European Union

Lithuania's parliament passed a controversial new law allowing volunteers from around Europe to join its national border guard force — while giving them the right to use violence against asylum seekers and migrants crossing in from Belarus.

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

MEPs denounce Uganda’s anti-LGBTIQ Bill and call for the universal decriminalisation of homosexuality and transgender identity.
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Subcommittee on Human Rights

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

There's general agreement that Ukrainian losses are about one third of Russian losses. There are several possible reasons for this discrepancy — one reason that has gone under-reported is the way in which Russia and Ukraine treat their wounded.

On Thursday, the European Parliament adopted three resolutions on the respect for human rights in Russia, Afghanistan and Nigeria.
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Subcommittee on Human Rights

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

One of the most profound but under-appreciated impacts of the Covid pandemic on Early Career Researchers (ECRs) is that we simply have not had the opportunity to find “our people” – the ones who are so integral for socialising us into academia, for accompanying us through the confusing terrain and showing us the hidden rooms. Our people are the kindred spirits who help us find our voice and develop our approach to research and the world.

Years of cancelled and online conferences have meant that we have not had the opportunity to meet other ECRs and established scholars in our field in person. And so, it was with a generous microgrant from UACES, that I packed my bags and headed off to the 2023 International Studies Association (ISA) conference in Montreal where, as fortune would have it, I essentially managed to meet the entire bibliography of my thesis [1].

To give some context, ISA is the largest international studies conference in the world. It is MASSIVE – 5,500 attendees from across the globe (though much more work needs to be done to help those who require visas to attend), present at several hundred panels, organised across three hotels over four days. It is easy for a first timer to get burned out and overwhelmed (I did). I attended innovative insightful talks ranging from migration and borders, through ontological security, to solar geoengineering and patent mapping.

These panels and presentations are, of course, important. But being able to meet these people outside of the confines of a panel and hear more about their work more candidly; to arrange drinks and dinners to sit and bounce around nascent thoughts with people working in similar (and sometimes completely different) areas as me has helped me clarify my ideas, (re)orient myself within my discipline, and move my research forward. Conversations with both established and early career ontological security scholars have helped in my thinking around contingency and temporality in particular and given me renewed focus and engagement with my thesis.

On a more human level (which is all too frequently overlooked in institutional academia), we need these kinds of encounters to develop our support networks. Academia can notoriously be a very lonely place and being able to meet our people is utterly vital in helping ECRs survive and thrive in this world.

Maybe the real ISA is the friends we made along the way.

 

[1] This line was shamelessly stolen from Lauren Rogers (@rogerslkay)

 

 

About the UACES Microgrant:

The UACES Microgrant scheme is aimed at supporting research for our Early-Career and Individual Members.

The microgrants scheme will provide grants of between £100 and £500 to UACES members to assist them to cover the costs of undertaking their research. The grants are designed to recognise the challenges facing researchers at this time.

Next application deadline: 31 July 2023.

The post Always Meet Your Heroes: Reflections on ISA 2023 appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

On 25 April, SEDE Members will exchange views with the Minister of Defence of Moldova, Anatolie NOSATÎI. The debate will focus on the consequences of Russian war of aggression against Ukraine for Moldova, including the danger posed by Russian proxy political agitators and the presence of large stocks of ammunition and 1,500 Russian soldiers in Transnistria.
In order to counter massive Russian disinformation campaigns aimed at destabilising the country and change the political order, Members will also exchange views with the Minister NOSATÎI on the prospects of a new CSDP partnership mission (EUPM Moldova), which should contribute to enhancing the resilience of Moldova's security sector in the areas of crisis management as well as hybrid threats.
Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Hannah Moscovitz and Emma Sabzalieva

How are shifting geopolitics affecting higher education institutions and systems? What are the power dynamics at play when geopolitics comes into conflict with higher education policy and practice? What is different about today’s higher education and global geopolitical trends from their interactions in the past? These questions are at the heart of our inquiry in the special issue on The New Geopolitics of Higher Education in Globalisation, Societies and Education. In recent years, higher education institutions have found themselves caught up in various geopolitical crises and events, including a global pandemic, new territorial conflicts and military invasions, and a spread of grassroots movements calling for climate justice and a redressing of structural racism, among others. Bringing together a collection of ten articles, the Special Issue roots the study of higher education in prevailing geopolitical currents to explore how higher education policies and actions are imbricated in the changing geopolitical landscape.

