European views on the UK’s renegotiation: Czech Republic, Hungary, Sweden, and Lithuania

The success or failure of David Cameron’s planned renegotiation of the UK’s EU membership will depend to a large extent on how the other 27 EU member states respond to his proposals. But how do countries across the EU view the UK’s renegotiation? Building on a report published in 2014 by the German Council on Foreign Relations, EUROPP is running a series of overviews of the renegotiation from each of the EU’s member states. Compiled by the LSE’s Tim Oliver and written by authors based at universities and research institutions, the overviews will set out what discussion – if any – there has been about the renegotiation and the wider views within each country on the renegotiation and a potential Brexit. This post is the sixth in the series and gives views from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Sweden, and Lithuania. Czech Republic: A desire to accommodate British demands, but without treaty changes Hungary: A natural supporter for Cameron, but with caveats Sweden: Both risks and opportunities in EU renegotiation Lithuania: Britain is threatening the EU’s fundamental principle

China, Europe, and the Pandemic Recession: Beijing’s Investments and Transatlantic Security

Given the depth and breadth of the pandemic-induced recession in Europe, private companies in need of capital and governments looking to shed state-owned enterprises may be tempted to sell shares, assets, or outright ownership to investors with liquidity to spare. Of greatest concern is the role that China might play in Europe, building Beijing’s soft power, weakening allied geopolitical solidarity, and potentially reprising the role it played in the 2010s, when its investments in Europe expanded dramatically. More specifically, there is concern over China’s investments in infrastructure and sensitive technologies relevant to American and allied military operations and capabilities. Whether Europe is prepared and able to parry Beijing’s economic statecraft is somewhat unclear, given varied attitudes toward China and the patchwork of investment screening mechanisms across the continent. Regardless, the outcomes will have significant implications for US security and for the Defense Department specifically. In support of US European Command (EUCOM) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) assembled an interdisciplinary team to examine these issues and offer actionable policy recommendations for military leaders and decisionmakers on both sides of the Atlantic. Study sponsors (nonfunding): United States European Command, United States Department of Homeland Securityhttps://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1945/thumbnail.jp

The EU and US as International Actors in Disaster Relief. Bruges Political Research Paper No. 22, January 2012

The European Union and the United States both claim international leadership in disaster relief, a high profile area of public concern and a part of each side‘s broadly defined foreign policy. The 2010 Haiti earthquake tested the capacities of each side to participate actively and deliberately in international disaster relief. Although both the EU and US mobilised a response effort and undertook a range of relief activities, both received criticism from internal critics and external observers. To offer a unique comparative perspective, this paper applies the concept of 'actorness' to the EU and US in order to enhance our understanding of their respective responses. Normally applied only to the EU, the actorness concept helps to capture behavioural dynamics within a complex, multi-level system which also characterises the US. We find substantial degrees of actorness in both polities, with the EU scoring highly in contextual determinants of actorness but lower in internal factors shaping actorness. The US, normally assumed to be a complete global actor, scored well in most categories but showed a degree of incoherence related to inter-agency and inter-department relations at the federal level. These results improve our understanding of EU and US disaster relief efforts and hold promise for comparative studies of actorness

The EU as a global counter-terrorism actor in the making

After the terror attacks of 11 September 2001, the European Union (EU) staked its claim as an important international player in the fight against global terrorism. The EU encouraged new initiatives at the United Nations and devoted newfound attention to aid and assistance programs to third states. The EU's ambitions and heightened activity prompts a number of questions about rhetoric versus action and offers a useful test case for assessing the quality of the EU's ‘actorness’. This article applies the actorness concept to shed light on the EU's behaviour in global counter-terrorism activities. It draws together existing insights on actorness into an analytical framework containing four sets of variables – context, coherence, capability and consistency – and applies the framework to evidence gathered on the EU's international and third country role in countering terrorism. Our results show that the actorness approach sheds considerable light on the EU's international behaviour in global counter-terrorism and suggests the EU has some way to go before becoming a full actor in this area

Actorness and effectiveness in international disaster relief : the European Union and United States in comparative perspective

This article examines the role of the European Union (EU) and United States as actors in international disaster relief. We take the analysis of ‘actorness’ one step further than normal by assessing the extent to which different aspects of EU and US actorness led to effectiveness in actual outcomes. In doing so, we make two contributions. First, we provide a rare comparison between EU and US foreign policy actorness, shedding light on the actor capability of each bloc in the area of international disaster relief. Second, we specify the relationship between actorness and effectiveness, a relationship which is too often assumed rather than explored. Using previous research of EU and US actorness as a starting point, we link four aspects of actorness to effectiveness and assess the resulting hypotheses using the case of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. We find support for our proposed links between actorness and effectiveness, although further research is needed before robust conclusions can be drawn

Multilevel Governance and Complex Threats : The Case of Pandemic Preparedness in the European Union and the United States

The scale of dangers posed by influenza pandemics, combined with a series of actual outbreaks, has led policymakers in both the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) to frame the issue as a security threat and to call for extraordinary action. In the US, the 2006 and 2010 National Security Strategies identified pandemics as a “catastrophic challenge” while the 2006 US Pandemic Plan argued that “pandemics should be viewed as a national security issue.” The EU’s 2008 review of its own European Security Strategy broadened the scope of threats facing the continent to include pandemic influenza. Identifying an influenza pandemic as a security threat, however, is relatively easily done. More challenging is to act upon that designation, through implementing security strategies in practice and managing governance processes in multi-level governance systems. Drawing upon securitization theory and traditional implementation theory, this article compares the extent to which the EU and the US have turned words into action on pandemic preparation. The findings show that increasingly securitized rhetoric following the H5N1 and H1N1 outbreaks has indeed been followed by new policies, structures, and operational capacities. As such, the article provides preliminary evidence that securitizing a public policy problem can increase political leverage over administrative processes of implementation

Multilevel Governance and Complex Threats : The Case of Pandemic Preparedness in the European Union and the United States

The scale of dangers posed by influenza pandemics, combined with a series of actual outbreaks, has led policymakers in both the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) to frame the issue as a security threat and to call for extraordinary action. In the US, the 2006 and 2010 National Security Strategies identified pandemics as a “catastrophic challenge” while the 2006 US Pandemic Plan argued that “pandemics should be viewed as a national security issue.” The EU’s 2008 review of its own European Security Strategy broadened the scope of threats facing the continent to include pandemic influenza. Identifying an influenza pandemic as a security threat, however, is relatively easily done. More challenging is to act upon that designation, through implementing security strategies in practice and managing governance processes in multi-level governance systems. Drawing upon securitization theory and traditional implementation theory, this article compares the extent to which the EU and the US have turned words into action on pandemic preparation. The findings show that increasingly securitized rhetoric following the H5N1 and H1N1 outbreaks has indeed been followed by new policies, structures, and operational capacities. As such, the article provides preliminary evidence that securitizing a public policy problem can increase political leverage over administrative processes of implementation