Publications
NATO’s Global Aspirations
Posted on 2008-05-16.
Bucharest was initially dubbed the “enlargement summit.” But this epithet was soon obsolete, despite the go-ahead for Albania and Croatia to join. Western European opposition to Ukrainian and Georgian membership plans was too strong. Would enlargement necessarily increase NATO’s capacity?
The EU Special Representatives: what lessons for the EEAS?
Posted on 2007-11-26.
The work of the EU Special Representatives (EUSR) has not figured prominently in the coverage of EU foreign policy-making and output, let alone in the preliminary exchanges concerning the establishment of the European External Action Service (EEAS). Nevertheless, the experience they have accumulated provides relevant lessons to be fed into the upcoming deliberations on how the EEAS might be designed.
Lessons learned from European defence equipment programmes
Posted on 2007-10-30.
This Occasional Paper explores the issue of European armaments cooperation. Such cooperation between countries has often been difficult. Even so, European governments continue to collaborate on multinational equipment programmes for a number of reasons, and successful multinational programmes have manifold benefits. These benefits include, for instance, the possibility of meeting a capability requirement at an affordable price. Collaborative programmes allow greater economies of scale because of the larger order books. These savings also allow European governments to contemplate acquiring more advanced equipment (and share development costs), despite static defence budgets. Another advantage is the fact that common equipment can help countries work together on international missions: such interoperability is vital for the success of military coalitions. Also, governments gain political benefits from cooperation, and are perceived to be constructive EU partners. Moreover, multinational procurement encourages greater convergence of thinking about international security among EU governments, and this helps foster a common European strategic culture. Other positive side effects include technology sharing, technology development, common standards, integrated logistics and successful exports.
Europe back on track? Impulses from the German EU Presidency 2007
Posted on 2007-07-27.
Germany’s EU Presidency in the first half of 2007 had been met by huge expectations - which have largely been fulfilled. This report offers an overview of the aims and achievements in various policy areas during the six-month term. The report draws mostly positive conclusions on internal end economic policies, where agreement on many concrete measures from the presidency’s work program could be achieved, notably on the single market, justice and home affairs, climate protection and energy policy. With the ‘Berlin Declaration’ Germany achieved a show of unity for the future of the Union that was an auspicious start for the talks on treaty reform. The agreement on a detailed mandate for the upcoming Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) under the Portuguese Presidency now offers a way out of the constitutional crisis of the Union. The presidency played a prominent and constructive role throughout the negotiations, which achieved a number of difficult political compromises. In foreign policy, results were less tangible. Germany’s engagement helped to deepen the economic partnership with the US, but could not avoid deterioration in EU-Russia relations. That was a specific drawback for the ambitious concept of a “New Ostpolitik”, aiming at integrated policies on Russia, the EU’s Neighborhood and energy. In the conflicts in Kosovo and between Israel and Palestine, substantial settlements are also a long way off. The EU is preparing for an ambitious operation in Kosovo and Germany helped to move the Middle East conflict higher up on the international agenda. An annex offers a survey of the conditions for EU policy in Germany and the organisational structures of the Presidency.
Opportunities and Limits of EU-China Security Cooperation
Posted on 2007-07-02.
In its European Security Strategy, the European Union defined the People's Republic of China (PRC) as a strategic partner and envisaged comprehensive cooperation with it, including in the security sector. China and the EU often use the same terms, but the connotation of these terms differs due to fundamentally different security concerns. This article critically assesses the possibilities, prospects and difficulties from a European point of view of pursuing Sino-European cooperation in security matters. It concludes that given basic differences in perception, cooperation is likely to be successful in such fields as environmental disasters and pandemics, but will remain limited in such areas as non-proliferation, the fight against terrorism and energy security.
5 publications have been found on 1 page(s).
