU membership. Whether such an offer will actually materialize for Moldavia or Ukraine remains to be seen. Certainly they are hopeful that it will. Even Georgia dreams of the prospect, and Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has developed a habit of issuing statements with the EU flag in the background. Yet with all the furor about the EU's role in the Caucasus, the major element missing in the debate has been any consideration of EU relations with Turkey as a critical actor in the region. This is surprising for three reasons: Turkey shares a border …