 

What is “new” about the “new geopolitics”?

By qualifying the current geopolitics as new, the special issue emphasizes that we are currently witnessing a different set of geopolitical patterns requiring new ways of thinking about their intersections with higher education.  This “new geopolitics” also signals a need for a renewed and refined understanding of geopolitics as it pertains to higher education. Indeed, the literature linking higher education to geopolitics remains scant and scattered, opening opportunities to bring these together into a new sub-field. At the same time, we acknowledge that geopolitics are constantly in flux, and that those witnessed today will not always be “new”. Indeed, since we started to develop this novel conceptual approach, we have seen the new geopolitics continue to unfold before our eyes, with recent examples including Russia’s war on Ukraine, the incursion of armed forces into universities in Perú, and global solidarity with academic communities affected by earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria.

While the articles making up the special issue are concerned with issues and events of contemporary relevance, they also promote deeper conceptual questions on how to study the intersection between geopolitics and higher education. The special issue thus aims to offer flexible frameworks for future inquiries.

 

Conceptualising the New Geopolitics of Higher Education: a proposed framework

In our full-length opening article for the special issue, Conceptualising the new geopolitics of higher education, we introduce a new conceptual framework for investigating the new geopolitics of higher education. By interconnecting multiple scales, agents, interests and opportunity structures, the SAIOS framework offers a way to connect to broader geopolitical contexts and tensions at play in the higher education domain.

SAIOS framework developed by Moscovitz and Sabzalieva

The framework draws from previous studies investigating the global dimension of higher education, in particular Marginson and Rhoades’ ‘glonacal’ framework and its subsequent development. Theoretically, the framework has its roots in relevant concepts including multi-scalar dynamics in higher education and the agent-structure connection. The SAIOS framework accounts for the multifaceted and complex ways in which geopolitical forces interact with higher education policy decisions and actions and aims to offer a flexible heuristic to analyse and critique the intersections of the new geopolitics with higher education, which can adapt to ongoing shifts in the geopolitical environment.

 

Advancing a Critical Geopolitics Approach to Higher Education

The SAIOS framework is also an important development in promoting a critical geopolitics approach to higher education. Concerned with making explicit the discursive and manifest interactions between space and power, and recognizing that politics, space and territory are contested notions, a critical geopolitics framing of higher education leads us to the identification of four themes where we see intersections between critical geopolitics and higher education studies. As we discuss in the paper, each theme represents a form of rupture away from dominant understandings of power and organisation in relation to geopolitics and higher education. The ruptures are from i) hegemonic notions of world power, politics, and knowledge production, ii) the fixation on the national scale to understand territorial sovereignty and power, iii) the strict domestic-foreign binary and iv) the emphasis on macro perspectives and a need for scaling down to the micro.

The themes and inquiries advanced in the articles of the special issue advance one or more of these ruptures, promoting rich and timely insights into the new geopolitics of higher education.

 

Towards Context-Sensitive Approaches to the New Geopolitics of Higher Education

The articles making up the special issue approach the notion of geopolitics of higher education from a specific geographical scale or context, from the perspective of specific agents and their distinct interests and motivations and underscore different ways in which geopolitics collide with higher education policy and practice. Taken together, the ten articles make the case for examining both empirically and theoretically the new geopolitics of higher education. Each contribution points to critical transformations occurring in the higher education policy domain as a result of shifting geopolitics. Yet, while widespread, these transformations are in no way fixed. The special issue therefore aims to shed light on the context-specific ways in which higher education is evolving in the current global landscape, with articles highlighting the new geopolitics between and across borders. They also offer a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to inquire into this connection, providing worked examples of the variety of entry points into our SAIOS framework.

Through the SAIOS framework, the call to engage in critical geopolitics, and through the combination of the ten articles in the special issue, we set forward an ambitious agenda for a new subfield of higher education studies, one concerned with geopolitics as a main reference point.

The entry is based on the special issue “The New Geopolitics of Higher Education” and its opening article “Conceptualising the New Geopolitics of Higher Education”.

 

Dr. Hannah Moscovitz is postdoctoral research fellow at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark.

