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European Foreign Affairs Review
Number of Followers: 34

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ISSN (Print) 1384-6299
Published by Kluwer Law International

[21 journals]

The European Union: A Key and Reliable Partner in the Arctic and Beyond
- Abstract:
  Content Type Journal Article
  Part of Volume 24, Issue 3
  Authors
  Marie-Anne Coninsx, Ambassador at Large for the Arctic, European Union.
  Journal European Foreign Affairs Review
  Online ISSN 1384-6299
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  PubDate: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 12:00:00 +000
Crisis Responders: Comparing Policy Approaches of the EU, the UN, NATO and
OSCE with Experiences in the Field
- Abstract: The EU aims at being a prominent global crisis responder but its Member States act also through the UN, NATO, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to achieve both short-term stabilization by military and/or civilian means, as well as longer term conflict prevention and transformation. By comparing the policy approaches of these four multilateral organizations to conflicts and crises, this article shows how the broad principle of comprehensiveness has been developed to fit different institutional logics, thus leading to divergences in approach. Distilling findings from empirical research conducted in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Libya, Mali and Ukraine, this article synthesizes lessons about varying levels of the EU’s and the other organizations’ conflict sensitivity, effective multilateralism, value-based approach and application of the principle of local ownership in theatre.
  Content Type Journal Article
  Part of Volume 24, Issue 3
  Authors
  Loes Debuysere, Researcher in the Europe in the World unit at CEPS (Brussels).
  Steven Blockmans, Head of the same unit and Professor of EU External Relations Law at the University of Amsterdam.
  Journal European Foreign Affairs Review
  Online ISSN 1384-6299
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  PubDate: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 12:00:00 +000
Non-governmental Search and Rescue Operations in the Mediterranean:
Challenge or Opportunity for the EU'
- Abstract: The article analyses the development of Search and Rescue (SAR) Operations in the Central Mediterranean by NGOs as a controversial but efficient practice and aims to discuss its impact on states’ and EU performances in coping with the migrant and refugee crisis. Using empirical data provided by the Italian Coast Guard from 2014 to 2018, it focuses on these questions: Are non-governmental SAR operations at sea becoming a civilian practice to be associated with governmental ones' Can the consolidation of such practice impact (complement) governmental and intergovernmental policies' It is divided into three parts. First, civil society organizations, and specifically NGOs, are analysed within the theoretical studies on migration, to stress their roles and approaches and to understand their relevance. Second, the recent use of SAR operations at sea by NGOs to rescue people in the Mediterranean are discussed as a complementary tool to governmental one. Their potentiality to become more than a temporary solution and instead to constitute an innovative and consolidated practice of ‘non-governmental SAR operations’ is assessed. Last, empirical data are used to evaluate the perception of such practice and to discuss its political and social legitimation.
  Content Type Journal Article
  Part of Volume 24, Issue 3
  Authors
  Daniela Irrera, Associate Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Catania, where she serves as Deputy Dean for Internationalization and Research.
  Journal European Foreign Affairs Review
  Online ISSN 1384-6299
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  PubDate: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 12:00:00 +000
The Rise of Crimefare Europe: Fighting Migrant Smuggling in West Africa
- Abstract: This article explores the incremental role of criminalization and crime control in European Union (EU) foreign policy and external action. Protecting Europe from dangerous or unwanted mobility has come to drive the EU’s relations with Africa. Consequently, the EU’s liberal state-building agenda (promoting peace, democracy and human rights) seems to be increasingly accompanied or even sometimes supplanted by illiberal practices (criminalization, policing, surveillance, border security and militarization). Based on fieldwork in Niger, Mali and Senegal, the article investigates how West African countries’ internal security apparatuses and borders are increasingly becoming a main target sector for European assistance. Yet scrutinizing policy implementation reveals that some European crime definitions and control models are locally resisted and contribute to greater insecurity by upsetting fragile micro-political stability. As such, the article problematizes the compatibility of European and African security, and argues for a collaborative engagement between Criminology and International Relations (IR) in analysing the EU’s emerging global crime-fighting role.
