EU public diplomacy in Asia: a case study of the EU Center in Taiwan

Since 2004, the EU has created 11 EU centers and two center-modeled programs in East Asia as an integral part of its public diplomacy in order to “promote the study, understanding, and support of the EU and its policies.” All of these centers were jointly established by the EU and local universities, and more than 50 % of their funding is offered by the EU institutions. Among these centers and programs, the EU Center in Taiwan (EUTW) distinguishes itself from the others in two ways. On one hand, similar to the EU Center in Singapore, it acts as a national center rather than a university center. On the other hand, it was jointly inaugurated by a consortium of seven universities rather than one or two universities across the island. Therefore, this paper aims to evaluate the EU public diplomacy in Asia with the help of soft power theory and an in-depth case study of the EUTW. I will firstly review the development of the EU Studies and EU-related communities in Taiwan before the EUTW was formally inaugurated in May 2009. In the second part, I will present an in-depth analysis of the structure and functioning of the EUTW in terms of EU public diplomacy on the island. In the third part, the work of EUTW in the promotion of study, understanding, and even support of the EU and its policies will be evaluated with help of an institutionalist framework. In the end, I will give a balance sheet of the EUTW in terms of EU public diplomacy before drawing into some conclusions.     

China’s direct investment in the European Union: a new regulatory challenge?

While China is fast becoming an important outward direct investor, its companies are showing an increasing interest to locate in Europe and the European Union (EU). It has been suggested that this can partly be explained by the more lenient attitude of the European countries compared to the US, where some acquisitions were abandoned when they ran into political opposition based on security concerns. Yet, also in Europe, the media follow rather closely each new Chinese entry, and certain politicians have started to criticise the take-over of technology-oriented companies, especially by Chinese state-owned firms. Against the background of a very open foreign direct investment (FDI) policy as measured by OECD FDI Restrictiveness Index for the EU and the individual countries, an overview is given of the pre- and post-establishment obstacles to direct foreign investment. Also, the EU policy measures that directly or indirectly deal with incoming direct investment are discussed. Within the context of the EU competition policy and the merger regulation, the EU Commission has cleared five cases of take-over by Chinese state-owned enterprises. Although the Lisbon Treaty authorises the EU Commission to take charge of investment policy as part of the EU commercial policy, it will take time to realise this. If the announced negotiations about an investment treaty between China and the EU could work out the necessary balance, it would be an important step in achieving more reciprocity between their respective investment regimes.     

Once a member,always a member? Assessing the importance of time in the relationship between the European Union and the Development Assistance Committee

This article examines the European Union's (EU's) full membership of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). More specifically, we address (1) why the EU became a full member of the DAC in 1961, long before the EU was granted legal competences for development policy, and (2) why this membership status has remained unaltered over the past half-century, despite persistent dissatisfaction among both EU and non-EU members of the DAC. By applying historical institutionalism, we find that the initial decision on the EU's membership status in the DAC created a path dependence that was impossible to reverse afterwards, despite changing internal and external circumstances.     

The European Endowment for Democracy and Democracy Promotion in the EU Neighbourhood

The European Endowment for Democracy (EED) is a recently established instrument of democracy promotion intended to complement existing EU tools. Fashioned after the US National Endowment for Democracy, the EED’s privileged area of action is the European neighbourhood. Meant as a small rapid-response, actor-oriented ‘niche’ initiative, its main task is to select those actors, from both civil and political society able to produce a change in their country. The EED represents a step forward in the EU’s capacity to foster democracy, but does not necessarily go in the direction of more rationality and effectiveness. Not all EU member states support the EED with the same enthusiasm and it is still not clear how it fits into the EU’s overall democracy promotion architecture. Its actions may be successful in a very constrained timeframe. However, recent crises at the EU’s borders would seem to call for a strategy that takes into consideration systemic hindrances, post-regime change complexities, regional dynamics and finally rival plans of autocracy promotion.     

‘Old’ un peacekeeping principles and ‘new’ conflicts: Some ideas to reduce the troubles of post‐cold war peace missions

The European Union (EU) has declared its European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) operational. It has put the institutional structures in place to manage the political aspects of security and defence policy and the member-states have pledged a range of military capabilities, which the EU may call upon. However there are significant issues that need to be resolved for the ESDP to be a truly effective and credible policy. On the whole, these issues revolve around military capabilities, defence spending and a strategic concept. Without investing in critical military capabilities and without a clear direction, ESDP will become a policy without substance.     