Dr. Emma Sabzalieva is Head of Research and Foresight at UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education (UNESCO IESALC).

 

Reference:

Moscovitz, Hannah & Emma Sabzalieva (2023) Conceptualising the new geopolitics of higher education, Globalisation, Societies and Education 21(2): 149-165 https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2166465

The post The New Geopolitics of Higher Education appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

By Mihail Chiru

Committee group coordinators are some of the most influential Members of the European Parliament (MEPs): they manage committees’ broad policy agendas, ensure the positions of their European Party Group are coherent across different policy initiatives and maintain high levels of voting discipline at plenary votes. When coordinators achieve consensus among party MEPs in the committee (i.e., the party group’s experts on the topic), a very powerful signal is sent to the non-specialist MEPs that they can support the party group line in the plenary without reservations. They also matter greatly through their role in bidding for and acquiring reports for their party and selecting the rapporteur, the person who shapes the position of the European Parliament on a legislative file, from their own committee contingent. Last but not least, successful spells as group coordinators have proved steppingstones in the careers of very successful MEPs, such as Manfred Weber, Martin Schulz and Elmar Brok. How then are these powerful MEPs chosen?

With the EP’s empowerment to the status of co-legislator in the European Union, committees can increasingly shape EU legislation and the stakes of selecting competent group coordinators have also increased significantly. The appointment of group coordinators is not only highly relevant for substantive policy-making, but also opens up a very interesting question for students of legislative politics beyond the EP. Notably: when given total freedom, what qualities and types of expertise do legislators prioritise when deciding whom to make their coordinator in a committee? Group coordinators are elected by their peers, the European Party Group committee contingent, not the leadership, as happens with most other positions in the European Parliament. Moreover, the proportionality criteria that apply to virtually all other EP offices do not affect this selection process.

In this article recently published by JCMS, I analyse the selection of group coordinators in the two largest parties in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party (EPP), from terms 2 to 8, and the Socialists & Democrats (S&D), from terms 6-8. The analyses indicate that coordinator seniority and committee incumbency are the most important factors that predict which MEPs become group coordinators. Probing further, it seems that while coordinator seniority matters greatly irrespective of committee type, committee incumbency is an extra argument for nomination as coordinator in the more powerful committees, i.e., those with higher levels of legislative activity and influence over the EU budget.

These findings corroborate the argument that legislative organisation in the European Parliament is mostly driven by an informational logic, which favours further specialization of MEPs by continuous membership in the same committee and re-appointment to committee leadership positions. Nevertheless, and similarly to the selection of committee chairs in the European Parliament, I find no evidence that the empowerment of the supranational legislatures has changed the patterns of group-coordinator selection.

Somewhat surprising given the policy-seeking orientation of MEPs, the absence of leadership influence and proportionality constraints does not automatically lead to the election of group coordinators who are more congruent ideologically with their committee contingent than other aspirants. One would expect such congruence to matter given the discretion that the coordinators have in selecting rapporteurs and the assumption that committee members would want to minimize the likelihood that the coordinator chooses rapporteurs who are not aligned with their preferences. Corroborating the latter, there is evidence that coordinators allocate more reports to MEPs who are closer ideologically to the coordinators’ national party position on EU integration. Our own analyses show that ideological proximity influences who becomes group coordinator only for the S&D sample, while it does not play a role for EPP coordinators.

Ties with interest groups active in the sectors covered by the committee’s portfolio increase the likelihood of becoming a group coordinator, according to initial analyses run on a sub-sample, but this finding would need to be further tested. It is also worth noting that in the case of the EPP, German and to a smaller extent Spanish MEPs are over-represented among committee group coordinators even when accounting for the large size of their national delegations. One possible explanation is the similarity in terms of legislative organization in two of these national parliaments compared to the EP: the coordinator position resembles that of Obleute in the German Bundestag and the committee spokesperson in the Spanish Congress.

It is reasonable to assume that the patterns of selection of EPP and S&D group coordinators uncovered by this research would be mirrored by similar processes in other European Party Groups interested in shaping EU policies. Nevertheless, it would be worthwhile exploring the extent to which the selection of group coordinators in smaller and less transnational groups is dominated by those groups’ largest national delegations. The apparent positive role for group coordinator selection of having a functionally equivalent position in the national parliament highlights how elements of national legislative organisation contribute to preparing MEPs for their work in the supra-national legislature and warrants further comparative research.

