Recently, EU leaders have repeated the message that the Union needs to be more “geopolitical”. What does this mean? Richard Youngs, professor of International Relations, analyses this ambition by questioning its underlying assumptions. Without a modern and innovative form of geopolitics, he writes, the EU’s international identity risks becoming more uncertain and ambiguous – a risk that the Covid-19 pandemic is likely to reinforce.
The long-term budget has been stable over time, hovering around 1 percent of GNI. Its core may remain in that neighbourhood, but the galaxy of satellites around it seems much more expansive. With an emerging mix of grants and loans following the COVID-19 crisis, we may soon see a long-term budget in the vicinity of 2 percent, argues Daniel Tarschys, senior advisor at Sieps and a former Secretary General of the Council of Europe.
The banking union was created to protect public finances against failing banks. Membership is mandatory for euro countries and voluntary for others. Outside of the euro area, the legal acts on supervision must however be implemented through national decisions. This and other legal differences are analysed by Dominique Ritleng, Professor of European Law.
China’s economic development and global impact are tilting the economic, political and military balances that have shaped the world since the end of the cold war. One fundamental step in China’s global strategy is the infrastructure project BRI. In this report, Svante E. Cornell and Niklas Swanström analyse its impact on the EU’s neighbourhood as well as on the European project.
With growing global competition and less respect for the rules-based world order, the EU’s lack of an industrial policy has become problematic. This mismatch calls for explicit EU competences in order to strengthen the competitiveness of European companies globally, writes Jörgen Hettne, Associate Professor in EU Law.
On 1 December 2009, the Lisbon Treaty entered into force, aiming at making the EU more democratic, more transparent and more efficient. In this volume, four scholars discuss whether the Treaty has strengthened the EU during the past decade, a period marked by several crises for the European Union. With contributions from Luuk van Middelaar, R. Daniel Kelemen, Anne Thies and Eleanor Spaventa.
Member States outside of the eurozone may opt to join the EU’s banking union or to continue staying out. In this report, Professor Thorsten Beck examines the pros and cons of a potential Swedish participation.
The new procedure for selecting the President of the European Commission is subject to institutional and political struggles. Regardless the fate of the system after the European elections in 2019, SIEPS’ director Göran von Sydow argues, a genuine European level contestation over executive office is not likely to emerge soon.
The outgoing European Commission has been defined by the idea of a more “political” institution. While the ambition proved difficult to implement, a return to the role as a neutral arbiter is no longer an alternative.
Several challenges stimulate the debate on the future of the EU: globalisation, security concerns, the rise of populism, the impact of new technologies, Brexit. An underlying question concerns the prospects for legitimacy and democracy.