Only daydreamers could have imagined that constructing a foreign ministry for a supranational entity with unified external representation would be easy. In this paper on the external representation of the EU, published by the Finnish Institute for International Affairs, CEPS Research Fellow Piotr Maciej Kaczyński observes that the European Union has once again entered uncharted waters. He attributes the complexity to two overlapping developments. First is the confusion over who to represent: the Union or the Union and the member states.

In his latest Commentary, Michael Emerson finds that nowhere is the competition over the primacy of norms in international relations sharper than that revealed by the UN’s response to the murderous repression by the Syrian authorities of their civilian population.

Michael Emerson is Senior Associate Research Fellow at CEPS.

 In this CEPS Commentary, Michael Emerson argues that the case for Palestinian statehood is as strong as that of Israel, on the basis of the four criteria contained in the Montevideo Convention of 1932 on the rights and duties of states. In the wake of the US threat to veto any resolution before the US Security Council to grant statehood to Palestine, he observes that no other single move of US diplomacy could do more to wipe out President Obama’s diplomatic advances towards the Arab world or to reinvigorate Islamic fundamentalist tendencies in the Muslim world at large.

In cooperation with the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies.

Participation in CEPS meetings is a benefit of membership. Non-members may be admitted for €50, paid in cash at registration. A sandwich lunch (€6) will be served before the event, from 12.30 onwards.

In the wake of Osama Bin Ladin’s death and against the background of a more confident United States and a more anxious China, Marta Dassù explores in this EuropEos Commentary the prospect that these two leading countries could form a ‘G2’, further marginalising Europe.
The author is Director General, International Programs, at Aspen Institute Italia and Editor of Aspenia.
 

Participation in CEPS meetings is a benefit of membership. Non members may be admitted for €50, paid in cash at registration. A sandwich lunch (€6) will be served before the event, from 12.30 onwards.

This Commentary argues that the EU should build up a world-class diplomatic corps, capable of becoming a major actor in global affairs. It is a collective effort by a group of EU policy analysts based at research institutes in Brussels and Leuven. It draws upon the findings and policy recommendations put forward in their new book Upgrading the EU’s Role as Global Actor – Institutions, Law and the Restructuring of European Diplomacy.

Participation in CEPS Meetings is a benefit of membership. Non-members may be admitted for €50, paid in cash at registration.

The sixth and final volume of Readings in European Security brings together the unique insight and analysis of security experts from the EU, NATO, diplomatic missions, national governments, parliaments, business, media and academics on the following topics:

Obama’s Foreign Policy: Is this change we can believe in?

Somalia and the Pirates

The Political Future of Afghanistan

The papers in this volume were presented at the European Security Forum during the period of April 2009 to March 2010.

Against the background of the EU’s disappointing performance as an external actor in recent international gatherings (UN General Assembly, the climate talks and the IMF), Michael Emerson and Jan Wouters exhort the EU to urgently face up to new realities and undertake a comprehensive and strategic review of how it should position itself in the multilateral system, especially regarding the distribution of roles between the EU itself and the member states.

With the establishment of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) in 1999, the EU achieved considerable progress regarding the institutionalisation of its foreign policy. Various innovations were included in the Lisbon Treaty to address the cohesion and effectiveness problem of the EU. The renamed Common Security and Defence Policy has not found it easy to establish a common policy, however, and the strategic actorness of the CSDP has so far been mostly limited to relatively small missions.

It is routine for countries to send their heads of state to participate in important celebrations in neighbouring states, but there was nothing routine about the Latvian and Estonian presidents going to Moscow to take part in Victory Day events on May 9.

On January 15th of this year, Russia became the last of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe to ratify Protocol 14 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which will now allow the long-awaited reform of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to begin. This commentary explores two basic questions: Why did Russia not ratify Protocol 14 for such a long time? And why has it now decided to ratify it after four years of delay?

Turks see the issue of genocide recognition as a matter of national pride and international prestige. This commentary finds, however, that their government has failed to accept that what most hurts Turkey's standing in the world is not international recognition of the Armenian genocide, but rather the country’s inability to face up to its history.