Abstract: The European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) is understood as an important new "instrument" in the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) "toolbox", designed to respond to the contemporary security environment as well as to overcome the inaction and hesitancy of the past....

The present article explores whether the first Trio Presidency of the Council of Ministers of the European Union (EU), composed of Germany, Portugal and Slovenia, lived up to the goal of ensuring greater continuity and sustainability in managing the Council’s work. Focusing on the Trio’s...

This collection of articles examines some of the legislative cornerstones of the emerging EU Area of Freedom, Security and Justice in light of the research question whether the relevant decision-making processes in the Justice and Home Affairs Council may best be understood from a Rationalist or...

Within the growing literature on the Europeanisation of national foreign policies of European Union (EU) member states, the case of Portugal has been almost absent. Yet despite its small size and intermediate level of development, Portugal has had relatively extensive international relations...

Research focusing on the leader-laggard dynamic in EU policy-making has significantly contributed to our understanding of why EU policies often go beyond the least common denominator and why policies look the way they do. The literature has also provided plausible arguments about the incentives...

This study accounts for the emergence of a supranational biometric control regime in Europe. The empirical focus lies on the institutionalization of Eurodac, an automated fingerprint identification system covering asylum seekers and 'illegal' immigrants. Who promoted the idea of setting up an...

The special position of the rotating Council Presidency has raised a long-standing debate on the extent to which this function allows a Member State to exert additional influence on European Union decision-making, in particular in external policy. This article argues that a broader and more...

This article contributes to the debate on how we can understand the increasingly high level of common EU foreign policies despite this being the policy area where one would expect the EU members to be least willing to agree to policies that depart from their national self-interests. This is done...