Over recent decades, freer trade and international specialisation have progressively concentrated pharmaceutical production, particularly for generic medicines, in a limited number of countries, especially China. As a result, excessive dependence on imported medicines has become a major vulnerability for the EU amid geopolitical tensions and the weaponisation of trade. In response, the EU has proposed the Critical Medicines Act, which seeks to strengthen supply security through trade strategies (such as supplier diversification) and by reinforcing domestic manufacturing capacity. Focusing on selected active pharmaceutical ingredients—the key inputs in medicines—included in the Union List of Critical Medicines, this article examines the complexity of pharmaceutical supply chains and the structural challenges affecting reshoring strategies. The article concludes by arguing that the EU should be highly selective in identifying which domestic production capacities to promote, not only to ensure the availability of essential medicines when imports become unreliable, but also to improve its bargaining power vis-à-vis foreign suppliers during geopolitical crises that may culminate in export restrictions.
The EU and its member states aim to restore Europe’s defence capabilities by 2030, primarily to deter Russia. Achieving this objective requires a robust European defence industry capable of rapidly closing military capability gaps, ensuring technological superiority and sustaining military support, including during a large-scale war of attrition. After decades of peace dividends and underfunding, Europe’s defence sector was unprepared for the demand shock triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since then, progress has been made, but not at the necessary scale and pace. Reaching defence readiness by 2030 under peace-time conditions remains an enormous challenge, further exacerbated by the change in US policy, geopolitical strains on supply chains and technological developments. To meet these challenges, Europe must reduce its fragmentation and enhance its defence–industrial output. This implies systemic reforms aimed at optimising procurement processes, enhancing cooperation, and investing strategically in critical enablers and research and development. Ultimately, a unified European approach is vital to building a resilient, self-sufficient defence industry capable of supporting a credible deterrence posture.
In March 2025, opening a European Parliament debate on defence, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen cited Alcide De Gasperi, recalling that 70 years earlier he had urged Europeans not merely to keep the peace but to build a common defence. The reference was not simply a rhetorical flourish: the collapse of the European Defence Community in 1954 still shapes Europe’s unfinished security architecture. This article traces the European Defence Community from the Pleven Plan (1950) to the rejection of this proposed treaty by the French National Assembly (1954), and reconstructs De Gasperi’s federalist reading of it, embodied in Article 38, which tied military integration to a democratic political community. The article then weighs that vision against what the EU has since built and what is still missing, concluding with three lessons learned from the analysis: this is Europe’s last call for a common defence, unpopular decisions demand courage, and the future lies not in ceding sovereignty but in maintaining it within an association of sovereign states.
This article provides a comparative analysis of the transnational parties unquestionably located to the right of the European People’s Party in the European Parliament. The article answers three questions. First, how do the stances of the European Conservatives and Reformists, Patriots for Europe and Europe of Sovereign Nations differ on key contemporary issues such as EU integration, the Russia–Ukraine war and the economy? Second, how might Europe’s future be impacted if one or more of these groups were to gain dominance over the others? And third, most crucially, how can—or should—the European People’s Party respond to the rise of these more radical forces? In this context, the first part of the article focuses on the ideological divergences among far-right actors in the European Parliament. The second part sets forth three distinct scenarios pertaining to potential future right-wing alliances at the EU level (including their implications for the Union’s policy trajectory) and explores the European People’s Party’s role in consistently containing far-right influence within the EU framework.
The security of Europe and the security of the Indo-Pacific are inseparable. This conviction is reinforced by the sight of North Korean soldiers fighting on European soil alongside Russia, the aggressor, in its full-scale invasion of its sovereign neighbour, Ukraine. Yet, Pyongyang’s backing of Moscow pales in comparison with Beijing’s. China has become economically indispensable to Russia and has helped undermine Europe’s security. China and Russia are also connected ideologically and have committed to backing each other’s core interests. For China, Taiwan is a core national interest. Whether Russia would also back China to annex Taiwan remains unclear. It is certain, however, that the tensions in the Taiwan Strait have security implications for Europe. Taiwan plays far too critical a role for Europe to neglect it. Europe must therefore work closely and effectively with its partners in the Indo-Pacific, a region technologically and politically crucial for its security and prosperity.
The Eastern Mediterranean has acquired growing strategic importance for the EU. It is not only the Union’s easternmost external border, but also a gateway to the Middle East, the Gulf, the Maghreb, the Balkans and, beyond them, Eastern Europe, the Black Sea and the Caucasus. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the discovery of hydrocarbon resources in the Eastern Mediterranean basin generated expectations that the area would undergo a positive geopolitical transformation. Many analysts assumed that economic incentives and shared energy interests would serve as catalysts for cooperation in a region long marked by instability. Türkiye, however, continues to project itself as a regional hegemon, a view shaped by perceptions of its size, history and imperial legacy. Through assertive diplomacy and military power projection, Ankara is seeking to impose its strategic preferences and signal that regional developments require its consent. This article examines the drivers of Türkiye’s assertive policy in the Eastern Mediterranean and analyses the responses of regional and foreign actors striving to safeguard their strategic interests.
In recent years Europe’s security environment has increasingly been shaped by overlapping crises which academics, experts and policymakers have tried to interpret. While the EU’s post-2022 security agenda has understandably focused on deterrence and the high-intensity conflict in the Eastern and Baltic neighbourhood, this shift has contributed to the marginalisation of the southern flank. This article examines the Western Mediterranean as a shared security space whose relevance has been underestimated despite the growing structural vulnerabilities and the variable threats that traverse it. Drawing on selected case studies from North Africa, it analyses how governance fragility, regional conflict spillovers, and the evolving engagement of regional and global actors are generating cumulative challenges for European security. The article also explores the implications of these dynamics for the EU–NATO relationship, highlighting persistent gaps between converging interests and fragmented policy responses. Taking all of these elements into account, it suggests that the Western Mediterranean remains a strategic priority for Europe and represents a test case for the EU’s ability to move beyond reactive engagement towards a more coherent and forward-looking security approach.
