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European Union

September 26, 2025

🧭 Why securing welfare benefits is key to EU enlargement

Ann-Kathrin Reinl Ann-Kathrin Reinl argues that welfare security is the quiet hinge of public support for EU enlargement. Credible guarantees on national benefits blunt fears about costs and migration. If we reassure citizens on welfare, support for a larger EU holds Read more
September 25, 2025

Towards feminist climate justice in Ireland and the EU 

Catherine Forde The climate crisis is having an alarming impact on Europe – and women and marginalised communities are disproportionately affected. Despite these challenges, Irish and EU climate policy remains largely gender blind. Catherine Forde and Fiona Dukelow consider what impact this has on the development of effective climate change policy  Read more
September 12, 2025

Free movement in the Global South: beyond the border line

Zoé Perko We tend to regard free movement as a legal and institutional achievement, but this view overlooks the lived realities in the Global South. Drawing on research in West Africa and South America, Zoé Perko shows how informal practices and historical networks redefine how ‘free movement’ really works Read more
September 2, 2025

Are European Parliament elections really ‘second-order elections’?

Ugur Tekiner European elections are traditionally seen as less significant than national elections. But Ugur Tekiner argues that the recent challenges facing the EU force us to rethink this classification. Recent European elections accurately reflect the national political mood in Member States, and reveal the growing polarisation around Europe Read more
September 1, 2025

How gender shapes EU-US parliamentary diplomacy

Lorenzo Santini For over 50 years, the European Parliament and the US Congress have steadily practiced transatlantic parliamentary diplomacy. In a second Trump era, what space remains for gender equality? Lorenzo Santini argues that informal and symbolic diplomacy helps keep women’s rights visible on the agenda Read more
August 29, 2025

🧭 When Europe means unity, not pluralism: rethinking conditionality in Ukraine

Lesley-Ann Daniels Lesley-Ann Daniels and Marc Sanjaume-Calvet explore a paradox at the heart of Ukraine’s path to EU membership: the strongest pro-European voices are often the least supportive of minority rights. Drawing on new survey data, they call for a more adaptive and politically sensitive enlargement strategy Read more
August 27, 2025

Toward a 'not-so-grand' security strategy for European defence policy 

Amélie Jaques-Apke Are we nearing a new incarnation of the French vision of a Gaullist Europe? Focusing on strategic autonomy, nuclear deterrence, coalitions of the willing, threat perception, and defence capability, Amélie Jaques-Apke examines the strategic dilemmas, and conceptual and operational deficiencies, in European defence policy  Read more
August 27, 2025

🧭 How Hungary and Serbia expose the EU’s enlargement vulnerabilities

Rafaela Gonzalez Lucioni EU enlargement, without credible enforcement of democratic standards, threatens the Union’s integrity. Cases like Hungary and Serbia expose the dangers of performative reforms and weak accountability. Rafaela Gonzalez Lucioni argues that to remain a values-based project, the EU must reform internal mechanisms and adopt a phased, conditional approach to accession Read more

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Advancing Political Science
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