Eurosceptic yet pro-enlargement: the paradoxes of Hungary’s EU policy

Abstract

The present article seeks to explore the main aspects of Hungary’s EU enlargement policy. It reveals a tension between the government’s committed support for EU enlargement and its critical stance towards the EU on several other fronts. However, on the basis of liberal intergovernmentalist theory, this article argues that this is not a real contradiction since enlargement to the Western Balkans serves Hungary’s national interests in spite of its government’s Euroscepticism. At the same time, Hungary’s questioning of the basic values of the EU as a community of liberal democracies has weakened the legitimacy of Hungarian interventions in favour of speeding up EU enlargement. While Hungary has become ever more isolated from the ‘old’ EU member states, more recently, its government managed to increase its leverage in the Western Balkans and central Europe in the context of the migration crisis.     

Italy and EU enlargement to the Western Balkans: the Europeanization of national interests?

Abstract

Italy is a vocal supporter of EU enlargement to the Western Balkans. Relying on primary and secondary sources and semi-structured interviews, this article analyses Italy’s position, including the ‘what?’ (the traditional views of the country on EU enlargement), the ‘how?’ (formal processes and actual practices of decision-making) and the ‘why?’ (the main factors influencing its position). The expected economic and security benefits for Rome largely compensate for the perceived costs of EU enlargement towards the region. Nevertheless, Italy’s influence capacity is hampered by lack of resources and a traditional focus on mere diplomatic presence, as it emerges from the recent examples of the Berlin Process, the refugee crisis, and the EUSAIR.     

Firm supporter and severe critic – Germany’s two-pronged approach to EU enlargement in the Western Balkans

Abstract

Germany has demonstrated an active commitment towards the accession perspective of the Western Balkans, which found its most vocal expression in the initiation of a Western Balkans summit in August 2014 and the ensuing “Berlin process”. However, German support reflexively goes hand in hand with a reference to rigid accession conditionality. This not only fosters stabilization and transformation in the Western Balkan states, but also – at the domestic level – counters widespread enlargement scepticism among decision makers and the German public. The far-reaching participation rights of the Federal Parliament, acquired by the 2009 amendments to the Act on EU Cooperation, involves the Bundestag inter alia in the opening of accession negotiations, thus also increasing domestic constraints for Germany’s position in the Council. Federal elections due in late 2017 and a political environment shaped by a discussion about migration, including from and through the Western Balkans, make enlargement policy a particularly hard-to-sell issue.     

De-Europeanisation through Discourse: A Critical Discourse Analysis of AKP’s Election Speeches

Abstract

This article takes issue with the question of whether Turkey has been turning away from Europe in recent years, by adopting a critical constructivist lens to understand how, rather than why, Turkey’s presumed distance from the European Union (EU) is taking place. In doing that, it seeks to analyse the ways in which the political–societal transformation of the country as distanced from the EU is enabled by certain discursive practices which in turn contribute to the growing rift between Turkey and the EU. This is mainly conducted through a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of texts produced by former Prime Minister and now President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an on Europe and the EU during key election periods starting with the 12 June 2011 general election.     

Comparing public attitudes on EU membership in candidate countries: the cases of Croatia,Macedonia and Turkey from 2004 to 2011

Past enlargements of the European Union (EU) have demonstrated that public attitudes on European integration can influence the course of accession processes. Beyond the literature on public EU support in member states and former candidates, the dynamics that shape public attitudes on EU membership within recent candidate countries have not been systematically examined. Analysing nine Eurobarometer (EB) surveys from 2004 to 2011, we argue that evaluations of EU membership in Croatia, Macedonia and Turkey are shaped by utilitarian considerations, belief in various political institutions as well as the fear of losing national identity. The economic crisis of 2008 has changed public opinion towards EU membership in all three countries, but Turkey appears to have been affected the most compared to Croatia and Macedonia.     

Continuity and change in instrumentalizing ‘The Precedent’. How Russia uses Kosovo to legitimize the annexation of Crimea

The article contributes to the efforts of understanding Russia’s legitimization endeavours by looking at the policy narratives centred around the so-called Kosovo precedent and the way they were perceived by different actors from Ukraine, Russia, and international experts. The aim of the paper is to scrutinize the process of politicization of contested international norms (in particular, territorial sovereignty and the right to self-determination) in the case of Russia’s legitimacy claims in Ukraine. In assessing the instrumentalization of the ‘Kosovo precedent’ in the Crimea crisis, we focused on three main elements identified in the selected policy narratives: the reinterpretation of history, the humanitarian and ethnic factor and the reinterpretation of Western actions in the Balkans.     

