There has been a fall in investments in several EU member states and the need to revive economic growth is often highlighted. Therefore, the European Commission has presented a plan for 315 billion euro of new investment.

Russia is the largest non-EU country with borders to several EU countries; a very significant supplier of energy to the EU; and an important destination for exports from the EU. The Russian economy is now facing serious challenges as a result of falling oil prices, sanctions and several years without reform.

Expanding international exchange generates new collective needs that the nation states cannot satisfy, but also new sources of revenue from the digital economy and from the struggle against fiscal evasion. In this analysis, the author argues that to fund the provision of European collective goods, the EU must identify and pursue mobile tax bases that are not within the reach of the individual member states.

Two years ago Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to renegotiate the United Kingdom’s EU membership and then hold a referendum if reelected. The date of the election, 7 May, is approaching and the question of who will win the election and what that will mean for the relationship to the EU is of interest to many Europeans.

The euro crisis has left no EU member state unaffected. European cooperation and solidarity has for many years been put to the test in a way which has no parallel in the post-war period.

Sexual orientation and gender identity have been more and more identified as grounds of discrimination in European as well as in national legislation. Today, the situation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer persons in the EU is considered a human rights concern.

EU enlargement into Central and Eastern Europe intensifies debates mired in the past.  A forgotten source is the earlier stability strategy by Western powers:  the shift to homogeneous nation-states and ethnic unmixing.

This paper argues that the resurgence of the Greek crisis is not surprising and can be explained both with a macroeconomic approach – lack of debt relief – and a microeconomic approach – lack of structural reforms. The lack of progress along both dimensions can be explained both by political economy arguments within Greece and the eurozone as well as deeper institutional deficiencies in Greece and the lack of a proper governance framework within the eurozone.

The Greek parliamentary election in January resulted in a coalition government with the radical left-wing party Syriza obtaining the most votes. What does this new constellation mean for Greece’s EU relations and the ongoing negotiations over the financial assistance to the country? In this paper, Dionyssis Dimitrakopoulos describes the changes to the political landscape and its implications for the country’s role in the EU and the eurozone.

With the Lisbon Treaty, the European Parliament increased its power of scrutiny over the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). But what role does the European Parliament, and more specifically, the political groups of the European Parliament play in that policy area? In this policy analysis, the author Daniel Fiott argues that the political groups of the European Parliament indeed do play a diplomatic role in the European Union’s foreign policy.