Rarely has an EU Presidency been met with such high expectations as Germany's in the first half of 2007. With hindsight, it might be said that these expectations have largely been fulfilled. The agreement on a detailed mandate for the upcoming Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) under the...

The EU has increasingly committed itself to fusing security and development. Developmental approaches to security are routinely seen as integral to the EU's distinctive foreign policy identity. This paper finds, however, that much work remains to be done to implement this commitment. Few in the...

This paper is the first in a series that will investigate normative foreign policy and forms part of a new project intended to explore fundamental aspects of foreign policy at the global level. Subsequent papers in the series will apply the conceptual framework developed in this paper to five...

This is the second in a series of papers from a new project entitled quot;Who is a normative foreign policy actor? The European Union and its Global Partnersquot;. The first paper - entitled Profiling Normative Foreign Policy: The European Union and its Global Partners, by Nathalie Tocci, CEPS...

This paper points out that education should be the central objective of the post-2010 Lisbon Process. Compared to other OECD countries, the member states of the European Union perform poorly when it comes to key indicators of innovative potential, such as the percentage of students enrolled in...

Syria is almost unique among Arab states in that the only variant of political Islam to be found here is state-sanctioned. This paper observes how the trends, tendencies and central figures of political Islam in Syria have positioned themselves with regard to relations with Europe, the...

This paper explores three areas in which the experience of the Great Depression might be relevant today: monetary policy, fiscal policy and the systemic stability of the banking system. We confirm the consensus on monetary policy: deflation must be avoided. With regard to fiscal policy, the...

This working paper is based on a contribution made to a conference on quot;Political Islam and the European Unionquot; organised by CEPS and La Fundacion para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diologo Exterior (FRIDE) and hosted by the Fundacion Tres Culturas in Sevilla on 24-25 November 2006....

This paper examines the EU's external power through the prism of perceptions by non-EU countries, as shown in the case of this paper in the Western Balkans. The paper argues that the EU's policy in the Western Balkans lacks a strong normative justification, which affects the degree of compliance...

This paper provides background information on the likely challenges the rise of China and India will pose for the economy of the EU. The purpose is mainly descriptive, namely to spell out what kind of trading partner China and India will represent for the EU in the foreseeable future. A first...