European Union

This in-depth analysis (IDA) focuses on how to implement the Strategic Compass’s partnership dimension in the field of security and defence, and how to maximise the potential of the EU’s different strategic partnerships. The report not only provides an up-to-date overview of the most important security and defence partnerships, but also places them in their wider historical context, and in the context of future challenges within a fiercely changing geopolitical landscape. The report maps the EU’s different partnerships and their institutional arrangements, as well as the main policy fields in the realm of security and defence. It offers an in-depth analysis of the core challenges of each major partnership and charts out concrete recommendations for gearing each partnership towards a more impactful realisation of the Strategic Compass’s goals. It also examines how existing cooperation arrangements can be improved, and how new fora can be utilised in a more comprehensive manner. Overall, this IDA seeks to examine and assess in detail how the Strategic Compass’s emphasis on security and defence partnerships can be implemented in practice, and what role the European Parliament can play in this process.
Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

The press briefing ahead of the Foreign Affairs Council will take place on Friday, 23 June 2023 at 14.00.

On 21 June 2023, the Swedish Presidency of the Council of the European Union hosted the EU-U.S. Ministerial Meeting on Justice and Home Affairs in Stockholm.

EU member state ambassadors have agreed the Council’s position on a new law to safeguard media freedom, pluralism and independence in the EU.

The Council agreed on its negotiating mandate for two legislative proposals on the collection and transfer of advance passenger information.

Press briefing ahead of the upcoming General Affairs Council will take place on 22 June 2023 at 12.00.

Today the Council reached an agreement (general approach) on a proposal for a nature restoration law. The proposal aims to put in place recovery measures that will cover at least 20 % of the EU’s land and 20 % sea areas by 2030, and all ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050. It sets specific legally binding targets and obligations for nature restoration in each of the listed ecosystems - from agricultural land and forest to marine, freshwater and urban ecosystems.

Press briefing ahead of the upcoming Agriculture and Fisheries Council will take place on 22 June 2023 at 14.30.

Today the Council agreed its stance (general approach) on a proposal for regulation on wholesale energy market integrity and transparency (REMIT). The proposal aims to support open and fair competition in the European wholesale energy markets, by banning trading based on inside information and deterring market manipulation.

Main agenda items, approximate timing, public sessions and press opportunities.

The Council delisted two individuals currently subject to EU restrictive measures in view of the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, following ECJ General Court rulings.

A French plan to "catalyse private investments" in the developing world launched in Paris was met with indifference onstage by president of Kenya William Ruto.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the biggest security challenge to confront Europe in decades. In the face of the crisis, there were unprecedented calls for solidarity with Ukraine, but also a renewed effort to enact a common foreign and security policy that is both strategic and forward-looking. Ultimately, this breach of international law raises a diverse set of security questions ranging from economic to climate to traditional, but it also raises questions of ontological security. These questions are reflected in the way the conflict was framed by the media. Germany’s decision to reverse decades-old policies of non-delivery of weapons to conflict zones was framed through references to World War II. The term ‘Finlandization’ was resurrected to the disappointment of the Finnish government. Questions of Russian identity, post-Soviet trauma, national myth, and Europeanization were once again linked to formerly occupied EU states. That these framings are part of media discourse is not surprising, but similar framings have also been part of national narratives of the war in Ukraine.

 

Ontological Security

Indeed, a year after the invasion, language about ontological security is clearly visible. Even as there is a growing split about the so-called “Zeitenwende” and its ramifications for foreign policy, questions about shame, guilt, and anxiety are crowded in the conversation about arming Ukraine. While the foundational myths of the European Union are being revisited, the Baltic states are also actively lobbying for a re-evaluation of the memory architecture of Europe. Ireland, Sweden, and Finland have had policies of military non-alignment – whether ideological or pragmatic – tested and in some places reversed. Most visible of all are stories of the past, whether the Winter War in Finland or the Soviet Occupation in Estonia, which are part of the political discourse on the contemporary war. The activation of these discourses impacts what is sayable and doable for policymakers and is deeply tied to ontological security concerns. Thus, understanding how ontological stress is addressed through discourse is a valuable tool in uncovering the broader picture of the war.

 

Shifting Narratives

But the narration of the war in Ukraine is not static and does not necessarily reflect the events on the ground. The ‘main characters’ of the war have shifted in some retellings, including the placement of the US and NATO in the role of security guarantor of Europe. Similarly, the setting of the war has shifted from Ukraine to Europe’s eastern flank, to Europe, and in some cases to a global battle. The temporal bounds of the war have changed as well, and these differ based on the lived experience of each state. In France, the war began on February 24, 2022, but in Estonia, this war represents the next link in a long and unbroken chain of Russian imperialism. These differences have consequences for EU cooperation, but they also reflect efforts to manage ontological stress by maintaining a coherent and actionable story.

 

In my dissertation, I analyse the narrative changes of four EU member states: Estonia, Finland, Germany, and Ireland. The primary data for analysis are the narratives themselves. I specifically look at how state representatives perform these narratives in international spaces, and what these narratives say about the state’s role in the world, the role of the EU, and the kind of world we live in. In the first year of the present conflict (February 2022 – February 2023) several narrative threads were activated and deactivated in specific state discourses that could indicate ontological security questions. These moments of change are the primary objects of study, but to understand them I need both historical and contemporary context.

