Circular migration has become a central concept for the future EU migration policy, implying that migrants should be encouraged to move repeatedly between the country of origin and the host country. The basic purpose is to utilise international labour mobility to make both countries’ economies more efficient.

The EU budget review will enter a new phase this autumn when the European Commission presents its long-awaited proposals for budget reform. At this seminar SIEPS will publish a new report, How to Reform the EU Budget? A Methodological Toolkit, in which EU spending is examined in detail.

The intention of the ongoing review of the EU budget is to create a budget that is better adapted at facing future challenges. At the same time it raises fundamental questions about what the EU is and should do.

National courts are Community courts and as such they should do everything needed to make sure that the preliminary rulings procedure functions as efficiently as possible. The effectiveness of this system is obviously based on a healthy dialogue (discourse) between the two main protagonists: the Court of Justice and the national court.

This report analyses how far the EU is integrating its energy and climate change policies. The report focuses on identifying possible synergies and trade-offs between the EU’s most recent package of legislative measures to combat climate change and its energy security objectives.

In the wake of the economic and financial crisis, a Swedish membership to the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has returned to the domestic political agenda. Although the issue has been politically dead since the referendum on the euro in 2003, public opinion in support of EMU has increased the past year as the Swedish krona has continued to depreciate.

The European Commission recently launched a discussion on the architecture of direct payments, with a view to rethinking the philosophy of agricultural regulation within the EU. The debate has been pursued under the Swedish EU Presidency.

In order to better understand the Swedish Presidency of the European Union, SIEPS invited a number of experts on the European Union from different member states. They were asked to write short analytical texts on how the Presidency has succeeded in relation to expectations and ambitions.

The Czech Presidency of 2009 inherited a fully charged agenda after France. Three severe external crises confronted the Czech government as it took over at the helm of the EU: the gas dispute between Ukraine and Russia; renewed hostilities in the Gaza Strip; and the deepest global economic crisis since the Great Depression.

This publication is the outcome of a seminar on democracy promotion in a transatlantic perspective organized jointly between the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies and Sweden’s Democracy Ambassador, Maria Leissner on 29 September 2008 in Stockholm. The aim of the publication is to make public the wealth of ideas and experiences that were presented at the seminar which deserves to be brought into the debate about democracy assistance and the possibility of enhanced future transatlantic cooperation.