Macedonia after the 2001 conflict: towards social cohesion and reconciliation?

The paper aims to contribute to the on-going debate in the literature about reconciliation after an armed conflict through presentation of the Macedonian experience. It focuses upon the following questions: Is the Ohrid Framework Agreement (OFA), which put an end to the armed conflict in the country, supported by the process of reconciliation? Has the state found the right way to deal with the past? In order to answer the questions, the paper describes briefly the Agreement and the process of its implementation. In this context, it identifies the type of power-sharing system established by the OFA through analysis of the Agreement within the integrative and consociational theory. Then, the paper examines how the state dealt with the past. Further, it discusses the impact of the amnesty for grave crimes on reconciliation in the country using the existing literature. The paper argues that it is questionable whether the state chose the best approach to dealing with the past.     

Multi-level Games: The Serbian Government’s Strategy towards Kosovo and the EU under the Progressive Party

ABSTRACT

Since the signing of the historic ‘Brussels Agreement’ on 19 April 2013 on the normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia, Serbian President Aleksandar Vu?i? and the Progressive Party have oscillated between competing tensions emanating from seeking membership in the European Union and those stemming from the retention of Kosovo, including the party’s uncompromising position on non-recognition. Following two-level game theory, this paper offers a comparative analysis of the Progressive Party’s multi-level game strategy vis-à-vis Kosovo and the EU, arguing that while the initial success of the Brussels Agreement can predominantly be attributed to the rise in popular support for EU accession, Serbian policy towards Kosovo appears to be far less clear and often contradictory and therefore, Serbian government strategy cannot have been influenced by public opinion.     

Iveta Silova. From Sites of Occupation to Symbols of Multiculturalism. Reconceptualizing Minority Education in Post-Soviet Latvia. Greenwich,CT: Information Age Publishing, 2006, ISBN 1593114613.

This article explores the personal spatialities of the majority of inhabitants in Estonia and Sweden. The author analyzed survey data and used variables about the perception of cultural distances, interest in receiving news from other countries via mass media, and contacts with people from these countries. The analysis suggests a hypothesis that in Estonia, personal spatiality is shaped primarily by institutional factors (e.g. the media, the economy). In Sweden, the formation of personal spatiality is based on versatile sources and is more autonomous with regard to the media than in a transition country such as Estonia. The analysis also demonstrates that the symbolic division of the world into East and West shapes the imagined Nordic and Baltic space and people's thinking patterns about ‘others’.     

Role conflicts in foreign policy: Nigeria’s dilemma over Bakassi Peninsula*

ABSTRACT

Post independence President of Cameroon, Ahmadou Ahidjo, a Fulani, like his kith and kin in Northern Nigeria, was quite supportive of Nigeria in her war with the separatist Biafra. At the end of the war, he laboured to convince Nigeria to a boundary demarcation that would place Bakassi Peninsula firmly on the side of Cameroon. Nigeria as at 1975, ensured to remain grateful to an African country that helped her during the civil war. The show of gratitude from Nigeria triggered eventually, a bellicose relation with Cameroon. Though un-confessed, Nigeria was beset with several role conflicts in her border dispute with Cameroon, since the peninsula had been inhabited by Nigerians from the pre-colonial times. This paper examines the causes and manifestations of these conflicts. To do this, the role theory framework is used. It is revealed that Nigeria’s cognitive assertions were in conflict over her material interests on Bakassi Peninsula.     

Immigration and Swiss‐EU Free Movement of Persons: Question of a Safeguard Clause

The issue of migration is a current topic in different European countries. In this paper, we concentrate on the case of Switzerland. After the adoption of the Mass Immigration Initiative on 9 February 2014, Switzerland is faced with a challenging task. It needs to implement the constitutional mandate to manage migration autonomously, although Switzerland has a bilateral free movement of persons agreement with the EU. We present an approach to a solution for discussion. The basic idea is to maintain the principle of freedom of movement without fixed quotas or national priority but with a safeguard clause for (statistically) exceptional situations. An exceptional situation occurs if serious social, economic or political difficulties arise. As an objective method to determine serious difficulties, we choose an excessive percentage in net migration, defined on the basis of the situation in the EU/EFTA. If the net migration in Switzerland is getting excessive, the safeguard clause could be called. In addition, we take other factors into account such as the amount of the EU/EFTA foreigners and the labor market.