Frans Timmermans has stepped down as executive vice president of the European Commission. Margrethe Vestager is expected to become the president of the European Investment Bank, and Jutta Urpilainen is going to join the competition to become Finland’s new president. These commissioners used to be political heavyweights in their home countries before moving to Brussels, […]
Ursula von der Leyen
When the former German Defense Minister, Ursula von der Leyen, became President of the European Commission in December 2019, she pledged to transform the EU into a more relevant geopolitical actor. While Europe’s identity had for a long time been rooted in the idea of the Union exerting normative power, that is, influencing the global […]
Until a few months ago, the policy and academic debate in the EU revolved around the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), praised across the board as proof of European solidarity and a concrete manifestation of the EU commitment to address the pandemic crisis. The RRF indeed marked a leap forward towards a stronger redistributive role […]
In her recent speech about the State of the Union, President Von der Leyen was right to focus on the challenges raised by the war in Ukraine, but she was short on a long-term vision, and on a plan to cope with its real nature. Yes, the war in our continent is certainly the central […]
The EU has spent the best part of 20 months working on its ‘Strategic Compass’ for security and defence, yet the war in Ukraine and the threat environment around Europe pose serious questions. If the Compass is to move from just another EU document to credible action, EU member states need to step up their […]
Four years have passed already since an informal gathering of European leaders in the Swedish city of Gothenburg proclaimed the “European Pillar of Social Rights”. Some, including leaders of the host country of the 2017 conference, still believe that the EU itself does not need to do much for its actual implementation. The notion that […]
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