Understanding Refugee Law in an Enlarged European Union Theory

The present article seeks to explore how asylum law is formed, transformed and reformed in Europe, what its effects are on state practice and refugee protection in the Baltic and Central European candidate countries, and what this process reveals about the framework used by scholars to understand the dynamics of international refugee law. Arguably, an exclusive focus on EU institutions and their dissemination of regional and international norms among candidate countries through the acquis communitaire is misleading. Looking at the subregional interplay between Vienna and Budapest, Berlin and Warsaw, Copenhagen and Vilnius provides a richer understanding of the emergence of norms than the standard narrative of a Brussels dictate. Hence, to capture these dynamics, we will attempt to expand the framework of analysis by incorporating sub-regional settings, cutting across the divide between old and new Members, and by analysing the repercussions sent out by domestic legislation within these settings. While acknowledging that bilateral and multilateral relations are continuously interwoven, we conclude that bilateralism accounts for a greater degree of normative development and proliferation than multilateralism at EU level, and that domestic legislation as formed by sub-regional dynamics will remain the ultimate object of study for scholars of international refugee law.

Setting the bounds of the European Union. EPC Discussion Paper 10 March 2020

How large should the European Union (EU) be? And what shape should it take? These are not new questions but have recently taken on a new form and seek to be answered with a sense of urgency that has been missing for some years. French President Macron can be held primarily responsible for this shift of emphasis. He wants an EU that is conscious of, indeed self-confident about, its own sovereignty. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s claim to be running a “geopolitical Commission” plays into Macron’s argument: she was, after all, his choice for the top job. But a sovereign Union strutting its stuff on the world stage needs to have established a pretty firm view about where its own territory starts and stops, what values it aims to propagate on the global stage, and which interests it intends to advance vis-à-vis those of its international partners and rivals. The purpose of assuming EU sovereignty is to better protect the security of its states and citizens. It implies an intention to adopt a more proactive stance. Even if the Union still lacks all the attributes of a federal state, its claim to sovereignty is an important further step in the federal direction. A sovereign polity is in need of a government, and in particular a foreign policy. The innovation of Union sovereignty as a supplement to, if not a substitute for, national sovereignty should also contribute to a strengthening of civic rights that flow from the concept of EU citizenshi

1989, bringing in a global Europe?

Whilst 1989 is widely acknowledged as a watershed in international relations, it is also regarded as a major upheaval in the course of European integration since its very beginning in the 1950’s. The nature of this regard, however, has overwhelmingly been univocal. The relationship between 1989 and the EU is commonly considered as a one-way process, with communism being finally “dissolved” into EU integration. Moreover, changes in the European integration process since 1989 have often been analyzed per se; there have been few attempts, if any, to connect 1989 and the EC/EU in a comprehensive way. The paper questions the unambiguous, linear and one-way character of the prevailing interpretations relating to the impact of 1989 on the European integration process. Through highlighting and discussing several dialectical trends, it sheds light on complex, multifaceted and open processes which call for re-assessing the impact of 1989 on Europe and the way the European Union has influenced 1989 and “managed” post-1989. It concludes that while the EU has been a major vector of change in CEE countries, 1989 has also induced wide-ranging, profound and long-term transformations on the European integration process, the exact impact of which is still difficult to assess. The EU picture resulting both from 1989 and from the choices made in the 1990’s is thus much more blurred and ambivalent

Peer Reviews on the Fight against Terrorism a Hidden Success of EU Security Governance?

This paper provides a first study on use of professional peer reviews by the EU to strengthen the European fight against terrorism. The first part outlines two theoretical approaches to assessing the outcome effectiveness of such peer reviews, namely compliance and learning. Peer reviews can serve both ends and have been increasingly touted as an effective tool to address transnational threats. The second part analyzes the evolution and impact of the EU's peer reviews on the fight against terrorism. Although the first peer review took several years to complete, it was regarded as a striking success that improved mutual trust and the coherence of the international fight against terrorism. It was therefore followed by a second peer review on consequence management in response to terrorist attacks. From a critical perspective, it is shown that the impact of these peer reviews could be doubted from both a compliance and learning perspective, as monitoring and flanking measures have remained too weak. The conclusions point to additional political or normative deficits of peer reviews in EU security policy-making.

A farm level analysis of the relation between cap-reforms and local environmental legislations: how and in which extent Flemish dairy farmers can fill up extra milk quota

The agricultural policies shift gradually from EU-level organised market interventions to local organised environmental policies. This paper explores the growth possibilities of the Flemish dairy sector with the outlook of a quota abolishment as a case study of this policy shift. The dairy quota policy seems very restrictive for the highly profitable Flemish dairy sector, but the environmental restrictions from the manure regulation can limit the growth of the dairy sector as well. The paper uses a spatial multi-agent simulation model applied to a sample of 40.000 farms to estimate price development of emission rights and their possible impact on the growth of the dairy production. The results show that a higher milk production leads to higher prices for emission rights. However, the increased cost of manure emission rights is not expected to impede dairy farm growth because the current milk quota rent estimates go far beyond the cost of manure emission rights

The EU and social protection: What should the European Convention propose?

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The European Neighbourhood Policy as a Process of Democratic Norms Diffusion in Ukraine. The Case of the EU Act Beyond Conditionality?

This paper is then focused on the European Neighbourhood Policy and democracypromotion in its Eastern neighbours. Can the EU act beyond ‘hard conditionality’ experiencedduring the enlargement process in order to succeed in democratizing its neighbourhood? Whatare the obstacles to democratisation and political change within the neighbours? At the heart of the analysis lies the question of efficiency of the ENP without hardconditionality linked with adhesion. Conditionality, i.e. linking the granting of benefits to thefulfilment of some conditions, has been at the core of the EU policy when dealing withaccession candidate countries. During the enlargement process, ‘hard conditionality’(describing measures a country must meet in order to access any money or politicalretribution) was the key means for democratic norms diffusion. By contrast, neighbourhoodpolicy uses conditionality in a more flexible way, which is tantamount to ‘soft conditionality’,destined to influence policies but not to propose a one-fits-for-all policy. It is often arguedthat because of the lack of an effective or ‘hard’ conditionality, the EU cannot pretend to amajor role as a promoter of democratic norms.enlargement