Year in review: Federica Mogherini’s appointment as EU High Representative

Following the European Parliament elections in May, attention turned toward negotiations over the EU’s ‘top jobs’, notably the President of the European Commission, President of the European Council, and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. As part of our review of 2014, Maria Giulia Amadio Viceré writes on the selection of Federica Mogherini for the High Representative role. She argues that the appointment, combined with the institutional provisions granted under the Lisbon Treaty, could mark a watershed moment for both EU and Italian foreign policy

Disconnected? Public Opinion, Economic Elites, and Political Parties during the Migration Crisis

This article analyses whether European political parties were responsive to the policy preferences of citizens and economic elites over immigration during the migration crisis. To do so, it derives hypotheses from the scholarly literature on party responsiveness and tests them on survey data collected in 2016 and 2017 from among voters, political parties, and economic elites in 10 different EU member states. Contrary to the widespread belief about the crisis of contemporary representative democracies, the article shows that political parties’ positions on immigration changed consistently with changes in public opinion. On the contrary, the article finds no significant relation between the positions of economic elites and those of political parties. These empirical results are particularly relevant for the study of democratic representation, as they challenge the widespread assumption about the crisis of contemporary representative democracies

Navigating the Unknown: Barriers to Evidence-Based Defence and Security Policy in the EU

At a time when Europe faces numerous crises, there is a real need for rigorous evidence to underpin effective policymaking. However, a gap between academia and policy creates clear obstacles in the use of evidence in policymaking. Many of these enduring obstacles are manifest in the inherent differences between separate communities: academics have difficulty communicating research in an applicable manner, and policymakers, in turn, tend to focus on operational motivations. The gap widens considerably when foreign, security and defence policy within the complex institutional structures of the European Union is considered. In addition to these well known barriers to evidence-based policy, there are two more obstacles in the defence and security space: sovereignty and dispersed decision-making. A dialogue of best practices must be opened up to broker knowledge in the EU context

Women on Mars : the two post-Lisbon high representatives and EU Foreign policy on Libya

Published online: March 2022The chapter examines women’s leadership in EU foreign policy. In the past decade, two women have served as chief of EU foreign policy. Since the Lisbon Treaty’s introduction of the new High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (December 2009), Catherine Ashton and Federica Mogherini held the post during its first ten years. How did Ashton and Mogherini access the position? And how have they performed their functions? To address these questions, we start by providing a comparative analysis of their nominations as High Representatives to examine their respective positional leadership. We then continue by assessing their behavioral leadership in facing the crisis in Libya. On a theoretical level, we employ the original and innovative analytical framework outlined in the introduction to this volume. By doing so, we participate in the effort to move research on women’s leadership in the EU beyond the status quo. On an empirical level, we shed light on the access to and exercise of women’s leadership in EU foreign policy, which remains largely uncharted territory

Externalizing EU crisis management : EU orchestration of the OSCE during the Ukrainian conflict

Published online: 8 October 2021Despite the Lisbon Treaty's modifications in the foreign and security policy domain, the EU has frequently relied on third parties to address external conflicts and crises. Using the Ukrainian conflict as a case study, this article adopts the orchestration model to explain why and how the EU enlists intermediary actors over which it has no formal control to pursue its objectives. It finds that in this conflict the EU outsourced part of its crisis management activities to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe because it lacked the civilian and military capabilities, as well as the regulatory competence and reputation to challenge Russia. Indeed, the Ukrainian case shows that orchestration has emerged as a crucial governance arrangement for the functioning of EU crisis management, raising serious questions about the EU overall capacity to act as a security provider in an international system marred by contestation and hard security concerns

Krt14-expression as a marker of lung regeneration/repair

Currently, little is known about the cellular and molecular mechanisms that promote alveolar epithelial repair. A recent study suggests that Keratin14-expression could represent a marker of alveolar regeneration, since its expression was immunoistochemically detected in hyperplastic pneumocytes in human samples of ARDS-related DAD. Here we shown the analysis on lung samples of various human diseases in order to confirm the hyphotesis of the previous study. We used two molecular biology tecniques, Real Time Pcr and Western Blot, on autoptical and bioptical lung specimens. As a result, we demonstrate here that Krt14- expression is only found in pathological samples with alveolar regeneration or repair, while all normal control samples are Krt14 negative

Informal groupings in EU foreign policy : a sustainable arrangement?

Published online: February 2021In the last decade, the EU’s foreign policy practices have grown increasingly complex. The Lisbon Treaty sought to further centralise member states’ foreign policies at the EU level, particularly through the new High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the European Commission, as well as through the establishment of the European External Action Service. And yet, on several occasions informal groups of member states steered EU foreign policy post-Lisbon. These informal dynamics of cooperation among EU member states reflect the extent of fragmentation in EU foreign policy governance despite the centralisation envisaged by the Lisbon Treaty. To contribute to the understanding of such dynamics, this policy analysis offers an overview of the types, functioning and implications of informal groupings in EU foreign policy post-Lisbon. Since most of the multiple crises the EU faced in the post-Lisbon era occurred – or are intimately interlinked to – Europe’s eastern and southern neighbourhood, the overview was conducted with special consideration to these regional settings. The phenomenon of informal and temporary groupings is a response to the need for efficiency in the face of geopolitical complexities. However, given the scant degree of accountability and temporary nature of these groupings, it is not a sustainable mode of governance for an EU that aims to be a more meaningful actor

Beyond the intergovernmental \u2013 supranational divide in EU foreign policy: Insights from Kosovo

Because of the intergovernmental nature of EU foreign policy, the role of the European Commission in EU external action is often considered minimal or residual. Providing a systematic review of the case of Kosovo, this paper demonstrates that it is possible to identify different degrees of integration in EU foreign policy. It does so by investigating under which conditions Member States delegate foreign policy competences to the Commission. In the case of Kosovo, integration in EU foreign policy has been conditioned by the level of control Member States have chosen exercise on or delegate to supranational institutions