An elegant solution to the Medvedev-Putin policy. CEPS Commentary, 27 May 2011

All of Russia is now absorbed in the burning question of who will stand for President in 2012. Kremlinologists at home and abroad are desperately trying to read the meaning of indirect remarks and hints from the President and Prime Minister. Michael Emerson writes in this Commentary that it would be condescending if not insulting for the Russian people for Medvedev and Putin to settle the matter in a private conversation, after which one of them announces that he will back the other. In his view, the ideal solution would surely be for both Medvedev and Putin to stand for President

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

The EU’s New Black Sea Policy- What kind of regionalism is this? CEPS Working Document No. 297/July 2008.

After the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 the European Union moved quickly to fill an obvious gap in its vision of the regions to its periphery, proposing the ‘Black Sea Synergy’. The EU shows a certain degree of commonality in its approaches to each of the three enclosed seas in this region – the Baltic, the Mediterranean and now the Black Sea. While the political profiles of these maritime regions are of course very different, they naturally give rise to many common policy challenges, including those issues that are based on the technical, non-political matters of regional maritime geography. This paper sets out a typology of regionalisms and examines where in this the EU’s Black Sea Synergy is going to find its place. While the Commission’s initial proposals were highly ‘eclectic’, with various examples of ‘technical regionalism’ combined with ‘security regionalism’, there is already a diplomatic ballet in evidence between the EU and Russia, with the EU countering Russia’s pursuit of its own ‘geopolitical regionalism’. The EU would like in theory to see its efforts lead to a ‘transformative regionalism’, but the lack of agreement so far over further extending membership perspectives to countries of the region risks the outcome being placed more in the category of ‘compensatory regionalism’

Dear Turkey, play it long and cool. CEPS Commentaries, 15 December 2006

[From introduction] How should the current impasse between the European Union and Turkey be interpreted, and how should Turkey react? Commissioner Olli Rehn says there is no train crash, but rather a slowing down because of works on the line. The Commission manifestly seeks to avoid a crisis, while being obliged to react to the non-implementation of the Ankara Protocol. Actually one can read the measures taken – namely to freeze (or not to open) 8 out of the 35 chapters of accession negotiations – in even lower key than Olli Rehn. The so-called ‘negotiations’ are not really negotiations at all, rather a process for monitoring Turkey’s unilateral adoption of the EU acquis. Turkey can perfectly well carry on its long process of unilateral convergence on the EU acquis in any case. The Commission’s staff will be happy to remain in constant informal contact with Mr Babacan’s team. Whether this process continues in or out of formal negotiations does not really matter at this stage, and the Commission will continue to review progress in its regular reports in any case. This requires that Turkey sees these measures as contributing to the ongoing modernization of Turkey’s democracy and economic governance. Turkey already has full access to EU markets through the customs union, so this not a matter of trading market–opening concessions, but rather one of choosing anchorage on European standards to improve domestic governance

Perspectives for the Balkans and a Wider European Order

CEPS established a template for EU strategy towards the Balkans already during the Kosovo war, and this was refined in the Ljubljana Declaration by the think tanks of the region (with CEPS) in July before the Sarajevo Summit. The subsequent evolution of policy in the region and of the EU and Stability Pact is compared with these proposals. Some parts of the CEPS proposals are developed further. Implications for the rest of the wider Europe are also examined, in search for the defining concepts and mechanisms of an order for the entire European space.

From Barcelona Process to Neighbourhood Policy: Assessments and Open Issues. CEPS Working Documents No. 220, 1 March 2005

The Barcelona process so far has been a valuable systemic/institutional advance in Euro-Med relations and a confidence-building measure on a large scale. But it has not been a sufficient driving force to have created a momentum of economic, political and social advance in the partner states. It is therefore quite plausible that the EU should seek some new advance – through the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) – to build on the positive features of Barcelona and so try to introduce some new driving force. The Action Plans currently being adopted seek to make the often vague intentions of the Association Agreements of the Barcelona process more operational by linking them to either domestic policy programmes of the partner state or to EU policy norms and standards as an external anchor. In this paper we first crystallise alternative approaches for the ENP to become a real driving force under the headings of ‘conditionality’ and ‘socialisation’. The conditionality concept would mean that the EU sets out i) what incentives it offers, and ii) the conditions on which these incentives would be delivered. The socialisation concept relies essentially on a learning process that comes from the extensive interaction between actors in the partner states and the EU, which induces the partner states to engage in policy reforms that are to a degree modelled on EU norms or derive some inspiration from them. For the EU to become a driving force for reform in the region also requires that it does not have to face an uphill struggle against negative tendencies, for example in the widening and deepening of radical Islam – and here the issue of coherence in the approaches of the EU and US together is paramount

Cyprus as the Lighthouse of the East Mediterranean: Shaping EU Accession and Reunification Together. CEPS Paperback. April 2002

For over a quarter of a century, Cyprus has been a divided island, with Europe’s last remaining ‘Berlin Wall’ separating its Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities. This stalemate between the regions, however, is finally beginning to dissolve. Negotiations are currently underway to resolve the Cyprus conflict, re-unify the island and secure the accession of the whole of Cyprus to the EU in the near future. This CEPS report explores the ways in which these developments might come about. The authors argue that simultaneous action could transform the political structures and interests that have up until now made it impossible to resolve the division of the island

British Balance of Competence Reviews, Part I: ‘Competences about right, so far’. EPIN Working Paper No. 35, October 2013

The first in a series for a CEPS-EPIN project entitled “The British Question and the Search for a Fresh European Narrative” this paper is pegged on an ambitious ongoing exercise by the British government to review all the competences of the European Union. The intention is that this should provide a basis for informed debate before the referendum on the UK remaining in the EU or not, which is scheduled for 2017. This paper summarises the first six reviews, each of which runs to around 80 pages, covering foreign policy, development policy, taxation, the single market, food safety, and public health. The present authors then add their own assessments of these materials. While understandably giving due place to British interests, they are of general European relevance. The substantive conclusions of this first set of reviews are that the competences of the EU are judged by respondents to be ‘about right’ on the whole, which came as a surprise to eurosceptic MPs and the tabloid media. Our own view is that the reviews are objective and impressively researched, and these populist complaints are illustrating the huge gap between the views of informed stakeholders and general public opinion, and therefore also the hazard of subjecting the ‘in or out’ choice for decision by referendum. If the referendum is to endorse the UK’s continuing membership there will have to emerge some fresh popular narratives about the EU. The paper therefore concludes with some thoughts along these lines, both for the UK and the EU as a whole

The CEPS Plan for the Balkans

In 1999, CEPS initiated the Europa South-East Policy Forum, a group of leading independent policy institutes from every country of South-East Europe, the network of Open Society Institutes. The objective was to contribute to the full integration of the whole of the region into the European Union. This report advocates accelerated political and economic reforms in these countries in the aftermath of the war, on the assumption that the European Union itself would make radical moves in its policies to support the process