The landscape of European security and defence cooperation has become a busy one. Last year, 25 of the 28 EU Member States signed up to commit to Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), spurring a wide array of specific cooperation projects and investment pledges.
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Estonian Foreign Policy Institute’s Junior Researcher Piret Kuusik attended a conference “From ‘Visegrad Four’ to ‘Varna Four’: The Rise and Role of Regional Cooperation in Central and South Eastern Europe” in Budapest, Hungary.
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Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the White House. While President Macron was greeted with a lavish state visit, then Chancellor Merkel’s visit was a modest working visit.
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France and conscription have a flawed, nostalgic relationship.
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The Enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) of allied troops in NATO’s north-eastern flank (Baltic States and Poland), as decided at the Warsaw Summit in July 2016, is a clear expression of strong political solidarity and seasoned brotherhood in arms, just as in the case of out-of-area NATO, EU or coalition-led operations since 1995.
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Some say that Russia simply gambles when it meddles in other countries’ elections, like a poker or roulette player who walks from one table to another to try his luck.
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Only 39 years old, Emmanuel Macron is the youngest person ever elected president of the French Republic. He won the final round of the presidential elections by a landslide against the far-right Front National candidate Marine Le Pen, but he did not get the support of the majority of registered French voters. An unprecedented number of voters—over a third of the total—either abstained (25.4%) or virtually boycotted the elections by casting blank or otherwise invalid ballots (11.5%). Therefore, only 63% of French voters actually voted for one or the other candidate.
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The newly elected French president will inherit a difficult security situation. A state of emergency has been in effect ever since the outrageous terrorist actions of November 2015 and is due to remain in force until at least next July.
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