Building a single European market in natural gas would be the most effective strategy for the European Union to counter Russia’s divisive energy diplomacy. The analysis is published a few days prior to the release of the EU Strategic Energy Review and the next EU-Russia summit. It also comes two months before the start of the Czech EU presidency which will work on energy security as one of its priorities.
The European Union’s leverage to promote human rights values and its vision of a rules-based world order has dramatically declined over the last decade, ECFR reveals in a new report, after analyzing over ten years of UN voting statistics.
In the aftermath of the Russia-Georgia conflict, the European Union should act to prevent wider political fallout on the continent. The EU can still “win the peace” by pushing for an international peacekeeping mandate in Georgia’s secessionist regions, taking the lead in the post-conflict reconstruction effort, and strengthening the European Neighbourhood Policy.
The Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty has cast doubt over institutional reform within the European Union, but EU governments cannot afford to move at the speed of the slowest, and should push for a ‘multi-speed’ Europe on defence.
44 prominent European politicians and public intellectuals have signed a statement calling on European leaders to continue building a common foreign policy and not let the Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty lead to another era of self-doubt.
The report provides an in-depth analysis of the political context of Dmitry Medvedev’s rise, focusing on the behind-the-scenes manipulation by ‘political technologists’. It urges EU leaders not to rush to embrace Medvedev, but use the momentum to establish the foundations for a common Russia strategy and set a series of ‘tests’ for the new president.
Ahead of the appointment of a new UN chief for Afghanistan, our report calls on the European Union and the United States to strike a ‘grand bargain’ and overhaul their Afghanistan strategy. The current, military-focused coalition strategy should be replaced with a comprehensive political strategy, which should include, inter alia, a coordinated political outreach to moderate Taliban insurgents.
Despite its economic strength and military might, the European Union has begun to behave as if it were subordinate to an increasingly assertive Russia. This dramatic change in the power relationship is rooted in the EU’s disunity and self-doubt - but both can be fixed. This is one of the conclusions of ECFR’s ‘Power Audit’ on bilateral EU-Russia relations, conducted with the participation of national experts from 27 EU member states.
A global public opinion survey by Gallup International - conducted in collaboration with the European Council on Foreign Relation (ECFR) - shows that there is growing public support for a more multi-polar world, and one in every three citizens around the world (35%) would like to see the European Union’s influence to grow. In an ECFR policy brief, to be issued on 24 October, authors Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard point out that “the EU is unique among the four big powers (the other three being the US, China and Russia) in that no-one wants to balance its rise”.
As the European Union prepares to sign a new treaty at the October inter-governmental conference in Lisbon, fifty prominent Europeans will launch the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) on 2 October, to promote a more coherent and vigorous European foreign policy in support of Europe’s common interests and shared values.
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