How Jean-Claude Juncker and Pierre Moscovici laid the groundwork for the EU’s post-COVID fiscal policy

The EU’s fiscal rules, which state that governments should run budget deficits no higher than 3% of GDP and maintain a public debt no higher than 60% of GDP, have been suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic and there are now growing calls for them to be reformed or abandoned altogether. Drawing on a new study, Frédéric Mérand documents how Jean-Claude Juncker, Pierre Moscovici and other figures within the European Commission laid the groundwork for this paradigm shift in EU fiscal governance

L’Europe dans la culture stratégique canadienne, 1949-2009

S’ appuyant sur la notion de culture stratégique, cet article démontre l’existence d’ une tension historique entre européanisme, continentalisme et internationalisme dans la politique étrangère canadienne. Cette tension fondatrice est explorée sur le plan conceptuel, mais également dans les prises de position concrètes des gouvernements et des partis politiques depuis la fin de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. En s’ alignant plus ouvertement sur Washington, le gouvernement conservateur de Stephen Harper (2006-2009) est le premier à privilégier le continentalisme de manière aussi unidimensionnelle. Même si le déclin de l’ européanisme ne fait aucun doute, la résilience anticipée de la culture stratégique nous amène à relativiser cette tentative de transformation de la politique étrangère canadienne.Building on the notion of strategic culture, this article substantiates the existence of a historical tension between Europeanism, continentalism and internationalism in Canadian foreign policy. We explore this basic tension at the conceptual level, but also through the positions taken by governments and political parties since World War ii. We note that, by aligning itself on Washington, the Conservative government of Stephen Harper (2006-2009) is the first to privilege continentalism exclusively and at the expense of other perspectives. While the decline of Europeanism seems inevitable, the anticipated resilience of Canada’ s strategic culture leads us to question this attempt at transforming Canadian foreign policy

France’s Return to NATO: The Death Knell for ESDP?

Our article focuses on the likely impact of France's return to NATO's integrated military command on the future of the European security and defense policy (ESDP). First, we describe the triangular relationship between France's defense, NATO and European defense policies that dominated the era of the Gaullist–Mitterrandist consensus (1958–95) and its gradual erosion under Jacques Chirac's tenure (1995–2007). Second, we explain the context in which President Sarkozy made the decision in 2007 to rejoin the Allied military command. Relying on interviews with French foreign and defense policy-makers, we address the extent to which ESDP considerations really played a role. Finally, we develop four scenarios for the future of European defense: (1) ESDP gets a new lease of life; (2) France becomes a normal player in a NATO-dominated Europe; (3) NATO and ESDP work out of a division of labor; and (4) France becomes the Trojan horse of European cooperation inside NATO. To develop each scenario, we rely on rationalist and constructivist mechanisms drawn from International Relations theory

Hommage à Bastien Irondelle, 1973-2013

Les témoignages qui affluent depuis la disparition de Bastien Irondelle soulignent la générosité, l’intégrité et l’engagement intellectuel du jeune professeur de Sciences Po Paris. Ces qualités, reconnues de tous ne doivent pas nous faire oublier qu’il a aussi été un chercheur prolifique au CERI. En une décennie, Bastien Irondelle a publié pas moins de 4 ouvrages, 17 chapitres de livres, 21 articles scientifiques, 12 recensions ou lectures critiques et 11 rapports de recherche mandatés. Ce court texte résume les principales contributions de notre collègue et ami, décédé au Mans le 27 septembre 2013 [Premier paragraphe]

The GRAVITY+ Project: Towards All-sky, Faint-Science, High-Contrast Near-Infrared Interferometry at the VLTI

The GRAVITY instrument has been revolutionary for near-infrared interferometry by pushing sensitivity and precision to previously unknown limits. With the upgrade of GRAVITY and the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) in GRAVITY+, these limits will be pushed even further, with vastly improved sky coverage, as well as faint-science and high-contrast capabilities. This upgrade includes the implementation of wide-field off-axis fringe-tracking, new adaptive optics systems on all Unit Telescopes, and laser guide stars in an upgraded facility. GRAVITY+ will open up the sky to the measurement of black hole masses across cosmic time in hundreds of active galactic nuclei, use the faint stars in the Galactic centre to probe General Relativity, and enable the characterisation of dozens of young exoplanets to study their formation, bearing the promise of another scientific revolution to come at the VLTI.Comment: Published in the ESO Messenge

Multiple star systems in the Orion nebula

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final fersion is available from EDP Sciences via the DOI in this record.This work presents an interferometric study of the massive-binary fraction in the Orion Trapezium cluster with the recently comissioned GRAVITY instrument. We observed a total of 16 stars of mainly OB spectral type. We find three previously unknown companions for θ1 Ori B, θ2 Ori B, and θ2 Ori C. We determined a separation for the previously suspected companion of NU Ori. We confirm four companions for θ1 Ori A, θ1 Ori C, θ1 Ori D, and θ2 Ori A, all with substantially improved astrometry and photometric mass estimates. We refined the orbit of the eccentric high-mass binary θ1 Ori C and we are able to derive a new orbit for θ1 Ori D. We find a system mass of 21.7 M⊙ and a period of 53 days. Together with other previously detected companions seen in spectroscopy or direct imaging, eleven of the 16 high-mass stars are multiple systems. We obtain a total number of 22 companions with separations up to 600 AU. The companion fraction of the early B and O stars in our sample is about two, significantly higher than in earlier studies of mostly OB associations. The separation distribution hints toward a bimodality. Such a bimodality has been previously found in A stars, but rarely in OB binaries, which up to this point have been assumed to be mostly compact with a tail of wider companions. We also do not find a substantial population of equal-mass binaries. The observed distribution of mass ratios declines steeply with mass, and like the direct star counts, indicates that our companions follow a standard power law initial mass function. Again, this is in contrast to earlier findings of flat mass ratio distributions in OB associations. We excluded collision as a dominant formation mechanism but find no clear preference for core accretion or competitive accretion.Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant AgreementFCT-PortugalERC Starting Gran