JournalTOCs

European Foreign Affairs Review
Number of Followers: 35

Full-text available via subscription

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

[21 journals]

Book Review: Democratisation against Democracy. How EU Foreign Policy
Fails the Middle East, Andrea Teti, Pamela Abbott, Valeria Talbot & Paolo
Maggiolini eds, Palgrave Macmillan. 2020.
- Abstract:
  Volume 25
  Online ISSN 1384-6299
  PubDate: Sat, 26 Sep 2020 00:01:05 GMT
  Issue No: Vol. 25 (2020)
Brexit in the Eyes of East: How Will It Reshape EU/UK Trade Relations with
East Asia'
- Abstract: Brexit reshapes not only the EU-UK relations but also impact their trade relations with Asia. This article explores possible directions of EU/UK trade relations with Asia, covering free trade agreements, bilateral investment treaty and the UK’s potential participation in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). This article argues that a sense of competitive liberalization motivates their pursuit for trade opportunities with East Asia. The EU has to prove its continuous relevance in the international economic relations as the Brexiters allege it as a constraint for the UK to pursue active and flexible trade relations. In contrast, the UK has to fulfill its promise of Global Britain by delivering measurable progress in trade negotiations instead of renegotiating back what it has already enjoyed under the EU free trade agreements (FTAs).
  Volume 25
  Online ISSN 1384-6299
  PubDate: Sat, 26 Sep 2020 00:01:05 GMT
  Issue No: Vol. 25 (2020)
Jean Monnet Projects and the Possible Impact on Chinese Youth’s
Perception on the EU
- Abstract: The European Commission celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Jean Monnet Activities in 2019. Thus, it is the optimal time to review the impact of Jean Monnet activities on external perception on the EU and its integration. The article, with its focus on Chinese youth’s perception, has employed comparative analysis of 5446 effective samples of the Survey on ‘How Chinese College Students Perceive the EU’, which was conducted among twenty-three universities around the country during the 2016-2017 academic year. The article concludes that firstly, Chinese college students mainly take in information in a more passive fashion and their opinions on foreign affairs including EUrelated issues are overwhelmingly influenced by domestic macro-media reports or education; secondly, while students from universities with and without JMPs (Jean Monnet Projects) hold less divergent views on the general information about the EU and international relations in a wider sense, those respondents from universities with JMPs do perform better when it comes to EU-specific knowledge, such as the number of EU Member States, its motto and its institutional composition; thirdly, the comparative study on universities with and without JMPs has demonstrated that JMPs have produced some influence, but the impact is particularly limited, which is woefully insufficient to shape the general perception of Chinese college students on EU-related issues; and finally, Chinese college students come to be rather conservative regarding the items that imply a certain sense of politics, and this type of conservative tone, along with certain sort of nationalist sentiment, is deeply ingrained. The article ends with some policy recommendations.
  Volume 25
  Online ISSN 1384-6299
  PubDate: Sat, 26 Sep 2020 00:01:05 GMT
  Issue No: Vol. 25 (2020)
Extending the Logic of Integration Beyond EU Borders: External
Differentiated Integration in the Case of the Energy Community
- Abstract: How can the EU remain a transformative power without offering a full membership perspective' This question has triggered an intense debate among academics and practitioners alike. This article contributes to this debate by highlighting the conceptual relevance of Differentiated Integration (DI). We argue that DI offers an analytical concept to capture dynamics and processes often neglected in established approaches. This is especially so if one adopts a comprehensive understanding of DI, as we propose here. First, we focus on DI beyond EU borders, i.e. on external DI. Second, we argue that DI entails more than the inclusion of non-EU Member States in selected EU policies. Thus, external DI involves the extension of general integration dynamics (i.e. widening, broadening, and deepening) beyond EU borders. To illustrate our argument empirically, we analyse the Energy Community, an international organization initiated by the EU that has gone through significant processes of deepening, broadening and widening since its foundation. Overall, we maintain that external DI points to the EU’s potential of exporting the general logic of integration beyond its borders. Applied in this comprehensive sense, DI can add to our understanding of the EU as a transformative power.
  Volume 25
  Online ISSN 1384-6299
  PubDate: Sat, 26 Sep 2020 00:01:05 GMT
  Issue No: Vol. 25 (2020)
The EU’s Contribution to State Recognition: An Instrumental Approach
- Abstract: The European Union has no legal capacity to recognize or to refuse to recognize States. However, the broad array of instruments contributing to the diversity and scope of its external action singles it out within the highly varied category of international organizations. The changing degree of mobilization of its different instruments depending on the geographical proximity of the contested entity, on political considerations such as the power of the third States supporting the contested entity, or on past experience reveals that the EU modulates its interventions in accordance with its own interests to the extent they are compatible with its Member States’ interests. Framed by the EU’s principles and objectives of external action as laid down by Article 21 TEU, foremost among which is respect for international law, such mobilization of its external action instruments enables it to support certain contested entities in their state-building process, as well as to help to prevent the unlawful emergence of new entities and so work towards non-recognition of their statehood.
