The internet and public–private governance in the European Union

The EU plays a significant role in public policy aspects of Internet governance, having created in the late 1990s the dot eu Internet Top Level Domain (TLD). This enables users to register names under a European online address label. This paper explores key public policy issues in the emergent governance system for dot eu, because it provides an interesting case of new European transnational private governance. Specifically, dot eu governance is a reconciliation resulting from a governance cultural clash between the European regulatory state and what can be described broadly as the Internet community. The EU has customised the governance of dot eu towards a public–private dispersed agencification model. The paper extends the evidence base on agencification within trans-European regulatory networks and the emergence of private transnational network governance characterised by self-regulation

The European Union's human security discourse : where are we now?

The language of human security has been prominent in the European Union's (EU) official discourse for a number of years. However, whilst it has been promoted as a new approach for the EU in the development of its security and defence policy, the aim of this article is to assess the extent to which it actually features in the EU's contemporary strategic discourse and practice. It seeks to uncover where and how the concept is spoken within the EU's institutional milieu, how it is understood by the relevant policy-makers in the EU and the implication of this across key areas of human security practice. It is argued in the article that human security has not been embedded as the driving strategic concept for Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) in an era of crisis and change in Europe and beyond and that the prospects for this materialising in the near future are rather thin

The challenges of cybercrime governance in the European Union

Information and Communications Technologies, in particular the Internet, have been an increasingly important aspect of global social, political and economic life for two decades, and are the backbone of the global information society today. Their evolution and development has brought many benefits but also the threat and practice of serious cyber attacks, cyber espionage and cybercrime within the virtual, networked ecosystem that we live in. In this context, the European Union over the past ten years has been developing its policies towards cyber threats. Drastically reducing cybercrime featured as a key priority objective in the Cybersecurity Strategy of the European Union (2013) delineating several lines of action, including enhanced operational capability to combat cybercrime. Focusing on the operational aspects and in particular the European Cybercrime Centre’s Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce, this article demonstrates how this represents novel, collaborative and flexible (informal) governance bounded by a broader formal milieu, reflecting the complexity of cybercrime investigations. It is also shown that, despite the relative success of J-CAT, challenges still remain

The collective securitization of cyberspace in the European Union

Reflecting a central premise of the collective securitisation model, it is argued in this article that both specific events and longer-term trends have galvanised and reinforced the EU discourse of increasing threat and risk around cybersecurity, at different points in time. Thus, whilst major cyberattacks have caused the EU to reflect with some urgency on the increasing threat and review its approach, new policy initiatives evolved incrementally thereafter, rather than being the product of any emergency action outside the EU’s normal politics. It is shown further that, in the case of cybersecurity, discourses of threat and risk have continued beyond policy initiation, and that this discourse has very much run in parallel with further action and initiatives. Finally, this article demonstrates how collective securitisation and legislation in certain key areas related to cybersecurity can also be subject to EU institutional desecuritisation moves, leading to national policy differentiation following a precipitating event

The European Union and Cyprus: the power of attractionas a solution to the Cyprus issue

Der vorliegende Beitrag geht der Frage nach, ob eine mögliche EU-Mitgliedschaft von Zypern dazu beitragen kann, den Konflikt auf der Insel zu lösen, oder aber ob er sich dadurch verschärft. Der Hauptzweck dieses Beitrages ist es zu untersuchen, ob und in welchem Umfang die EU-Mitgliedschaft als ein Katalysator für eine Lösung des Zypern-Problems dienen kann. Das Hauptargument ist, dass es trotz der vielen negativen Anmerkung zum EU-Beitritt auch viele positive Einschätzungen gibt, die davon ausgehen, dass der EU-Beitritt langfristig allen Beteiligten, also den griechischen und türkischen Zyprioten und der Türkei, Vorteile bringt. Außerdem wird argumentiert, dass die EU im Falle einer Mitgliedschaft Zyperns und der Türkei in der Lage wäre, den notwendigen ökonomischen und (sicherheits)politischen Rahmen zu bilden, um zu einer Lösung der Zypernfrage zu gelangen. (ICD

The financial crisis and Cypriot foreign policy : (re) Europeanisation

This article seeks to investigate the impact of the Eurozone crisis on the foreign policy of member states, taking Cyprus as a case study. Drawing on the debate on Europeanisation of national foreign policies, it is argued that Cypriot foreign policy, despite the general frustration caused by the financial crisis within broader society, has actually undergone a further (re) Europeanisation. This is explained in the main by the change in government and leadership, from the ideologically left leaning, pro-European but policy critical Christofias administration to the (centre) right leaning, pro-European and Western oriented Anastasiades government. This article therefore explores the dynamics of (re) Europeanisation of Cypriot foreign policy in the financial crisis and demonstrates how Cypriot foreign policy elites have actually adapted a more rather than less EU-centric approach to foreign policy issues and actions

The impact of the international financial and economic crisis on the (de)Europeanization of national foreign policies in the Mediterranean

The concept of Europeanization has developed considerably since its initial phase in the early 1990s when the focus was on analyzing the impact of EU (then EEC) membership. New conceptual tools like downloading, uploading, and crossloading have enriched that particular debate dealing with most policy areas and institutional arrangements. The question of the impact of Europeanization on national foreign policies has also now fully become part of the academic literature. Indeed, to date, there exists an important academic literature on the Europeanization of the foreign and security policies of European Union (EU) member states. In one of the latest studies available, covering ten member states of the then 27-EU, Hill and Wong1 provided the following comparative conclusions in relation to the degree and type of (de) Europeanization occurring