Feed aggregator

Ostentatious humiliation may bring Europe some breathing space in the short term. But that will be worthles unless we effectively and jointly reduce dependency on the US.

Du 4 au 7 août 1995, la Croatie menait l'opération militaire Tempête (Oluja) poussant 200 000 Serbes au départ définitif. Trente ans plus tard, quels sont les freins à une véritable réconciliation ? Comment parle-t-on de cet évènement à Belgrade et à Zagreb ? Entretien avec l'historien croate Hrvoje Klasić.

- Articles / Gratuit, Croatie, Courrier des Balkans, Histoire, Oluja, Croatie droitisation

À compter du 7 août, tous les produits en provenance des États-Unis entreront sans taxe sur le territoire du Kosovo. Une mesure symbolique, présentée comme un « geste d'amitié » envers Washington, après l'onde de choc des nouvelles taxes douanières annoncées par Donald Trump.

- Le fil de l'Info / Radio Slobodna Evropa, Kosovo, Economie, Relations internationales, USA Balkans

Aus zwei wurden drei nukleare Großmächte. Steht die Welt 80 Jahre nach dem Atombombeninferno von Hiroshima am 6. August 1945 vor einem neuen nuklearen Zeitalter? Eine Analyse.

Amid rising restrictions on foreign funding, localization—directly funding local groups—is seen as a path to more effective, locally owned aid. This policy brief examines whether donors should shift support from large civil society organizations to grassroots community groups.

Amid rising restrictions on foreign funding, localization—directly funding local groups—is seen as a path to more effective, locally owned aid. This policy brief examines whether donors should shift support from large civil society organizations to grassroots community groups.

Amid rising restrictions on foreign funding, localization—directly funding local groups—is seen as a path to more effective, locally owned aid. This policy brief examines whether donors should shift support from large civil society organizations to grassroots community groups.

Der Nahost-Experte Peter Lintl fordert angesichts des von der Hamas veröffentlichen Videos einen Geisel-Deal. Europa müsse aber auch auf die israelische Regierung Druck ausüben. Lintl sieht ein Mosaik an Möglichkeiten.

Next AFET committee meeting will be held on:

• Thursday 4 September, room SPAAK (1A2), Brussels

Meetings are webstreamed with the exception of agenda items held "in camera".

AFET - DROI calendar of meetings 2025
Meeting documents
Webstreaming
Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Next AFET committee meeting will be held on:

• Thursday 4 September, room SPAAK (1A2), Brussels

Meetings are webstreamed with the exception of agenda items held "in camera".

AFET - DROI calendar of meetings 2025
Meeting documents
Webstreaming
Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

A delegation of the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET), led by Chair David McAllister, travelled to Washington D.C. and Richmond, Virginia from 21 to 24 July 2025. This was the Committee's first official visit to the United States following last year’s elections on both sides of the Atlantic.
During the trip, Members discussed how to deepen transatlantic ties, enhance collective security, reinforce the shared commitment to supporting Ukraine, and tackle common challenges such as China's expanding global influence and the situation in the Middle East. Insights gathered from the visit will inform the Committee's ongoing work on the own initiative report on EU-US political relations.
Press Announcement
Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

A delegation of the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET), led by Chair David McAllister, travelled to Washington D.C. and Richmond, Virginia from 21 to 24 July 2025. This was the Committee's first official visit to the United States following last year’s elections on both sides of the Atlantic.
During the trip, Members discussed how to deepen transatlantic ties, enhance collective security, reinforce the shared commitment to supporting Ukraine, and tackle common challenges such as China's expanding global influence and the situation in the Middle East. Insights gathered from the visit will inform the Committee's ongoing work on the own initiative report on EU-US political relations.
Press Announcement
Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Photo courtesy of the Centre for Future Generations: https://cfg.eu/building-cern-for-ai/

Anna-Lena Rüland

For several research fields, large-scale research infrastructures play a crucial role in advancing cutting-edge research, with the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) often being referred to as a particularly successful example. Accounts of how “big science” projects like CERN get off the ground abound in the history of science as well as in popular science. Typically, individual scientists are seen to be pivotal in initiating large-scale research infrastructures (just think of the role of Isidor I. Rabi in the early phase of CERN). However, the specific strategies and tactics that scientists use to put a large-scale research infrastructure on the agenda of policymakers are rarely examined through a theoretical lens, impeding a more systematic understanding of what strategies and tactics may or may not work in advocating for big science. In my recently published article, I address this issue by drawing on the interest group and agenda-setting scholarship to study the strategies and tactics that the Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research in Europe (CAIRNE) has used to advocate for the so-called CERN for AI. In this blog post, I reflect on which strategies and tactics have proven successful and which have not.[i]

 

What is CERN for AI?

There are multiple, and in part clashing, visions of CERN for AI (this blog post provides a detailed overview). I will focus on the vision of CAIRNE, possibly one of the fiercest advocates for a CERN for AI. CAIRNE promotes a CERN for AI that:

• Consists of a central hub, supported by a network of (CAIRNE) research clusters;
• Is used to conduct research on all aspects of AI;
• Has close links to industry;
• Develops AI that aligns with European norms and values; and
• Is publicly funded.

