European Student Think Tank

With the US mov­ing mil­it­ary resources to the Asia-Pacific region, what organ­iz­a­tion will main­tain the sta­bil­ity and secur­ity in North and North Cent­ral Africa? The US has been down­grad­ing its par­ti­cip­a­tion in African affairs for some time now; one may refer to the events in Libya and the ongo­ing situ­ation in Mali. Europe faces many mod­ern threats, and it may very well have to pull itself together to prop­erly address the chal­lenges to its secur­ity ori­gin­at­ing from across the Medi­ter­ranean Sea as the US focuses on more of its own problems.

Putin­ism is an expres­sion widely used to describe the rul­ing style of Russia’s cur­rent pres­id­ent Vladi­mir Putin. But is it really more than a media buzzword? Our part­ners at Cross­ingtheBaltic took a closer look at what Putin­ism really means.

Energy today is one of the most import­ant issues on the world polit­ics agenda, since energy is a key ele­ment for the eco­nomy and, hence, the devel­op­ment of a state. Yet, des­pite its import­ance, the EU has so far failed to develop a com­mon approach. Aleksander Thomas takes a look at it.

Zero cur­rency war. Okay? That’s very simple.” IMF Man­aging Dir­ector Christine Lagarde was eager to appease journ­al­ists dur­ing her press brief­ing fol­low­ing the G20 meet­ing earlier this month. The pro­spect of a spiral of com­pet­it­ive devalu­ations has been the sub­ject of sig­ni­fic­ant polit­ical and media atten­tion, mak­ing its way to the top of the agen­das of regional and inter­na­tional sum­mits this year.

The EU is revis­ing its Digital Agenda, but still tech­no­logy does not find any place in it in terms of provid­ing pub­lic value. It is also fall­ing behind in terms of recog­ni­tion of some devel­op­ments in Esto­nia and les­sons that can be learned from the new European Cit­izens’ Ini­ti­at­ive. The rep­lic­a­tion of these can increase the demo­cratic legit­im­acy of the Union, if the vot­ing pro­ced­ures in the EP and the way it is con­sti­tuted are adapted.

Italy is going to elec­tions by the end of this month after 14 months of technocratic-ruling admin­is­tra­tion. Pier Luigi Ber­sani, the center-left can­did­ate has a good chance of becom­ing Italy’s next leader and couple of days ago I atten­ded a short, yet very mean­ing­ful speech of him at the Ger­man Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions in Ber­lin. Pro-European, sharp and thought­ful, he delivered indeed a strong message.

The Coun­cil of Europe recently released a report that warns that polit­ical pres­sure is being put on Span­ish pub­lic tele­vi­sion broad­cast­ing (Tele­visión Española, TVE). The report draws atten­tion to sim­ilar situ­ations of polit­ics push­ing broad­cast­ing in Hun­gary, Romania, Italy, Ser­bia and Ukraine.

In the terms described in the pre­vi­ous part of this art­icle, the EU developed its own digital policy, ensur­ing that it addresses both oppor­tun­it­ies and chal­lenges of the digital world. To achieve this, the EU approved a decent­ral­ised struc­ture, where the dif­fer­ent insti­tu­tions are respons­ible for the three aspects of the digital world. First, in 2010 the EU launched its Digital Agenda for Europe, under the respons­ib­il­ity of the Com­mis­sioner for Inform­a­tion Soci­ety and Media N.Kroes. The aim is to pro­mote the new tech­no­lo­gies in order to increase eco­nomic and social pro­spects. In the frame­work of the Agenda, the EU adop­ted sev­eral laws address­ing, for instance, broad­band cov­er­age, roam­ing har­mon­iz­a­tion, E-Commerce, eID, eSig­na­tures, as well as the pro­tec­tion of Intel­lec­tual Property.

On Janu­ary 11, 2013 the European Union (EU) estab­lished the European Cyber­crime Centre as part of the Euro­pol offices . This import­ant event raises the ques­tion of the instru­ments estab­lished by the EU to address cyber secur­ity issues. This art­icle argues that the mode of gov­ernance developed by the EU in order to address the issue of cyber secur­ity is coher­ent and com­pre­hens­ive of all aspects of cyber secur­ity. It how­ever notes that to com­plete this mode of gov­ernance, the EU is lack­ing a cru­cial link which is an inter­na­tional endorse­ment of the European vision.

Euro-sceptics and fed­er­al­ists alike read­ily put the words ‘demo­cratic defi­cit’ and the EU together. Whilst the former con­clude that exit is best, the lat­ter that ever-closer union is the way for­ward.
Within the aca­demic world argu­ments con­tinue to rage over the exist­ence of a demo­cratic defi­cit at all. Moravc­sik and Majone, both respec­ted schol­ars in the field of European stud­ies, deny its exist­ence, albeit for dif­fer­ing reas­ons. Their argu­ments that the EU is unfairly judged against demo­cratic ideals, not even met by nation-states, have fallen largely on deaf ears. What mat­ters most to the future of the EU is that it has become regarded as ‘com­mon know­ledge’ that the EU is an unwieldy and undemocratic.