欧债危机与当前欧洲一体化面临的困境

欧债危机暴露了欧盟经济治理体系的内在缺陷,使得欧洲一体化建设面临严峻的挑战。伴随欧债危机的社会经济动荡和欧盟内部纷争将是近期欧洲政治生态的主色调。同时,欧债危机也促使欧盟内部、特别是欧元区必须加快财政经济政策一体化的步伐。完善和强化经济治理体系,意味着欧盟需要进行必要的条约修改,展现更强有力的政治意志,并需要推动政治联盟建设的配套措施。因此,欧债危机也可能成为深化欧洲一体化建设的催化剂和契机。     

The substance of EU democratic governance promotion via transgovernmental cooperation with the Eastern neighbourhood

Existing studies of the European Union’s (EU) democratic governance promotion via transgovernmental cooperation in the EU’s neighbourhood seem to take the substance of what is being promoted by the EU for granted. In filling this gap, this article examines the substance of EU democratic governance promotion by assessing (1) to what extent norms of democratic governance appear in EU Twinning projects implemented in the Eastern neighbourhood, and (2) what factors account for differences in the presence of democratic governance norms across those projects. To explain possible variation, the article hypothesizes that the democratic governance substance of Twinning projects will vary with the country’s political liberalization, sector politicization, sector technical complexity, and EU conditionality attached to reform progress in a given policy sector. Data are retrieved from a content analysis of 117 Twinning project fiches from the Eastern neighbourhood and analysed via standard multiple regression. The article finds that the EU mostly promotes moderate, mixed democratic governance substance, which varies across different projects. This variation may be best explained by the level of political liberalization of the beneficiary country and the politicization and technical complexity of the policy sectors and institutions involved in respective Twinning projects.     

欧盟东扩与俄罗斯的对外经济贸易取向

在 90年代 ,通过东西欧经济一体化和对俄共同战略 ,欧盟已成功地把中东欧候选国和俄罗斯纳入欧盟的国际分工体系 ,并将最终把它们融入欧洲的政治和法律体系。欧盟东扩不仅使俄罗斯的对外贸易地理方向明显偏向西欧 ,而且使俄罗斯成为欧盟原材料和燃料的主要提供者。东扩后的欧盟将与俄罗斯拥有漫长的共同边界 ,从而使双方经贸关系更加密切 ,这无疑会成为 2 1世纪制约中俄贸易发展的一个重要因素。只有早日形成以产业内贸易为主体的贸易格局 ,中俄贸易才有可能取得较快的发展。     

Against the odds—a free trade agreement between the European Union and Australia?

The European Union (EU) and Australia have embarked officially on a free trade agreement (FTA) negotiation process, a procedure expected to last no less than 5 years. Public pronouncements from both sides which announced the beginning of the process of negotiating an FTA marked a significant departure from the well-known tensions and difficulties which date back to the late 1950s. British entry into the then European Economic Community in 1973 meant that it had to align its trade policies with the much contested European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This had been implemented in the late 1960s and provided limitless reasons for antagonism between Australia and the EU. Yet, over time, the trade agenda changed for both sides with new actors and new agreements, and some of the previous machinery no longer providing the liberalisation of trade as intended. Both the EU and Australia have moved on—some of this change due to new political actors and new economic realities. Despite the tortured history between them, and mindful that some might be sceptical about this change of heart, real politik often imposes its own political will and the new needs may well be in sharp contrast to the past relationships. The prospect of an FTA shows how the trappings of history might be side stepped by a stronger, almost opportunistic, sense of economic benefits however small they might appear.     

New threats – different response: EU and NATO and Somali piracy

When the European Union (EU) launched its first military naval mission, EU NAVFOR Somalia, Atalanta, the states who are members of both the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) made a political choice: to prioritize the EU over NATO in their multilateral military efforts to fight piracy and its consequences. Thereby, Atalanta challenges the conventional assumption that EU security cooperation will remain limited. It also challenges the widely held belief that the European states will chose to act through NATO if dealing multilaterally with international security issues. How can we explain this decision? This analysis suggests that it can be explained in two phases where different mechanisms were at work. In the first phase, which can be accounted for from a neo-realist perspective, France, who held the Presidency, used particular favorable geopolitical conditions to put an autonomous EU operation on the agenda. However, agreement on the EU option cannot be explained as a result of strategic bargaining. Instead, in a second phase and in line with an alternative hypothesis building on the theory of communicative action, the EU member states came to support the French suggestion due to legitimacy considerations regarding the legal framework of the two operations.     