  Volume 25
  Online ISSN 1384-6299
  PubDate: Sat, 26 Sep 2020 00:01:05 GMT
  Issue No: Vol. 25 (2020)
Brexit and the Effects of the Proposed EU–UK Partnership Agreement
on the Audiovisual Sector
- Abstract: The audiovisual media industry has undergone and is undergoing a phase of global consolidation. While the sector is a significant component of the European economy, it is a special sector from a cultural perspective. Governments have reacted to this by trying to accommodate a tension between commercial objectives and what is perceived as ‘cultural’ objectives. Also the European Union has sought to reconcile these tensions. Now, Brexit poses further challenges for the global media sector, much of whose business activity was based in the UK.While the exact details of what Brexit would mean were unclear in June 2016, they have been partially clarified since then. The aim is to base the future EU/UK relationship on a free trade agreement, not on the Single Market. However, the audiovisual sector will be excluded from this agreement in line with the long-established precedent of a cultural exception in EU trade deals. The sector has widely understood these following extensive debates since 2013, ahead of adopting the EU mandate for the now-abandoned Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations with the US. Many international broadcasting groups have anticipated the end of UK Single Market access after Brexit by relicensing channels and relocating staff into the EU27. While the UK will retain and maybe grow some core strengths, notably around content production, its role as the leading European centre for global media companies is likely to be eroded by new hubs in the EU27, while UK-based media companies will continue to be affected by EU regulation in relation to market access as well as free movement. There are particular issues around data transfers and state aids. This article seeks to evaluate if the current negotiations cater to the interest of the audiovisual sector and if not, why not.
  Volume 25
  Online ISSN 1384-6299
  PubDate: Sat, 26 Sep 2020 00:01:05 GMT
  Issue No: Vol. 25 (2020)
The EU’s Position in the Trade-Food Security Nexus: Embedded
Neoliberalism Reinforced
- Abstract: The link between food security and trade has been the subject of continuous debate, which reveals a spectrum of different paradigms on the preferred relationship between the market and the state. Particularly during episodes of salience, paradigms come to the surface and are challenged, reinforced or reinvented. This article therefore zooms in on such episodes, to provide a more refined picture of how this nexus is perceived within the European Commission. Firstly, ideal types of paradigms applicable to the nexus are set out in an analytical framework. Secondly, this framework will be used to distinguish which ideas are dominant and whether variation exists between different Directorates-General (DGs) involved. The dominant policy paradigm is traced during the 2007–2008/2010 world food crisis, through an analysis of the EU’s Food Security Policy Framework (FSPF) (2010) and policy statements issued by different sections of the Commission. Subsequently two politicized cases in the ‘policy practise’ are analysed, namely EU milk exports to West Africa (2018) and EU safeguard measures on rice originating from Cambodia and Myanmar (2019). Finally, the EU’s ‘Farm to Fork’ future food strategy (2020) is discussed, which highlighted food security the midst of the Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) crisis. Throughout the analysis, an embedded neoliberal paradigm is identified, which entails a dominant free trade orientation combined with flanking policies and a focus on temporary measures under exceptional market conditions.
  Volume 25
  Online ISSN 1384-6299
  PubDate: Sat, 26 Sep 2020 00:01:05 GMT
  Issue No: Vol. 25 (2020)
European Union-Middle East Relations and International Relations Theory: A
Stock-Taking and Suggestions for Research
- Abstract: Current scholarship on European Union-Middle East relations has contributed little to ongoing theoretical debates in the academic discipline of international relations. Yet several influential research programmes regarding world politics would benefit from incorporating events and trends involving these two regions. In particular, conceptual controversies regarding regional and global security, the diffusion of regional identities, interregionalism and overlapping regionalism and the politics of empire will be advanced when specialists concentrate on analytical puzzles, and move beyond descriptive, evaluative and prescriptive accounts.
  Volume 25
  Online ISSN 1384-6299
  PubDate: Sat, 26 Sep 2020 00:01:05 GMT
  Issue No: Vol. 25 (2020)
The Inconsistent Human Rights Agenda of EU Mediterranean Policy
- Abstract: Vagueness and inconsistency in policy formulation represent an underlying factor for the longstanding weakness and ineffectiveness of EU human rights action towards the Mediterranean neighbourhood. This article aims to shed light on the causes of such flaws in policy-making and grasp their consequences on EU approaches on the matter, focusing on the competing preferences vis-a-vis the role and scope of human rights held by the key actors who have affected the direction of EU Mediterranean policy over time. The article argues that the roots of human rights inconsistency therein lie in the EU’s protracted incapability to coherently conciliate such competing views despite opportunities to do so emerging periodically throughout the last thirty years of Euro-Mediterranean relations.
  Volume 25
  Online ISSN 1384-6299
  PubDate: Sat, 26 Sep 2020 00:01:05 GMT
  Issue No: Vol. 25 (2020)