In recent years, the EU has set for itself a number of long term objectives to increase its members’ energy security. First and foremost is the desire to reduce dependency on Russia as Europe’s main energy supplier. However, not all EU countries view Russia as a threat to their energy sector, and some, particularly Germany, are actively promoting Russia’s continued energy dominance in Europe. The biggest challenge facing the EU’s quest for higher energy security is how to reconcile the conflicting energy interests and needs of...
The decline in both the rule of law and the adherence to democratic norms in Turkey has made it easier for the EU to keep Ankara at a distance than was previously the case. Talks of future EU accession have become altogether symbolic and the substance of even the so-called “privileged partnership” is being hollowed out to cover limited areas of strategic significance. However, neither side is willing or able to abandon the other entirely. The existence of both pull and the push factors in Turkey-EU relations can explain why there are...
China’s increasing involvement in Europe, against the background of its growing economic and political strength in the international domain, creates both risks and opportunities. From an economic viewpoint, the trade between China and Europe continues to grow, and is matched by greater Chinese investment in Europe, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe. At the same time, there are substantive political disputes between the sides, particularly with respect to violations of human rights and the status of China in the World Trade...
While once serving as a cohesion factor across EU member states and in transatlantic relations, the “Russian question” has turned into a litmus test of EU unity and transatlantic solidarity. Since Crimea, Russia-related affairs in Europe have reflected and amplified existing fault lines across EU member states and within European political arenas and societies. Diverging European perspectives on Russia, coupled with transatlantic tensions on the “Russian question” under Trump, have sown confusion in Brussels’s Russian policy, serving...
Since the election of Donald Trump, relations between the US and the EU have been on the decline. The clash between the globalist worldview of EU leaders and that of the US President has been manifested on a number of issues. On trade, Trump has identified the EU as a platform for tilting terms of trade in favor of Germany at the expense of the US, and has expressed his willingness to enter into a trade war in order to protect American industry. Major differences of opinion also exist with respect to the nuclear agreement with Iran...
In recent years, the populist radical right parties have grown in strength in many European countries, including France, Germany, Austria, Holland, Denmark, Finland, Poland, and Hungary. The meteoric rise of the radical right parties reflects broad public criticism of global trends such as immigration, multiculturalism, and the concentration of political power in the hands of the European Union and its institutions. Accordingly, a not insignificant part of the radical right’s agenda is directed toward the delegitimization of the EU...
Senior members of the security establishment have claimed that the current terrorist threat in Europe is unprecedented. This essay examines this claim against the background of the waves of terrorism that have plagued Europe over the last five decades, and specifically in light of the nature of the current threat and the response that it demands. The terrorist threat in Europe in recent years has focused primarily on Muslim Europeans and converts to Islam. These perpetrators are usually veterans of the wars in Iraq and Syria who...
The wave of asylum seekers that arrived in Europe over 2015-2016 generated a major challenge for the EU. The need to provide for over a million people, most of whom fled from regions of conflict, created major tensions among the EU countries with respect to the division of the asylum seekers. This tension threatened the unity and stability of the EU, both internally within each member country and likewise between the member countries. In the domestic-political realm, Eurosceptic politicians have exploited the fear of asylum seekers...
Sixty years after the Treaty of Rome was signed, the European Union faces an existential threat in the form of a series of crises, both foreign and domestic. At home, the EU is coping with the lingering effect of the financial crisis of 2008, which exposed the birth defects of the euro bloc (i.e., its structure and composition) that currently appear incurable. The wave of asylum seekers and immigrants that flooded the EU (2015) has developed into a systemic crisis whose effects will be felt on the Continent for a long time to come....
The European Union in Turbulent Times: Challenges, Trends, and Signifcance for Israel maps, reviews, and analyzes the urgent issues on the European agenda. The essays in this collection review the political, social, and economic consequences of these issues and assess their significance, both for Europe and for Israel.
President Trump’s decision on May 8 to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Actions (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal, and to re-impose the sanctions has forced the other countries party to the agreement to decide how best to conduct themselves in this new paradigm. The major goal guiding them is to ensure the continuity of the agreement and to prevent Iran from resuming the nuclear activities. Despite threats voiced prior to the US administration’s decision, the Iranian regime—motivated by a desire to continue...
President Trump’s announcement that the United States would withdraw from the JCPOA is the most recent development in a series of unilateral decisions by the administration that have thrown relations between the US and its European allies into a crisis. In the short term, Germany, France, and Britain, like the European Union as a whole, will need to confront their relations with Iran vis-à-vis the nuclear deal against the background of the American withdrawal, and in the long term, their future relations with the United States....