  Content Type Journal Article
  Part of Volume 24, Issue 3
  Authors
  Eva Magdalena Stambøl, Doctoral Researcher, Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg Universitet, Denmark.
  Journal European Foreign Affairs Review
  Online ISSN 1384-6299
  Print ISSN 1384-6299
  PubDate: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 12:00:00 +000
The European Union and the Responsibility to Protect
- Abstract: The European Union (EU) has committed itself to the promotion and the implementation of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in political statements, most recently in the EU Global Strategy. When taking a closer look at the activities of the EU in the context of humanitarian crises that can be brought within the R2P framework, the strength and effectiveness of the EU’s support might be questioned. This article examines the EU’s interest in the R2P by addressing the factors that inspired the EU’s openness towards the concept and by examining whether the EU’s commitment to the R2P falls within its general ambitions to contribute to international security or whether the EU is placing human suffering at the core of its considerations. In addition, this article questions to what extent the EU is capable of pursuing its own interest in the R2P and to what extent the EU is held back in implementing its commitment to the R2P by differing EU Member State approaches. It will be shown that the EU is strongly committed to fulfilling its collective responsibilities in partnership with the United Nations and that the focus of the EU’s activities has been put on atrocity prevention.
  Content Type Journal Article
  Part of Volume 24, Issue 3
  Authors
  Julia Schmidt, Lecturer, Law School, University of Exeter, UK. The research was funded by a British International Studies Association (BISA) Early Career Small Research Grant.
  Journal European Foreign Affairs Review
  Online ISSN 1384-6299
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  PubDate: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 12:00:00 +000
The EU and the ‘Problem’ of Illegal Logging: the Case of the
EU-Malaysia VPA
- Abstract: Malaysia was the first country in Asia to start negotiations for a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with the European Union (EU). These VPAs are the core of the EU’s external forest governance and stem from the 2003 Forest Legality Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan. Both aim to govern the ‘problem’ of illegal logging. This article presents two investigations. First, it looks at the process of problematization: what is the problem represented to be' In other words, how is the problem delineated and what assumptions underlie this representation' To this end, this article presents a thorough analysis of the FLEGT Action Plan, puts together the pieces of the problem, and links them to the coherence of the EU as a global actor. Second, the article delves into resistance to this governing in the case of Malaysia. In the VPA processes, the EU expects local actors to articulate their interests and streamline their knowledge to reach an optimal definition of legal logging. These expectations however obscure a history of diverging interests and legal battles in Malaysia. The second part of this article investigates how local actors such as indigenous peoples’ groups, timber producers and state-level politicians have come to resist the VPA and its governing in a series of opting-out and walking out.
  Content Type Journal Article
  Part of Volume 24, Issue 3
  Authors
  Marjolein Derous, PhD Researcher at the Centre for European Union Studies, Ghent University (Belgium).
  Journal European Foreign Affairs Review
  Online ISSN 1384-6299
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  PubDate: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 12:00:00 +000
The Concept of ‘Resilience’ in EU External Relations: A Critical
Assessment
- Abstract: The 2016 Global Strategy (GS) made resilience central to the European Union’s (EU’s) external activities. However, many aspects of resilience were ambiguous. Three of these aspects are identified in this article: whether resilience is about risks or resources, whether resilience means stability or change, and what is the role of values. These ambiguities created a space for the policy work of EU bureaucracy. This work is examined in development and neighbourhood fields, and in relations with Russia. Documents’ analysis and semi-structured interviews reveal a difference in how three ambiguities were interpreted. Differences were identified among policy fields but not between EU institutions. These differences reflect the efforts of EU officials to preserve consistency in ‘their’ fields. This policy work undermines one important goal for introducing resilience in the GS, the enhanced coherence of EU external activities. Finally, the study revealed that some interpretations moved closer to the theoretical writings on resilience compared with the GS.
  Content Type Journal Article
  Part of Volume 24, Issue 3
  Authors
  Tatiana Romanova, Associate professor at Saint-Petersburg State University (Saint-Petersburg) and National Research University – Higher School of Economics (Moscow).