Overall, our results indicate that committee members are not primarily concerned with choosing the most ideologically congruent MEP as a group coordinator, but that they value experience in overcoming coordination problems among group members. Thus, a good boss is one who has already proven able to facilitate the committee members’ collaboration and the efficient usage of the group’s human resources.

Dr. Mihail Chiru is a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Oxford. He previously taught at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA) and conducted postdoctoral research at UCLouvain. His work focuses on legislative behaviour, legislative organisation and party politics in the European Union and Central and Eastern Europe.

Twitter: @MihailChiru, at the Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR) @Politics_Oxford. Find Mihail Chiru’s academic profile here.

The post How to Choose a Good Boss? Committee Coordinators in the European Parliament appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

For our weekly ‘Ideas on Europe’ editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we have the pleasure to welcome again Dr Nick Startin, from John Cabot University, in Rome. Listen to the podcast on eu!radio.

 

 

Over the last decade, there has been much media debate about the rise of right-wing populism and its potential threat to liberal democracy.

That’s right: from Trump to Bolsonaro, from Orbán to Erdoğan, the notion that an era of ‘illiberal democracy’ is gaining momentum has become a dominant media narrative.

And over the last twelve months the debate has intensified in Europe with Marine Le Pen’s strong performance in the 2022 French elections, followed by Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the Fratelli d’Italia and first female Prime Minister of Italy.

In France, on the back of the protests over President Macron’s pension reform and his controversial decision to trigger article 49.3 to pass his legislation, we have even seen in recent days a further rise in support for the Rassemblement National. According to an IFOP poll conducted for the Journal du Dimanche, support for the RN would rise by 7% if there were fresh parliamentary elections in France.

 

So, it sounds as if that media speculation about the onward electoral trajectory of the Radical Right in Europe is right?

Certainly, what with the cost-of-living crisis and tensions around migration across the West, the demand side conditions remain favourable for Radical Right Parties. But we shouldn’t necessarily be as pessimistic as some media channels and experts would lead us to believe.

The reality is that Radical Right Parties, in spite of their potential to exploit the ‘echo chamber’ of social media and to spin ‘fake news’, are not in control of the shifting demographic, generational cycle. Some of the regressive policies of the Radical Right simply do not chime with the evolution of public opinion among the younger generation in some key attitudinal areas. And this is problematic for the Radical Right.

 

What kind of issues are we talking about?

Let’s take ‘climate change’. Traditionally, European Radical Right Parties have tended to be in ‘denial’ or ‘sceptical’ about climate change but as the issue has taken on more salience – particularly among younger voters – this has led to a scramble among the Radical Right to appear credible on the ‘climate crisis’.

In France, there is no doubt that Marine Le Pen’s commitment not only to stop new wind farm projects, but also to dismantle existing ones, was a reality check for many younger, undecided voters at the last Presidential elections France.

 

What other issues are there beyond climate change?

On value issues, like abortion and same-sex marriage, the demographic sands are also shifting away from the Radical Right. In the U.S, it was apparent how some Republican candidates were unable to exploit the Roe versus Wade debate to their advantage in some key contests at the November midterm elections.

In Italy, the Meloni government, despite its strong emphasis on traditional family values, will have to tread carefully if it does not want to appear out of touch with younger voters. For instance, it is unlikely to instigate any national legislation on the reform of abortion law, for fear of it being overturned by a constitutional referendum.

It’s true, the Italian senate did vote against a measure introduced by the European Commission to make the recognition of same-sex parents mandatory. But we have also recently seen demonstrations in Milan after the Minister for the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, advised the centre-left Mayor of Milan, Beppe Sala, to stop registering the children of same sex couples. This has alienated many voters, particular younger ones.

 

So, are you implying the long-term electoral prospects of the Radical Right in Europe may not be so clear-cut after all?

In the long term, this might well be the case.

As the wheel of demography continues to turn, so progressive social attitudes are likely to become more entrenched. No amount of regressive framing by Populist news channels or social media is likely to reverse this. The simple truth is that the ‘generational genie’ is out of the bottle, and it can’t be put back in!

