The Shaping of a Policy Framework for the Wider Europe. CEPS Policy Brief No. 39, September 2003

[From the Introduction]. With the enlargement of the EU from 15 to 25, the new Wider Europe debate – interpreted in the broad sense as in this paper – rises high up on the EU agenda, complementing the draft Constitution prepared by the European Convention. Together they are defining what the EU is to be. The Convention is defining the EU from the inside. The Wider Europe debate is seeking to define it by reference to its outer edges and wider neighbourhood. Already in March 2003, the European Commission published a first policy communication on the subject. This has been followed by the document on European security strategy submitted to the European Council in June 2003 by Javier Solana, the optique of which is different, but whose content overlaps with the Wider Europe. These two documents may be viewed as ‘white’ or ‘green’ papers of the EU institutions. They are important references, yet highly preliminary and incomplete. The present document sketches a more structured policy framework, and makes proposals for how this might be further developed

European Neighbourhood Policy:Strategy or Placebo?. CEPS Working Documents, No. 215, 1 November 2004

The EU now faces an existential dilemma in the apparent choice to be made between over-extending the enlargement process to the point of destroying its own governability, versus denying one of its founding values to be open to all European democracies and possibly generating negative effects from the exclusion of countries in its neighbourhood. The newly emerging European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) seeks a way out of the dilemma. This policy seems to pass through a familiar three-stage process for major EU initiatives: first the important idea enters political discourse, second the EU institutions take modest initial actions that are not up to the task and third, the EU accepts the need for credible action at a level commensurate with the challenge. The ENP has passed rapidly from the first to the second stage, with potential to move to the third stage, without it yet being clear whether the institutions will now go on to sufficiently develop their proposals. This issue presents itself as one of the most precise and significant challenges facing the new Commission presided by Mr Barroso. The new member states represent the EU’s newest resource, which could greatly contribute to a successful ENP

Bright solitons in a quasi-one-dimensional reduced model of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate with repulsive short-range interactions

We study the formation and dynamics of bright solitons in a quasi-one-dimensional reduced mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii equation of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate with repulsive short-range interactions. The study is carried out using a variational approximation and a numerical solution. Plots of chemical potential and root mean square (rms) size of solitons are obtained for the quasi-one-dimensional model of three different dipolar condensates of 52Cr, 168Er and 164Dy atoms. The results achieved are in good agreement with those produced by the full three-dimensional mean-field model of the condensate. We also study the dynamics of the collision of a train of two solitons in the quasi-one-dimensional model of every condensate above. At small velocities (zero or close to zero) the dynamics is attractive for a phase difference {\delta} = 0, the solitons coalesce and these oscillate forming a bound soliton molecule. For a phase difference {\delta} = {\pi} the effect is repulsive. At large velocities the collision is independent of the initial phase difference {\delta}. This is quasi-elastic and the result is two quasi-solitons.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure