The European Union in International Affairs

This book analyses why the Ukrainian state established asylum laws and policies in the thirty years since 1991, even though the number of asylum seekers was very low. International and non-governmental organisations transferred international asylum norms to Ukraine. Various state and non-state actors participated in this process, translating, spreading, and resisting those norms. In many cases, legislative adoption was driven by domestic politicians’ pursuit of recognition by international organisations, such as the European Union and the Council of Europe, and by their desire to meet conditionality requirements. NGOs sought to influence administrative practices, alternating between confrontational and conciliatory, formal and informal approaches, and often relying on personal contacts. Actors used and shifted between scales in order to transfer norms or resist transfer. In the process, they produced, renegotiated, and confirmed those scales. For instance, NGOs resorting to the European Court of Human Rights to prevent refoulement placed the European scale above the national scale. This book offers a new multi-actor and multi-scalar analysis of policy transfer.

This is an open access book. With the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine, European security has been put on high alert. The implications of the Russian military invasion are many and difficult to grasp in full. However, the need for greater European strategic autonomy appears increasingly evident. The book argues that strategic autonomy may be reached—also in the short run—if differentiated integration is seen as an asset rather than a challenge. While the EU (together with NATO) remains the core in such a system, there is a multitude sub-regional integration processes that need to be taken into account to get the full idea of how European strategic autonomy can be achieved.

This book provides new and established researchers with innovative methodologies and research strategies to explore European security integration from a different perspective, challenging traditional theoretical interpretations. It takes a step back from well-established theoretical approaches to the European Union’s (EU) Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) to ask more fundamental questions about the core assumptions underpinning research on European security integration. It supports methodological innovations with an analysis of the most significant empirical problems of European security governance, including the war in Ukraine or the role of Russia in European security. In the last chapter, the author offers ideas for new pedagogical approaches to teaching European Studies.

This open access book delves into the responses of EU actors, such as member states, institutions, and political groups in the European Parliament, to the fragmentation of the liberal international order (LIO). The analytical framework adopted in this volume explores the diverse interpretations of this phenomenon and the various political initiatives associated with them. Among these interpretations is the concept of strategic autonomy, which has emerged as a key feature of debates surrounding the EU's adaptation to a fragmented LIO. The contributors examine these dynamics across different issue areas and dimensions of EU foreign policy, encompassing the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), external relations, and the externalization of internal policies. They use the term fragmentation to refer to a bundle of processes affecting the LIO that range from challenges to the universality of human rights to the crisis of global governance instruments, from the bifurcation of tech to protectionist tendencies in trade policies.

The second edition of EU Foreign Policy Toward Latin America systematically examines the main aspects of the EU-Latin America relationship. The chapters provide an in-depth analysis of the long-term trends in the EU's relationship with Latin America as a region, sub-regions, and individual countries. Students and practitioners interested in interregional studies, Latin America, and EU external relations will find this an invaluable resource to examine past interactions within the Euro-Latin American space. The book advances the concept of liberal partnerships,  EU capacity building, and modular interregionalism, reflecting the convergence of strategic priorities, multiple narratives, and asymmetrical relations. Under one framework of analysis, the book explains why the EU and Latin America have developed a variety of institutional mechanisms of cooperation, ranging from bilateral association agreements to regional trade negotiations.

This book offers an in-depth exploration of the European Union's cooperation with non-EU countries on readmission and return, as central components of EU migration policy. It delves into the differences between formal and informal agreements and the factors influencing return rates, critically assessing the ‘effectiveness’ of cooperation in this contentious policy field. Through a comparative analysis of 57 non-EU countries, the book enhances our understanding of why certain countries cooperate on readmission and/or return. Countries geographically closer to the EU are more dependent and, thus, conclude readmission agreements more often. For countries in Africa and Asia, EU incentives and pressure play a bigger role and influence the cooperation together with domestic administrative capacities and bilateral readmission agreements and closer existing relations. Formal or informal readmission cooperation has a limited impact on return rates with non-EU countries beyond the Eastern neighbourhood. This comprehensive work is an essential reading for academics, policymakers, and policy advocates interested in EU external migration cooperation and the broader dynamics of international migration policy.

This open access book examines the EU’s and Russia’s policies in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus through the prism of hegemony, a concept that it applies to both regional actors. The study cross fertilises the literatures on the EU neighbourhood policy, Russia’s foreign policy, and the scholarship on power in international relations to arrive at an innovative conceptualisation of the mechanisms of hegemonic power. The comparative lens of the analysis leads to novel findings that advance our understanding of the EU’s and Russia’s behaviour in the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood.  In this book, the existing, separate theorisations are subsumed under more generic terms and concepts, thereby rendering EU and Russian modes of influence comparable for empirical analysis. The comprehensive conceptual framework of hegemonic power in shared neighbourhoods is based on three ideal typical mechanisms of hegemonic influence: coercion, prescription, and co-optation. To understand the nature of EU and Russian hegemony in the region, the uses of the three mechanisms by Russia and the EU towards two neighbourhood countries are compared. The focus is laid on EU and Russian actions towards Moldova and Armenia since the beginning of the 2000s and the local perceptions of these actions. Thus, the comparative case study provides insights into the longer developments in this regional order that led to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The book is intended for scholars and students interested in understanding the broader context of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Because of its contribution to the debate on regional powers in shared neighbourhoods, it is particularly useful for researchers analysing the (changing) power dynamics and hegemonic behaviour in this regional order. Furthermore, it offers other scholars an analytical framework to work with when analysing the policies of different regional powers.