CAIRNE started to advocate for CERN for AI in 2017, based on two central arguments. First, the organization considers it vital to bring Europe’s top AI researchers together in a central place to coordinate their research efforts and to agree on a few top research priorities for the field. According to CAIRNE, this is needed to help the European AI community overcome its fragmentation. Second, CAIRNE argues that more hardware is needed to enable cutting-edge AI research in Europe and to catch up with AI frontrunners like the US and China. When CAIRNE was founded in 2018, CERN for AI became one of the central issues that the organization advocated for. However, despite CAIRNE’s continuous advocacy, CERN for AI has not (yet) materialized. This may soon change, as the initiative has made it to the highest political level: Ursula von der Leyen recently proposed to set up a “European AI Research Council where we can pool all of our resources, similar to the approach taken with CERN.”

 

Invest in a variety of strategies

Between 2017 and 2025, CAIRNE used different means to draw policymakers’ and the broader public’s attention to CERN for AI, three of which proved particularly useful. First, CAIRNE engaged with different members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to convince them of CERN for AI’s merit. This parliamentary strategy has paid off, as several MEPs have begun to back CERN for AI during the deliberations for the AI Act. Second, CAIRNE’s founding members invested a great deal of time and effort into promoting CERN for AI by writing countless opinion pieces and giving interviews for prominent media outlets across the EU. For example, their proposal featured in “der Tagesspiegel,” and “Science Business.” This media strategy drew attention to CERN for AI beyond a specialist audience. Finally, and in line with a mobilization strategy, CAIRNE drew attention to CERN for AI among the AI community, think tanks and the broader public by organizing CERN for AI-dedicated events and publishing open letters. Across all these strategies, CAIRNE credibly presented CERN for AI as an issue that needs to be addressed at the EU-level: Firstly, because the funding needed for CERN for AI would likely exceed the capacities of any one EU Member State and, secondly, because the entire European AI research community should benefit from and participate in CERN for AI.

 

Find the right label

A CAIRNE strategy that created controversy, especially within the European AI community, was the framing of the proposed AI research infrastructure as a CERN for AI. Several people that I interviewed for my article argued that, in principle, it is beneficial to use the renowned CERN “brand” to promote a large-scale, European (AI) research infrastructure. Yet, in the case of the CERN for AI initiative, this strategy backfired. There are two reasons for this. First, at about the same time as CAIRNE started to promote CERN for AI, a group of prominent AI researchers that is now known as “ELLIS” advocated for a networked AI research infrastructure modeled on the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). Given the EU’s limited funding for AI and the enormous price tag of any AI research infrastructure, ELLIS had no interest in supporting CAIRNE’s proposal. Second, critics of CERN for AI, among them ELLIS members, argued that the CERN label did not make sense in the context of AI because, unlike to the massive colliders at CERN, the computing power necessary for AI research does not need to be centralized. (Somewhat ironically, while criticizing CAIRNE’s framing, ELLIS failed to acknowledge that back in the day, the EMBL was promoted as a Conseil Européen de la Recherche Biologique). Critics of CERN for AI have further argued that using the CERN label for a large-scale AI research infrastructure is “misleading” because the current political circumstances are not comparable to those that eventually facilitated the establishment of CERN.

 

Balance centralization with decentralization

In the future, scientists and scientific organizations like CAIRNE may therefore want to frame their proposals for large-scale science infrastructures more strategically. Historical research has shown that promoting a “big science” project as a CERN of [insert relevant scientific discipline] does not necessarily have to backfire. What seems to play an important role is that those advocating for a large-scale science project in a research field that does not strictly require big instruments choose a framing that manages to balance the best of both worlds: the unifying moment of centralization and the efficiency of decentralization. Such a framing is also likely to more strongly appeal to policymakers and thus find political backing because a central research facility supported by a network of research clusters would maximize the number of constituencies that see a return on investment from big science.

 

Dr. Anna-Lena Rüland is a research fellow with the European Research Council-funded project “Addressing Global Challenges through International Scientific Consortia” at the University College London Global Business School for Health. She graduated with a PhD in science policy from Leiden University in July 2024 and currently conducts research on science diplomacy, research security, as well as science, technology and innovation policy.

 

This blog post is based on her article that won the 2024 Award for Excellent Paper from an Emerging Scholar from the ECPR Standing Group ‘Knowledge Politics and Policies’. This was the eighth time this prize was awarded. Previous winners are Cecilia Ivardi and Linda Wanklin, Anke Reinhardt, Adrienn Nyircsák, Alexander Mitterle, Justyna Bandola-Gill, Emma Sabzalieva, Olivier Provini and Que Anh Dang.

 

References

Cassata, Francesco. 2024. A ‘Heavy Hammer to Crack a Small Nut’? The Creation of the European Molecular Biology Conference (EMBC), 1963–1970. Annals of Science: 1-48. https://doi.org/10.1080/00033790.2024.2351511.

