The heavily criticised EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investments (CAI) finds itself on the axis of the European Union, China and the US. This constitutes an uncomfortable triangle for the three Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, also known as the 3B. The EU-China deal provides a worrying case study about the indirect effects the EU’s foreign policy may have on its member states.
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The EU’s approach to a post-Brexit security partnership with the UK is intended to address common concerns, such as the fight against terrorism and the spread of cross-border organised crime. A continuing mutual interest in enhanced operational co-operation in internal security and cross-border law enforcement, means that separate EU-UK agreements will need to be developed.
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It is now extremely unlikely that Gazprom owned Nord Stream 2 will ever be operational in the way Moscow envisaged. US sanctions have stopped pipeline construction in its tracks. More US sanctions will be adopted before the end of the year creating further problems for the pipeline.
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The French President, Emmanuel Macron, recently gave an interview to Le Grand Continent, a journal published by the Groupe d’études géopolitiques. Macron discusses crises that plagued Europe and the world in 2020, particularly the COVID-19 pandemic and terrorism, as well as fundamental long-term transitional processes and challenges such as climate change, digital transformation and various intra- and inter-state inequalities.
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The formation of our new world differs in complexity, notably according to a number of pandemic and post-pandemic factors that encourage the transformation of old “centres of power” and the emergence of new ones.
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On Monday 19 October, Estonia hosted the Three Seas Virtual Summit, marking the end of Estonia’s presidency of the initiative and handing over the reins to Bulgaria.
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On 4 September US president Donald Trump hosted a ceremony at the White House attended by the president of Serbia, Alexander Vucic, and the prime minister of Kosovo, Avdullah Hoti, at which US-brokered agreements were signed on normalising economic relations between the two Balkan countries.
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The dispute between Greece and Turkey over maritime territories goes back generations and remains unresolved. As competition over natural gas resources in the Eastern Mediterranean intensifies, the situation has become dangerously militarised. With the help of Dimitrios Triantaphyllou, professor of International Relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, we assess what is different about the same old debate this time and why it has become heated now, and we look at the fallout between the two NATO allies, reactions within the EU, the grievances of both countries and the wider international setting that contributes to the tensions.
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The world order is changing, but the contours of the order (or the absence of one) that will replace it emerge only in the process of sketching them out.
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With Belarus rapidly moving towards a post-Lukashenko era, the EU has no credible option but to support Belarusians’ bottom-up demands for democracy. This has geopolitical implications that the EU needs to be prepared to address. Russia is determined to maintain control over Belarus and likely to perceive the EU’s engagement as undesirable if not threatening.
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