The European Union in the G20: what role for small states?

The G20 has emerged as the premier forum for international economic policy coordination. For small EU states, the EU's participation in the G20 represents a particular challenge as they may be faced with decisions in which they had no say. This article looks at the possibilities for small state involvement in the G20 process and analyses the extent to which they can influence the EU's participation in the G20. The article suggests two sets of variables to explain the possibilities for influence of small states in the EU's external relations. Looking into four financial and economic policy dossiers, the article explores the conditions of success of small states' strategies. The article does not contradict that the big member states dominate the EU presence in the G20, but it does argue that small states may successfully use the EU as a foreign policy platform to pursue national objectives. Their influence varies strongly and is bound to a number of conditions.     

Dead on arrival: normative EU policy towards China

The European Union’s (EU) normative roles in global politics have in recent years been a hotly debated topic. The EU promotes its political values outside of the Union, especially with regard to prospective accession countries and small developing countries. However, a normative foreign policy approach encounters considerable challenges when confronted with major powers, such as China and Russia that do not share the political values promoted by the EU. Attempts at pursuing a normative policy towards these countries often come across as halfhearted. This article discusses EU normative policy towards China. It identifies loss of the moral high ground, conflicting positions of EU members and lack of leverage as the three main factors hampering it. It needs to be recognised that these problems are fundamental and stem from the very nature of the EU itself. The article argues that instead of a halfhearted offensive normative approach towards China or ubiquitous dialogues with partners, the EU may be better off with a more determined policy of defensive normativity. This would entail being more insistent in upholding European values within our own community rather than seeking to export them outside of the Union, and favouring demand-driven cooperation. The choice stands between altering the self-image of the EU to make it better correspond to reality, or making reality live up to the self-image.     

Anger and protest: referenda and opposition to the EU in Greece and the United Kingdom

The public image of the European Union (EU) has met increasingly negative evaluations since the economic and financial crisis hit its peak. Although opposition towards the EU has been pitched as a temporary phenomenon, it has now become a distinctive characteristic of European integration, described as ‘embedded’. Recent analyses on citizens’ attitudes towards the EU underline a rational utilitarian dimension, stressing that EU attachment is affected by future life expectations. Are rationalist perspectives the only possible explanation behind the rise of Euroscepticism, though? This article offers an alternative approach, by using discourse analysis, and examines how emotions, as embedded in Eurosceptic discursive frames and practices, may affect attitudes towards the EU. We argue that an analysis of citizens’ opposition through emotions when the salience of the EU increases can show how a Eurosceptic emotion-laden public discourse may become prominent at the domestic level.     

Administrative reform assistance and democracy promotion: exploring the democratic substance of the EU’s public administration reform principles for the neighbourhood countries

International donors, particularly the European Union (EU), vehemently endorse institution-building and public administration reform (PAR) in their work on democracy support. Still, the linkages between externally sponsored reform and advancement of democratic governance in beneficiary countries constitute a blind spot in our understanding of democratization. This article contributes to examining this relationship by exploring the democratic substance of the EU’s PAR portfolio for the neighbourhood countries. The aim of the article is to focus attention on the PA–democracy interface in the study of democracy promotion by elaborating a conceptual framework for exploring the nature of externally supported administrative reforms and the substantive content of democracy being advanced. By using the OECD/SIGMA’s (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development/Support for Improvement in Governance and Management) PAR framework for the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) countries as a case study, this article demonstrates how the EU’s approach to programming PAR accommodates elements from several formats of democratic governance while the conceptualization of the democratic effects of the PAR principles remains vague. The article concludes by highlighting the need for closer examination of the potentials and limits of external PAR strategies in democracy support, and for attuning the EU’s PAR design to its democratic implications.     

Sleeping Beauty Awakens: The Italian Parliament and the EU after the Lisbon Treaty

More direct involvement in the EU decision-making process has traditionally been an ambition of the Italian parliament. The implementation of the Lisbon Treaty has prompted parliament to maintain tighter scrutiny of the EU legislative process, not only through the use of the new subsidiarity control mechanism, but in particular by exerting a stronger influence on the government on EU affairs. The latter will be the key challenge in the post-Lisbon era. It is too early to say, however, whether this will have a positive or negative impact on the EU's democratic legitimacy.     

