... Germany and China remained deep and structural, with bilateral trade relations and integrated supply chains continuing to underpin the German Standort. Second, the institutional framework of de-risking had already been codified at both national and European Union levels, limiting the scope for substantive revision without incurring significant political and regulatory costs. Third, EU-level regulatory mechanisms substantially circumscribed the space for purely bilateral initiatives, requiring Berlin ...
Who doesn't remember looking through a kaleidoscope for the first time as a child? Colorful little particles magically reassemble themselves again and again. Turn the kaleidoscope and multiple reflections create unique beautiful shapes. New patterns full of symmetry emerge continuously.
Geopolitics, too, is constantly in motion, creating a world full of nuances.
In cities such as Berlin in particular, urban geopolitics is tangible and visible: Power shifts, ideological confrontation, reconstruction...
... However, the new system soon began to falter. The key problem was its inability to be fully inclusive of Russia. NATO remained as a military alliance. Moreover, former Soviet allies, and then its former republics, began to integrate into the Alliance. The European Union increasingly became NATO’s junior partner. Simultaneously, the key normative and institutional foundations of the European security architecture, established at the end of the Cold War, began to erode: the United States withdrew from ...
The practice of value diplomacy is highly dependent on the broader geopolitical constraints within which individual states operate
Over the past decades, the international system has undergone a profound transformation, driven by the rise of new powers and the gradual erosion of the Western dominated order. As Ijaz et al. (2024) argue, emerging actors increasingly challenge global governance structures, which were historically shaped to serve the interests of the Global West. This trend illustrates...
The issue of internal transformation, taking into account external challenges, remains paramount for the EU
Rarely in the history of the European Union has it faced challenges comparable to the ones it faces today. Since the end of the Cold War, the EU has been on the rise. Its membership has expanded quantitatively and qualitatively. Pan-European institutions and European law have been ...
... Islamic Revolution. Unlike the United States, they continued to purchase Iranian oil and invest in Iranian industry. The United States was only able to end this independence in the 2010s under the threat of secondary sanctions and financial penalties. The European Union criticised the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Germany and France were particularly vocal. Even Moscow adopted a more cautious and balanced policy. Finally, after the Ukraine crisis started in 2014, the EU was hardly in a hurry to escalate ...
... In other words, an information blockade is aimed not at protecting against disinformation, but at shielding audiences from cognitive dissonance that may arise when the official narrative collides with inconvenient facts.
After February 24, 2022, the European Union added to its already existent
foundation
, a system of new legislative restrictions on access to Russian information sources. At the same time, the scale of technological blocking exceeds the legal one: according to
data
compiled by the ...
The economic competition between “bullets and armour” continues
The eighteenth package of EU sanctions was marked by a focus on the energy sector. From the very beginning of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in 2022, Brussels has placed particular emphasis on measures restricting the Russian fuel and energy sector. Bans were introduced and expanded on energy imports, on the export of equipment and technology for the oil, gas, and other industrial sectors, and on investments in the energy sector...
Ukraine will have to pay the price for the hawks’ triumph
A new wave of sanctions against Russia has captured global attention, with the European Union’s 19
th
package taking centre stage. Brussels had been working on it for a long time; Slovakia blocked its adoption back in late September, and Hungary also voiced objections. However, a new version of the package was ultimately adopted....
... than the military conquest of one country by another. Its goal was to establish collective security, rather than peace under imperial rule. The integration of Europe evolved from the Coal and Steel Community to the European Community, and then to the European Union. Aspects of a European confederation—or a supernational sovereign state such as a European Federation—appeared to vaguely take shape, as certain “government functions” emerged, although the EU can hardly be compared to a true national ...