 

My Fieldwork in Finland and Estonia

I was awarded a UACES travel grant to conduct the first legs of my fieldwork in Finland and Estonia in May 2023. I began in Finland on May 5 with two goals. First, I wanted to visit sites of memory that play a role in current Finnish political debate. These included, among other things, the Helsinki Museum, the Statue of Peace and the Fortress of Suomenlinna. Since the Winter War has played such an important role in Finland’s vicarious identification with Ukraine, it was important to get the context of that war and how it is currently being activated in this context. Following this, I conducted 11 interviews with various military, security, and foreign policymakers and experts in Helsinki and Jyväskylä. These were semi-structured interviews that focused primarily on the moments of change I identified in the data. In addition to the interviews I conducted in Helsinki, I attended a research conference with the Finnish Political Science Association and used this as an opportunity to gather feedback from the academic community about the core arguments of my research.

 

The research in Finland revealed several interesting points. First, the debate around military non-alignment/neutrality in Finnish history is also one about identity vs. imposition, a point that was made in several instances since the Soviet Union collapsed. The war in Ukraine and the decision to join NATO have invited this discussion anew. Moreover, the ‘Never Alone’ narrative that is part of the language architecture of the EU does not necessarily coalesce with the Finnish national experience of being left to fend for itself in the Winter War, which causes a bit of narrative tension. Finally, the security imaginaries in Europe are shifting, and Finland’s are shifting as well, but what has emerged is a newfound recognition and, more significantly, the international performance of Finland’s role as a border state. All of this ties into questions of maintaining coherence in the Finnish autobiographical narrative and the reproduction of an understandable social space.

 

Following my fieldwork in Finland, I traveled to Estonia, where the research was similar but the narratives around the war are very different. I visited sites of memory in Tallinn, Tartu, and Narva including two controversial statues: the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn and the former site of a Soviet T-34 tank that was removed last year. Both these sites have been flashpoints for ethnic Russians living in Estonia. Moreover, I visited the Occupation Museum, the Narva Museum, the Estonia Ethnographic Museum, and the War Museum. Finally, I conducted nine interviews with policymakers, politicians, historians, and security experts.

 

As with Finland, the interviews in Estonia gave me a good deal of insight into the moments of change I had already identified in the data. The question of ontological security in Estonia is an interesting one in part because Estonia has arguably gained self-esteem because of the events of the past year; unlike Germany or France, Estonia’s security calculations were proven correct. The emphasis on resilience and preparation for conventional threats from Russia, which were out of step when the general focus was on the war on terror, are now part of the strategic calculations of the EU as a whole. Indeed, as many experts told me, the conversation about Russia as a fundamental existential threat has never really faded from domestic discourse, even when it was suppressed internationally during the EU and NATO accession talks. Nonetheless, the international discourse about the war activates many other ontological security pillars in Estonia, such as overall EU remembrance practices, the importance of resistance and the role of the Forest Brethren in resisting Soviet occupation, and the ‘Never Alone’ narrative, which plays an entirely different role in Estonian political life than it does in Finland.

 

Benefit of the Travel Grant

The UACES grant gave me the opportunity to gather these critical insights and made me aware of many aspects of these cases that I would otherwise have missed. My interviews also connected me to academic networks in Estonia and Finland which will guide this research for years to come. I will present this research at the British International Studies Association conference in Glasgow in June and at the UACES conference in Belfast in September.

 

 

The post Ontological (In)Security at the Russia-EU Border: The Case of Finland and Estonia appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The strategy should have begun with an honest reflection on what went wrong and on the distorted perceptions which have shaped German foreign relations since 1990.

The winner of 2023 LUX Audience Award will be announced on 27 June in a ceremony at the European Parliament’s hemicycle in Brussels.
Committee on Culture and Education

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

The winner of 2023 LUX Audience Award will be announced on 27 June in a ceremony at the European Parliament’s hemicycle in Brussels.
Committee on Culture and Education

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Years of stability and development have also brought new opportunities because, in the background, Morocco has long been developing its green energy and agriculture along with key infrastructure linking it to global markets.

Leaks of the EU Commission's proposal for plants produced by new genomic techniques have prompted concern regarding transparency, consumer rights, and co-existence with existing organic agriculture in the EU.

Budapest violated EU asylum laws by forcing people to first go to Hungarian embassies in Serbia and Ukraine before initiating a claim for international protection, ruled the European Court of Justice.

On 27 June, the Members of the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) and national parliaments of the EU Member States will meet in an Interparliamentary Committee Meeting (ICM).
Members of the European Parliament will debate with their counterparts from the Member States 'The cost of non-enlargement' and 'Strengthening security and democratic resilience through the enlargement process'. Gert-Jan Koopman, Director-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations from the European Commission and Aude Maio-Coliche, Director for Strategic Communication and Foresight from the European External Action Service will participate in the sessions.
Participants are also invited to a special address by H.E. Ms Aïssata Tall Sall, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Senegal, followed by an exchange of views.
Draft agenda
List of participants
Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP