The political controversies associated with the visual presence of the European Union (EU) have a longer history than the EU itself. This is evident in the unwieldly processes of designing and adopting common symbols including the EU flag, passport, currency and the visual diplomacy of ‘family photos’ of EU leaders. EU institutions have revamped […]

Nativist visions of a Europe’s Union opposed to the EU belong to a classical inventory of radical right (RR) parties. However, an antithetical redefinition of Europe where ‘the image of Europe as a shining city perched on the hill of perpetual peace, social welfare, and inalienable human rights is replaced with the cry of ‘“Europe […]

Today’s political reality of populist movements, geopolitical competition and disinformation has inspired an emerging scholarship on politicisation in EU external policy. Yet most of these recent contributions on EU external policy focus on politicisation processes within the EU. Comparatively, little research has been done on how actors based in and/or representing third countries contribute to […]

In the past four years the European Union has become an increasingly important actor in the field of defence. One key development, the establishment of a European Defence Fund (EDF) with a budget of 7.953 billion EUR for defence research and development for the period 2021–2027, has generated much interest in academic and policy circles. […]

In order to condemn the violence of the regime and to support the people opposing Lukashenko, the EU has put in place a two-level strategy which employs standard hard power instruments in regards to the leadership and a strategy inspired by the EUGS in regards to Belarussians. The approach toward Lukashenko is threefold, with different […]

In the immediate aftermath of the election of Joe Biden the European Commission proposed ‘A new transatlantic agenda’. This ambitious plan emphasizes that together the EU and the US ‘have the reach to set regulations and standards that are replicated across the world’. This very much sounds like a revival of the major priority of […]

In the last twenty years, a heated academic debate about the role of the public in EU integration has emerged. Among the so-called ‘grand theories’ explaining EU integration, the impact of EU citizens has largely been perceived as marginal or even ineffective. Accordingly, European integration is seen as a matter of choices of the member […]