Hoos, Holger. 2023. ‘AI made in Europe’ am Wendepunkt. Der Tagesspiegel, 7 July 2023.

Kelly, Éanna. 2021. Call for a ‘CERN for AI’ as Parliament Hears Warnings on Risk of Killing the Sector with Over-Regulation. Science Business, 25 March 2021.

Kohler, Kevin. 2024. CERN for AI: An Overview. https://machinocene.substack.com/p/cern-for-ai-an-overview. Accessed 13 February 2025.

Matthews, David. 2024. Call for the EU to Build Publicly Funded Cutting-Edge Artificial Intelligence. Science Business, 4 January 2024.

Rüland, Anna-Lena. 2025. “We Need a CERN for AI”: Organized Scientific Interests and Agenda-Setting in European Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy. Minerva Online first. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-024-09568-6

Wulff Wold, Jacob. 2024. Von der Leyen Gives Nod to €100 Billion CERN for AI Proposal. Euroactiv, 25 July 2024.

 

[i] A slightly different version of this blog post has previously been published for the European Union Science Diplomacy Alliance Newsletter: https://www.science-diplomacy.eu/news/.

The post How (not) to lobby for large-scale research infrastructure: Lessons learned from the CERN for AI appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The Trump administration is pursuing an explicitly anti-multilateralist policy rooted in national sovereignty, geopolitical calculation, and transactional economics. Conspiracy theories played a significant role in justifying actions like the dismantling of USAID. Global norms, including the SDGs, are cast as threats to U.S. interests precisely because they promote forms of cooperative governance. The withdrawal from international organizations, disregard for established norms (even to the point of military threats), and blunt pressure on other nations—such as the baseless accusations of “genocide” against South Africa—signal a paradigm shift. It redefines the balance between values and interests, privileging short-term political dominance over long-term global cooperation.

The Trump administration is pursuing an explicitly anti-multilateralist policy rooted in national sovereignty, geopolitical calculation, and transactional economics. Conspiracy theories played a significant role in justifying actions like the dismantling of USAID. Global norms, including the SDGs, are cast as threats to U.S. interests precisely because they promote forms of cooperative governance. The withdrawal from international organizations, disregard for established norms (even to the point of military threats), and blunt pressure on other nations—such as the baseless accusations of “genocide” against South Africa—signal a paradigm shift. It redefines the balance between values and interests, privileging short-term political dominance over long-term global cooperation.

The Trump administration is pursuing an explicitly anti-multilateralist policy rooted in national sovereignty, geopolitical calculation, and transactional economics. Conspiracy theories played a significant role in justifying actions like the dismantling of USAID. Global norms, including the SDGs, are cast as threats to U.S. interests precisely because they promote forms of cooperative governance. The withdrawal from international organizations, disregard for established norms (even to the point of military threats), and blunt pressure on other nations—such as the baseless accusations of “genocide” against South Africa—signal a paradigm shift. It redefines the balance between values and interests, privileging short-term political dominance over long-term global cooperation.

Deutschland tut immer noch viel zu wenig, um Frauen vor Gewalt zu schützen. Das ist auch ein wirtschaftliches Problem. Dabei ist längst klar, was sich ändern müsste., Es ist eine traurige Realität, die immer noch zu wenig Beachtung findet: Gewalt gegen Frauen ist in Deutschland ein systemisches Problem: Für 2023 erfasste das Bundeskriminalamt 360 Frauen und Mädchen, die aufgrund von Tötungsdelikten starben. Von diesen 360 wurden 247 der innerfamiliären Gewalt ...

An undercover BBC investigation reveals the women who involve children as young as 13 in sex work.

Turkey’s geopolitically motivated industrial and supply chain policy implies close ties to Germany as well as a security and economic policy orientation towards the EU. Ankara wants to bring production and sales into line with EU standards and establish a green high-tech and services economy. However, its decarbonisation measures remain inadequate. Turkish stakeholders see disruptions to global supply chains as creating the opportunity to relocate European production chains to Turkey (nearshoring). The government, the private sector and business organisations are all working to expand sustainable energy supplies. Turkey’s authoritarian domestic policy – namely, the dismantling of democracy, repression and disregard for the rule of law – makes it extremely difficult to deepen bilateral cooperation. Despite close economic ties, there are normative differences between Germany and Turkey and a consistent strategy to overcome them is lacking. Rather, the Turkish government is focused on using industrial policy to compensate for shortcomings in the rule of law. Amid the geopolitical tensions between the United States and China, Turkey is performing a delicate balancing act: it is maintaining its ties to the West while at the same time expanding its technology partnership with China and energy cooperation with Russia. German policy towards Turkey requires a strategic rethink. It should endeavour to promote economic stability, strengthen Turkey’s security policy integration into Europe and counteract Ankara’s strategic rapprochement with Moscow and Beijing. Going forward, cooperation should be made conditional on democracy, the rule of law and human rights.