Condemned for complicity in illegal practices, Frontex recently lost its executive director over accusations of misconduct. A dilemma faces his replacement: where fundamental rights are at risk, should the agency stay, and attempt to remedy the situation, or withdraw, to avoid being complicit?
The EU’s legislative cycle is approaching its final full year. Ahead of 2023, three SIEPS researchers make an appraisal of what the Commission, the European Parliament and the Council have achieved so far and how well – or not – they worked together to achieve it.
The EU Treaties award citizens of EU member states certain rights simply because of their nationality. Other rights depend on cross-border or economic activity. Thirty years on from the formal articulation of EU citizenship, Prof. Theodore Konstadinides assess two understandings of EU citizenship: the market and the social, traces their roots and reflects on whether this distinction is a useful one.
On 1 January Sweden took over the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU. It shoulders this key institutional and legislative responsibility during a time of war and economic turmoil, with its government having been in office for just two and a half months. But, argue SIEPS researchers Jakob Lewander and Louise Bengtsson, there are good reasons for thinking that Sweden will succeed in the roles of honest broker and effective crisis manager.
Infringement cases at the Court of Justice of the EU are thought to be simple affairs; easy for the European Commission to win. In this European Policy Analysis Markus Johansson and Olof Larsson of the University of Gothenburg show that things are not quite so straightforward: member states are defending – and winning – such cases more often than was previously thought.
Following the decisive victory for the right in its parliamentary elections, Italy will shortly have a new government. The Prime Minister will almost certainly be Giorgia Meloni of Fratelli d’Italia. In a new analysis Giovanni Capoccia of the University of Oxford explains what all this might mean for Italy and for the EU.
Faced with millions of refugees fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU moved quickly and with remarkable unity. In this essay SIEPS researchers Bernd Parusel and Valeriia Varfolomieieva suggest some lessons that the handling of the situation might hold for the future of EU asylum policy.
In 1997 the Court of Justice ruled that the Swedish retail monopoly on alcohol was consistent with EU law. Would it do so again today? In this report Dr Graham Butler (University of Aarhus) notes how Swedish policy and EU law have changed since that decision. He finds that, today, the monopoly’s compatibility with EU law is questionable.
This autumn the European Commission will present a draft of a new EU Global Health Strategy. This is an opportunity for the EU to deepen, broaden and better operationalize its approach in line with Agenda 2030, argues Louise Bengtsson, Senior Researcher at SIEPS.
Swedish voters are still reluctant to join the euro. For this situation to change, the EU’s economic and monetary union (EMU) must be able to ensure economic prosperity, writes Karolina Ekholm, Professor in International Economics at Stockholm University.