A rising need to protect Ukrainian war refugees against organised crime networks, investigation of war crimes, combatting human trafficking and firearms smuggling, and enforcement of sanctions are the main concerns and cooperation priorities between the EU and Ukraine in the internal security domain.
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There is no reason to assume that history in the 21st century will necessarily be less complicated or less bloody than it was in the 20th or 19th centuries. To cope with global competition, we have to strengthen a common front with the countries that share our worldview, both in fundamental issues but also in the coordination of everyday matters of practical politics, says Jonatan Vseviov, the secretary general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Estonia.
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Despite the mounting evidence of the most serious of human rights violations being conducted by Russian forces on Ukrainian soil, the EU has chosen not to use its new Magnitsky Act to blacklist the perpetrators and their commanders.
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The sheer size and geopolitical significance of Ukraine would have, in and of itself, required a clear and coherent policy from the European Union in the aftermath of the Cold War. However, the EU’s focus was initially on the countries that joined the EU in 2004, and on Russia.
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This report examines Russia’s preparations for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine: domestically, in Ukraine itself, in the global information domain, and in building its relationship with China.
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While Baltic security thinking has long been dominated by assessments of the risk of Russian military aggression in Europe, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was still a shock in its brutality and scale. It has led the three Baltic states to further increase defence spending and to accelerate the building of national defence capabilities.
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Robotic platforms, artificial intelligence, and weapons with autonomous functions have become central to defence innovation. Major powers rely on emerging technologies to achieve and maintain strategic advantages over their potential adversaries. Yet more developed AI-based solutions produce not only more sophisticated technologies but also a not-less-sophisticated set of problems.
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Since its inauguration by 44 heads of state and government during the Czech EU Council Presidency in Prague on 6 October 2022, the European Political Community (EPC) has been discussed and analysed by many political scientists across Europe. There has, of course, been no consensus. Some welcomed the French initiative as the right format at the right time; others criticized it as a non-inclusive, ‘Macron-only’ project. Nearly everyone, however, tried to compare the EPC to the European Union, whose framework and decision-making are in desperate need of institutional reform. In this sense, the EPC has blended into a European and EU enlargement context. Fair enough!
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With the aggressive attack on Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the course of European history has changed. War in Europe is back. War waged by a great power against its neighbour has returned to European soil. The European security architecture—established after the end of the Cold War and built as a pan-European code of conduct—has been disrupted by Putin’s unjustified and aggressive invasion. The principles of democracy, human rights, rule of law, market economy, good neighbourly relations, and territorial integrity have been brought into question. And the European Union’s response to this challenge is the European Political Community.
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Reshaped by the new great power competition, the international order has been undergoing revolutionary transformations. Revanchist Russia has unleashed a barbarian war against a sovereign European nation, while increasingly militarised and contentious China looms as a not-so-insidious threat in the Indo-Pacific. In response to these shifting dynamics and mounting geopolitical tensions, Europe is now awakening to the new reality and paying greater attention to the far-away region.
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