The EU’s influence extends beyond its formal neighbourhood policy through everyday encounters, diaspora networks and procedural experiences. Drawing on 30 interviews conducted in Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia and among North Caucasian diasporas in the EU (2023–4), this article examines how European values travel to Russia’s North Caucasus through non-institutional channels. The research reveals that EU soft power operates most effectively through ‘procedural Europe’: the predictability of bureaucracy, the fairness of legal systems and the transparency of governance experienced through mundane interactions. These findings challenge conventional assessments that measure influence solely through formal programmes. The article argues for recognising procedural coherence as a distinct soft-power asset and supporting informal channels of value transmission. For EU policymakers, this means investing in administrative harmonisation across member states and strategically engaging diaspora networks rather than attempting to establish a direct institutional presence in geopolitically constrained regions.
The Russo-Ukrainian war, the potential expansion of the EU’s border on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, the ongoing pressing need for the diversification of the EU’s energy resources, the strategic interest in gaining access to the vast reserves of critically important minerals in Central Asia and, finally, the recent outbreak of a new violent conflict in Iran, have all turned the Black Sea region into an important strategic hotspot for the EU. As the ‘buffer zone’ between the EU and Russia, which is likely to remain a security challenge for Europe for some time to come, becomes thinner, the EU needs to seriously upgrade its policy on the Black Sea region. This article reviews the EU’s approach. It argues that while the EU’s new strategy for the region offers promise, its implementation will require the EU to live up to its potential as a geopolitical actor in this volatile space.
There is no denying either the importance of the Baltic Sea or the strategic importance of the Kola Peninsula to Russia’s military deterrent. It is in Russia’s interest to secure the use of these areas for all eventualities. The country’s armed forces are expected to increase in size in the coming years, and this will result in both changes to the force structure and the establishment of new forces, especially on the borders of north-west Russia. Alongside this, the inevitable thawing of the Northeast Passage will bring new challenges and actors to the region, impacting the general security situation there. In the current situation, where transatlantic relations are in a state of flux, it is important that the EU and NATO’s European member states also prepare for China to become more aggressive in terms of its military capabilities in the northern regions.
Attention in Europe remains fixed on the war in Ukraine and the transatlantic relationship. This focus, however, risks obscuring mounting challenges in North Africa, particularly Libya. Libya’s political fragmentation and unresolved state-building process have created conditions that Russia and China are exploiting to expand their influence across the Mediterranean, the Sahel and Sub-Saharan Africa. This article examines how Libya has become a strategic hub for Russian military activity and a platform for expanding Chinese economic and political engagement. It argues that these developments expose strategic incoherence and short-termism in EU and NATO policies, especially the emphasis on migration management over long-term stability, reconstruction and reconciliation. By analysing Libya’s internal dynamics and external alignments, the article highlights how continued Western disengagement risks entrenching instability, undermining Mediterranean security and allowing rival powers to reshape the regional balance of power to Europe’s detriment.
The EU’s expansion to include countries in Eastern Europe formerly under Soviet domination brought the geopolitics of dealing with Russian expansionism firmly into EU institutions. Because of its size and geographical location, Poland is crucial to the EU’s self-defence against Russia. Yet, Poland is divided between a government that would strengthen those institutions and a president who would repeat the errors of Poland’s past foreign policy in the 1930s, when it alienated allies. In an echo of the seventeenth century’s debilitating liberum veto , such a policy would also preserve European weakness by insisting on unanimity in European security policy, allowing it to be paralysed by pro-Kremlin veto players such as Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. But if Poland overcomes this historical legacy, it will be in a prime position to lead Europe’s security and defence integration. The upcoming accession process involving Ukraine and Moldova would allow the changes needed to eliminate the Hungaricum veto in the spirit of what Mario Draghi has described as ‘pragmatic federalism’.
This article examines the evolution of centralisation and decentralisation trends in the EU and the US since 2000, exploring which factors explain variation in these trends and whether the two systems are converging towards a similar institutional equilibrium or diverging further. It builds on the hypothesis that both entities, which are both federal political systems, are constantly being shaped by major crises that influence the vertical balance of power within each system. The results reveal two distinct trajectories. The US exhibits an oscillatory federalism, characterised by sharp crisis-driven centralisation followed by decentralising reversals. By contrast, the EU follows a more stable but gradual path towards centralisation, punctuated by key moments such as the creation of NextGenerationEU, which constituted a Hamiltonian moment of supranational fiscal consolidation. While both systems have centralised in response to crises, their trajectories remain parallel rather than convergent, reflecting fundamentally different models of federal governance. Still, the EU may be slowly moving towards the kind of fiscal and political union that it took the US centuries to build.
Returns of people staying illegally in a country and dealing with unauthorised stay more generally constitute a lasting challenge to the EU. Manifested through the widespread tolerance of people overstaying their visas, persistently low numbers of effective returns and the dysfunctions of the Schengen zone, EU policy in this area has not worked well for at least the past two decades. If the EU takes measures to limit the abuse of visa-free regimes, puts sufficient resources in place, and coordinates internally within countries and between its members, it could address some of the problems of illegal stay more effectively. Regularisations constitute an escape route for governments in that they eliminate illegal stay, but mass regularisations are problematic from the viewpoint of a migration policy’s legitimacy. Due the inherent limitations of the EU’s return policy it is necessary to increase the bloc’s efforts to prevent illegal departures towards the EU by sea, land and air.