Such demographic changes are likely to put Radical Right Parties on the back foot as they seek to widen their support. In truth, despite much talk of ‘culture wars’, these demographic shifts are probably more likely to strengthen liberal democracy in a global context rather than ‘illiberal democracy’ in a national one!

 

Thank you for this cautious note of optimism in a long-term perspective. I recall that you are currently teaching at John Cabot University, in Rome.

 

Interview by Rune Mahieu.

The post Populist Right Parties and the Generational Shift appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Between January and March 2023, I had the opportunity to join the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internationals (IBEI) as a visiting researcher on a RENPET bursary. As I embarked on the last semester of my PhD, I counted on my research stay at IBEI to receive additional feedback on my PhD thesis, as well as other research projects, and strengthen my professional relations with the academic community at IBEI. I am delighted to say, my stay at IBEI delivered on all counts.

My PhD project revolves around the role of informality in EU foreign policy negotiations. Specifically, I develop scope conditions for the rise of informality in CFSP/CSDP negotiations and examine the informal venues, practices, and roles that member states navigate to make formal institutions work (for them). This original framework is applied to the study of three EU foreign policy negotiations of the last decade: the 2014 Russian sanctions negotiations, the PESCO negotiations, and the negotiations over the establishment of Operation EUNAVFORMED Irini. I can hardly think of someone better placed to provide feedback on my thesis than Charlie Roger, assistant professor at IBEI and author of the book The Origins of Informality: Why the Legal Foundations of Global Governance are Shifting, and Why It Matters (Oxford University Press, 2020). While at IBEI, I also completed the write-up of the final few chapters of my manuscript, getting all that much closer to the final submission in June.

During my stay, I also had the opportunity to present a draft version of a co-authored paper I am working on with Ana Juncos (Bristol University) and Karolina Pomorska (Leiden University), titled ‘Coordinative Europeanisation and Russia’s war of aggression: how crises shape Europeanisation dynamics in EU foreign policy’. The paper explores the distinctive Europeanisation dynamics triggered by Russia’s war of aggression. The members of the IBEI research cluster Norms and Rules in International Politics provided us with insightful comments, taking time to engage in a substantive discussion on the paper. The article will appear in a Special Issue of Contemporary European Politics.

Lastly, my research stay provided a fantastic opportunity to get to know in greater detail the outstanding work of various members of the IBEI community, from the predoctoral fellows to several members of the faculty (including Esther Barbé, Oriol Costa, and Eva Michaels). The stay thus provided a great networking opportunity – and, more importantly, just some lovely exchanges among colleagues.

I am very grateful to RENPET and UACES for making my residency possible. I am especially indebted to Robert Kissack, for welcoming me at IBEI, Charlie Roger, who took time to provide feedback on my PhD thesis, and the members of the Norms and Rules in International Politics research cluster for their feedback. A special thank you to Carlos Sanchez, Helena Arregui, and the rest of the administrative staff at IBEI, for always being kind, professional, and ready to help. Most of all, I wish to thank the wonderful predoctoral candidates and research assistants at IBEI, who made the days at the office fun and enjoyable.

 

 

RENPET is an Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Network of ten major universities across Europe and a leading pan-European professional academic association. RENPET builds on the strong cooperation established through the 2014-2017 ANTERO Network and the 2017-2020 NORTIA Network. RENPET fosters cutting edge research, translates that research into innovative teaching and professional development and actively engages in policy debates among our powerful powerful epistemic community.

 

Apply for a RENPET Network Residency.

The post Research Stay at IBEI – A RENPET Bursary Report appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Culture encompasses symbols, language, beliefs, values, and artefacts found in human societies. The components of culture could be categorised under “ideas and symbols” on the one hand and “artefacts” (material objects) on the other hand. Artefacts in the form of “statues,” for example, possess a strong cultural language that can represent the identity of a group of people. However, reflecting on the #RhodesMustFall campaign in South Africa, which was directed against a statue at the University of Cape Town (UCT), one would realise how artefacts can bring cultural entanglement to remembrance, and the consequences thereof.  For example, in the context of the #RhodesMustFall campaign, it was a revolt against culture, not artefacts. This is because culture can serve as an instrument of dominance. The #RhodesMustFall campaign was, therefore, a negative response to cultural entanglement. Notwithstanding, the problem with cultural entanglement is that cultures do not meet but people of different cultural backgrounds do.