  Journal European Foreign Affairs Review
  Online ISSN 1384-6299
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  PubDate: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 12:00:00 +000
The Sub-state Dimension of the European Union Relations with China
- Abstract: Regional governments across the world actively participate in international relations. They open trade and cultural missions abroad, join international networks of cooperation, and sign treaties and agreements with their partners from other countries. Relationships at regional and local levels have moderated rising tensions between states that might otherwise paralyse global governance. Fast growing networks of sub-state contacts in Sino-European affairs create new opportunities for the European Union (EU) to advance European interests, norms and values. Unfortunately, acknowledgement, by Brussels, of such potential political instruments is limited. The main goal of this article is to show how the EU could benefit from growing substate connections with China. This article begins with an explanation, based upon a survey conducted among regional authorities from the five EU Member States, of the phenomenon of fast-growing cooperation on the sub-state level between Europe and China (Germany, France, Italy, Poland, and Spain). Next, this study identifies, through interviews with the European External Action service (EEAS), the European Commission (EC) officials and the regional authorities, EU activities that promote collaborations on ‘the third level’ of its relations with China. The research concludes with suggestions of possible ways Europe could benefit from further development of sub-state contacts with China.
  Content Type Journal Article
  Part of Volume 24, Issue 3
  Authors
  Tomasz Kamiñski, Assistant Professor, Faculty of International and Political Studies, University of Lodz.
  Journal European Foreign Affairs Review
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  PubDate: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 12:00:00 +000
European Union Adapting to an Era of No Ruling Trade Paradigm
- Abstract: Since the end of the Second World War, the ruling paradigm pertaining to international trade policy has been ‘fostering liberalization of trade and economic integration.’ The paradigm evolved through a convergence of a variety of different forces and has been a constant for approximately seventy years. The European Union (EU) is very much a product of the acceptance of the paradigm. The institutional arrangements of the EU have elements that foster achievement of the paradigm’s goals. In the last few years, however, acceptance of the paradigm may be waning. The inability to make substantial progress in the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round is one indication. The EU itself is facing issues in ratifying certain aspects which the Commission negotiated at the bilateral level. Additionally, the deep trade agenda interferes in domestic politics. A question remains regarding how the EU has and will change its trade policy strategy in order to successfully achieve its international agenda for issues that have become more and more important for the EU societies.
  Content Type Journal Article
  Part of Volume 24, Issue 3
  Authors
  William A. Kerr, University Distinguished Professor and an Associate Member of the College of Law, University of Saskatchewan, Canada.
  Crina Viju-Miljusevic, Associate Professor, Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Carleton University, Canada.
  Journal European Foreign Affairs Review
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  PubDate: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 12:00:00 +000
Book review: Power, Perception and Foreign Policymaking: US and EU
Responses to the Rise of China, by Scott A. W. Brown. (London: Routledge.
2018)
- Abstract:
  Content Type Journal Article
  Part of Volume 24, Issue 3
  Authors
  David A. Beitelman, PhD, Research Fellow, Centre for the Study of Security & Development, Dalhousie University
  Journal European Foreign Affairs Review
  Online ISSN 1384-6299
  Print ISSN 1384-6299
  PubDate: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 12:00:00 +000
Book review: Structural Principles in EU External Relations Law, edited by
Marise Cremona. (Hart Publishing, Oxford. 2018)
- Abstract:
  Content Type Journal Article
  Part of Volume 24, Issue 3
  Authors
  Nanette Neuwahl, Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law, Université de Montréal Co-director, European Foreign Affairs Review
  Journal European Foreign Affairs Review
  Online ISSN 1384-6299
  Print ISSN 1384-6299
  PubDate: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 12:00:00 +000
Book review: The Routledge Handbook on the European Neighbourhood Policy,
edited by T. Schumacher, A. Marchetti & T. Demmerheuber. (London and New
York: Routledge. 2018)
- Abstract:
  Content Type Journal Article
  Part of Volume 24, Issue 3
  Authors
  Lyubov Zhyznomirska, PhD, Department of Political Science, Saint Mary’s University (Halifax, Canada)
  Journal European Foreign Affairs Review
  Online ISSN 1384-6299
  Print ISSN 1384-6299
  PubDate: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 12:00:00 +000