Structural,Domestic, and Strategic Interests in the European Union: Negotiation Positions in the Council of Ministers

Preferences are a crucial element for analyzing decision making and negotiations, but knowledge about which factors determine these preferences is sparse. Some quantitative and qualitative studies of European Union (EU) negotiations have assumed that the negotiation conflict dimensions in intergovernmental negotiations reflect market‐versus‐regulation approaches as well as a north–south dimension. In this study, I demonstrate that these findings can be extended to show that the relevant determining factors for negotiation positions are economic structural variables and the degree to which a country benefits from the EU. Furthermore, the domestic interests of EU governments better explain a government's interest in some specific issues, such as consumer protection or fishery policies, than do their partisan preferences. Moreover, I am able to show that in frequent negotiations, such as EU Council of Ministers negotiations, sincere preferences dominate; however, some factors, such as extreme salience, can increase the likelihood that a minister will choose a less sincere strategic position such as an extreme position.     

Uncertainty at the EU's borders: narratives of EU external relations in the revised European Neighbourhood Policy towards the southern borderlands

This article analyses the role of narratives in European Union (EU) external relations in the revised European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and systematically explores how they operate in practice in the context of the EU's border management practices vis-à-vis the “southern borderlands”, in particular with respect to their inclusionary and exclusionary potential. Key EU documents and statements by EU agents, released throughout the first three years of Arab uprisings and pertaining to the revised ENP, will be subjected to a thorough examination which highlights four observations: first, in spite of the fact that the revised ENP is rooted in several narratives, some nevertheless dominate over others; second, the simultaneous presence of and recourse to different narratives contribute to an increase, rather than a decrease, of uncertainty in the EU's southern borderlands; third, despite a multitude of narratives which serve to legitimize EU action in the framework of the revised ENP, the latter perpetuates the logics of its predecessor by generating benefits mainly for the EU itself; fourth, that the first three years of the revised ENP have in practice demonstrated that an imbalance exists between on the one hand the original acceptance of the narratives by EU stakeholders and on the other hand their willingness to abide by them and fill them with life.     

A small state’s anticipation of institutional change: effects of the looming Brexit in the areas of the CSDP and internal market

ABSTRACT

Brexit will profoundly change politics in the European Union, and all countries will have to adjust to the new situation. But the issue is more pressing for small member states that are more dependent on international organisations than big states. This article studies how the institutional setting affects a small state’s preparations for Brexit in the areas of the common security and defence policy and internal market. Contrary to the expectations, it shows that the Czech Republic, the small state under scrutiny, has invested more effort into a preventive adjustment in the internal market policy than to the CSDP. This result is explained by the existence of alternative institutional frameworks that are expected to mitigate the impact of Brexit on EU’s security and defence policy. It also suggests that while small states profit from the existence of strong institutions, they also face the risk of unmitigated impact when these institutions change.     

Deploying EU military crisis management operations: a collective action perspective

This article will work towards a multi-level collective action approach for understanding the deployment of Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) military operations. It is multi-level because it uses three levels of analysis: firstly, the international level, where events that create threats to certain values catalyze the process leading to the deployment of an operation; secondly, the national level, where EU governments formulate their national preferences towards prospective deployments based on utility expectations; and thirdly, the EU level, where EU member states negotiate and seek compromises to accommodate their different national preferences. The strength of the model will be demonstrated through empirical case studies on the deployment processes of EUFOR Althea in Bosnia and Herzegovina and EU NAVFOR Atalanta off the coast of Somalia. The article will also provide an overview of the existing theoretical literature on the deployment of CSDP military operations.     

Partnerships in transition: the case of the EU and middle-income countries (MICs)

The EU has introduced a differentiated approach to development cooperation by reducing financial support for countries graduating to middle-income status from development cooperation. Differentiation will likely be applied in additional countries in the next budget cycle; as such, the way the EU organises differentiation makes for an important pilot case. This article reviews the factors that led to the graduation of certain countries and how this matches with the EU’s aspirations to policy coherence for development. The analysis concludes that ambiguous differentiation policy horizontally led to vertical incoherencies in the ways policy objectives are conveyed to financial instruments, and how they subsequently facilitate programming.