Consequently, when we talk about cultural entanglement and the violent confrontation that often takes place, we are referring to the friction that takes place when people with different cultural identities negotiate about belonging within the same geographic spaces. The issue of “who is in and who is out” is relevant during the process because it is linked to “otherness” (the fact of being different) and other complexities that are involved when negotiating collective belonging. The #RhodesMustFall campaign in South Africa was, therefore, indicative of the memory of entanglement between Europeans and native Africans in South Africa. Geographic spaces belong to everyone because people arrive in different geographic spaces at different times.

No human being is supposed to be perceived as a foreigner anywhere in the world. Concerning African-European cultural entanglement in South Africa, it should be noted that Europeans who arrived in South Africa/Africa did not understand/learn African culture, languages, and spirituality. As a result, African languages and spiritualities were relegated to an inferior position below European languages and spirituality. Objectively speaking, the relegation of African languages below European languages, for example, was a result of the complex linguistic landscape of Africa. There are African countries with more than 200 native languages. This made interaction difficult. Hence, the use of European languages helps people of varied native languages to easily interact. We should, therefore, avoid the temptation to perceive the use of European languages in Africa as a mechanism of oppression. African societies pre- and post-colonisation did not have a single language. If that were the case, it would suffice to argue that the relegation of African languages was an act of oppression.

Therefore, as Africans in the present dispensation, we should refrain from perceiving European languages as “the languages of the oppressor.” We are obliged to be objective in our views. Ngugi Wa Thiongo’o advises us (Africans) “… to use European languages, but not to allow European languages to use us.” It is also our responsibility to create a language that can be used across the continent.
Certainly, human encounters do not exclude violent conflicts from occurring at the micro and macro levels. Sometimes it is a matter of time before a violent conflict takes place.

The memory of African and European cultural encounters is, however, not so much about truth, but about the experience. This is because truth in this context is a lived experience of peoples’ pain that must be acknowledged. Some early clashes between African and European encounters happened because of “difference – otherness”. If you are not like us, we must make you look like us – “culturalization.” This affected Africans the most, as envisaged in the dominance and dispossession of African societies by Europeans in South Africa. The traumatic memory of dispossession has been haunting native South Africans hitherto. It is, therefore, imperative to consider how African and European entanglement in South Africa can be reimagined. This issue is salient because there is a need to create a collective memory in South Africa that would work for Africans and Europeans equally. One way to do that is to leverage the South African cultural philosophical concept of Ubuntu (meaning I am, because you are). Ubuntu is important in South Africa in the present political time because of socio-economic agitations. Ubuntu would allow native South Africans and Europeans to look at the “land question” for the benefit of all.

However, if that is not possible, Africans and Europeans must learn to be tolerant and accommodating of each other to create a stable environment. This is what cultural encounters should do when perceived in a positive light. Africa and Europe are two allies with deep historical encounters. There is no need to propagate resentment and anti-European sentiments across South Africa/Africa. The negative effect of African and European encounters should, therefore, be noted by both parties. And the time to do that is now.

The post Memory and Political Time: African and European Cultural Encounters appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Main messages from the Tripartite Social Summit, 22 March 2023.

The President of the Eurogroup, Paschal Donohoe, has sent a letter to the President of the Euro Summit, Charles Michel, to report on the work of the Eurogroup. The letter will inform the discussion that Leaders will hold at the upcoming Euro Summit.

President Michel invited the members of the European Council to the meeting taking place on 23-24 March 2023. They will start with an exchange of views with UN Secretary General Guterres. The EUCO discussions will then touch upon Ukraine, competitiveness, trade, migration and energy. On Friday 24 March leaders will hold an Euro Summit in inclusive format.

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

The Council has adopted two decisions related to the Windsor Framework, greenlighting the main elements of the political agreement in principle on the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland to the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement.

Statement by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union on the alignment of certain third countries with Council Decision (CFSP) 2023/501 of 7 March 2023 amending Decision (CFSP) 2020/1999 concerning restrictive measures against serious human rights violations and abuses.

Council note on the delivery and joint procurement of ammunition for Ukraine, as approved by the Foreign Affairs Council on 20 March 2023.