How Norway could use its presidency of the Council of the Baltic Sea States to help normalise relations with Russia

In light of the EU’s lack of unity over how to approach Russia, the Council for the Baltic Sea States (CBSS), which includes Russia as a member, provides an important supplementary diplomatic forum for regional diplomacy in Europe. Stefan Gänzle argues the new Norwegian presidency of the CBSS offers a potential platform for establishing a dialogue between Russia and other European countries

Coping with the 'Security-Development Nexus':: The European Community's Instrument for Stability - Rationale and Potential

"Challenges to security and development policy alike, such as fragile states, natural disasters and post-conflict reconstruction, are unlikely to respect the institutional boundaries or delimitation of competences of the European Union's complex system of governance. This holds true for the 'grey area' that exists between traditional foreign/security and development policies. Since 2007, the Instrument for Stability (IfS) constitutes the European Community's main instrument for addressing what has been called the 'security-development nexus'. It is a broadly mandated and flexible policy tool for rapidly funding assistance to countries in situations of (emerging) crisis and natural disaster. Thus, the IfS provides the Community with additional financial capacities in crisis management. While not fundamentally changing the institutional set-up of the EU's external relations, the IfS has contributed to removing legal obstacles and to clarifying actors' roles at the interface of foreign and development policies." (author's abstract

EU Foreign Relations after Lisbon: Tackling the Security-Development Nexus?

Presentation on department page: http://www.uia.no/no/portaler/om_universitetet/oekonomi_og_samfunnsvitenskap/statsvitenskap_og_ledelsesfag/ forskning_isl/isl_working_papers_seriesThe 2009 Lisbon Treaty sought to enhance the coherence of EU foreign policies by improving the conditions for collective action in the EU-level foreign relations system, including its interaction with member states. Several innovations aimed to facilitate collective action: the establishment of the European External Action Service, bringing EU institutions and member state officials together, is the most important. Policy-level innovations, in turn, have included a string of ‘comprehensive’, ‘joined-up’, and ‘whole-of-government’ approaches that have explicitly focussed on linking the various instruments in the EU’s tool box. Have these reforms led to improved policy coherence? We focus on a key domain that illustrates Europe’s engagement with the changing global context: the nexus of security and development policy. Drawing on post-Lisbon Treaty policy documents and interviews with officials from the EU foreign relations bureaucracy, we argue that collective action at the EU-level has improved somewhat since 2010. This has been accompanied by some improvements in the coherence of security and development policy. Nevertheless, decisionmaking is still affected by bureaucratic actors catering to specific constituencies and, accordingly, the coherence of security and development policies remains challenged. The EU institutions lack the strategic direction that would be provided by clear prioritisation of global policy objectives, but this is not possible in a system that lacks clear hierarchy. Without combining strategic direction with effective changes in the foreign relations apparatus, reforms aimed at improving collective action can only make a marginal impact on policy coherence

Overthrowing Secrecy: The Spitzenkandidaten experiment and a new chance for a European party system. CEPS Commentary, 4 August 2014

The Spitzenkandidaten experiment has been at the centre of a heated debate for several months now, prompting much speculation as to the changes it will bring to the balance of power between the EU institutions. But the real coup d’état has been directed against the old process of appointing the European Commission President behind closed doors. Although the new procedure entails “a number of political, institutional and ‘thus’ constitutional ambiguities”, according to the authors of this commentary, it has rendered that process more transparent, if not more democratic – and will almost certainly endure to the next European elections in 2019 and beyond. As a result, they conclude that the new procedure is likely to trigger important changes in Europe’s political parties and elections

Party positions on differentiated European integration in the Nordic countries: growing Ttgether, growing apart?

The Nordic countries constitute an interesting laboratory for the study of differentiated European Integration. Even though Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden share some historical, cultural, socio-economic and political characteristics, all those countries have ultimately opted for a different kind of relationship with the EU. Whereas Finland, a member of the Eurozone since its inception in 1999, has been considered to be part of the Union’s ‘inner core’ for quite some time, Iceland and Norway, in contrast, have opted to remain outside the EU albeit closely associated via the European Economic Area Agreement. The variation of relationships has also been reflected in Nordic parties’ positioning vis-à-vis European integration in general and differentiation of European integration in particular. Broadly speaking, party families can be distinguished along traditional (e.g., agrarian, Christian democratic, conservative, and social democratic) and modern (e.g., socialist left, green, and populist radical right) ideological orientations. Although political parties belonging to both the traditional and modern Nordic party families have adopted different stances on European differentiated integration, we would assume—against the backdrop of Nordic cooperation—higher levels of transnational cooperation in European matters. Consequently, this article examines the similarities and differences between parties belonging to the same ideological family, and the extent of transnational party cooperation in the Nordic countries. Drawing on a series of interviews conducted with party representatives as well as on official party documents, this article shows that although institutionalized party cooperation mostly reflects divisions between party families, such institutionalization does not include a common vision for European integration. We conclude that the low level of partisan Nordic integration is primarily caused by domestic-level factors, such as intra-party divisions, government participation and public opinion

Why the EU’s system of flexible integration will likely accommodate Switzerland’s special requests

On 26 May, Switzerland pulled out of negotiations over a new partnership with the European Union. Stefan Gänzle, Tobias Hofelich and Uwe Wunderlich write that while the rhetoric on both sides is likely to become more heated in the coming months, there remains ample scope for a compromise