There is an on-going scholarly debate on European (dis)integration. Research (Cross, 2017; Jones et al., 2021; Vollard, 2018; Webber, 2018) has addressed how historical European crises often led to deepened European collaboration (Cross, 2017). The scholarly work has mentioned how severe crises in EU member states’ reluctance to stay as member-state or include new member-states, obstruction to integration in certain policy areas (the Euro, CFSP, SEM and Schengen), right-winged populism and anti-EU rhetoric in most cases not resulted in expected disintegration, but rather in new negotiations and policy-making. In such context, the European Commission plays an important role to promote European interest beyond individual member-states’ national interests. The climate change challenge provides one of the most contemporary global crisis. The Agenda 2050 on sustainable development is a bold and ambitious vision by the European Commission for a climate neutral Europe and may serve as a normative model globally. This study explores the recent role of the European Commission to promote sustainable development. It is argued that in times of serious European crises, the European Commission has acted as a normative power and transformed crises into a window of opportunity.

This study deals with the European Commission Communication Europe 2020, which was a direct result of the global economic crisis that began in 2007-2008. The focus is to explore how the Commission gained an extended role as political entrepreneur by launching the Europe 2020 Strategy and turning crisis into a window of opportunity. Europe 2020 was a Commission initiative to deal with the crisis by promoting smart, sustainable and socially inclusive development beyond the narrow scope of economic growth. The Commission addressed the economic crisis as an existential threat to European economy, but also to wealth, health integration and stability. It is argued that the crisis management of the Commission, was, in times of weakened member-state capacities, a result of political entrepreneurship.

This study deals with the European Commission and Communication Europe 2020, which was a result of the global economic crisis of 2007–2008 and forward. Europe 2020 was an initiative to deal with the crisis by promoting smart, sustainable, and inclusive growth. The Commission addressed the crisis as an existential threat to Europe, but also as a window of opportunity to build a new prosperous region. This study explores the political entrepreneurial efforts taken by the Commission as well as assesses the outcome of reforms implemented. The Commission has achieved many targets, although some challenges remain unsolved.

There is a growing bulk of studies on global climate changes and conflicts. It has been argued that climate change may be a triggering factor to conflicts and wars, especially in societies with poor governance. This study explores the climate-security nexus in Africa. It is argued that the global climate change provides profound state and human security challenges to African governments and people. Scarcity of vital resources in food, water, sanitation and health has challenged political and economic structures, infrastructure and integration. This has also been due to poorly governed states with authoritarianism, corruption, ethnic divisions and fragile, dysfunctional institutions. The war in Darfur is a tragic, but illustrative example of the climate change-security nexus of our time.

Aid policy and development cooperation : Europeanisation, norms, structures and instruments

This book on European Union (EU) governance and political entrepreneurship in Agenda 2030 explores the role of EU actors in debating, shaping and implementing Agenda 2030 in Europe. It explores several EU actors in the context of numerous development goals to see how the EU overall has downloaded the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals in a European context. This chapter has asserted that the EU constitutes a system of governance, and that the European Commission has a prior record of accomplishment as an engine driving the promotion of sustainable development in Europe. The initiation of Agenda 2020 for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth was a major reform within Europe between 2010 and 2020 and yielded great results within most EU member states. Such efforts within Europe have influenced the debate and decisions leading up to the UN Agenda 2030. The UN Agenda represents a complex set of goals that includes most areas of society: social, economic, environmental, cultural and political. The development goals are devised to protect and promote the people, planet, prosperity and peace through a global partnership. This book explores the content of Agenda 2030, the many actors involved in European governance to promote such goals and the ways that these UN goals are embedded in a European context through European political entrepreneurship.

On 12 September 2018, Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, presented the State of the Union 2018 to the European Parliament. He stressed his enthusiasm for economic progress in the EU within the context of the preceding global and European crisis. He also re-emphasized the importance of a unified Europe, both in dealing with internal growth and promoting social cohesion within the Single European Market (SEM), as well as in relation to growing global competition. Over the decades, shared European challenges and crises have resulted in common debates, negotiations, policies and laws providing for European integration. These challenges and crises have not always been easy to address, but the contemporary EU is a major symbol of European unity amidst diversity. This is not to say that a European crisis cannot result in distrust, disengagement and finally disintegration. There have been and will be serious structural and systematic hindrances in politics and economics, but European integration suggests that Europe’s development has embedded political entrepreneurship by treating crises as opportunities.

This study focuses on European political entrepreneurship in the Europe 2020 strategy. The aim of the study is to analyse the Europe 2020 strategy and the role of European political entrepreneurship in debating, shaping and implementing the strategy within the EU's political levels of governance. In 2010, the European Commission released an official communication titled 'Europe 2020: A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth'. It succeeded the European Single Market programme (1986–92) and the Lisbon Strategy (2000–10). In the new Europe 2020 Strategy, the Commission called upon EU institutions, member states, regional and local authorities and the private sector to address the economic crisis by promoting smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. It referred to smart growth as promoting an economy based on knowledge and innovation, sustainable growth as economic growth based on resource efficiency and a greener economy and inclusive growth as growth that provides for social integration. The Commission further argued that fundamental measures, beyond day-to-day and regular political and economic activities, had to be implemented by engaged European actors seeking new economic and social models and presenting the state of the world, on all political levels of European governance.

The Europe 2020 Strategy was a communication from the Commission pointing out the grave danger of an economic recession in Europe. It also served as a roadmap for a prosperous Europe in the future based on smart, sustainable and socially inclusive growth. The economic recession had challenged years of economic and social developments, and Europe 2020 addressed how it was time for European actors to set out countermeasures as one coherent European Union (EU). This chapter discusses the Europe 2020 Strategy implications of building a European social market economic model for the 21st century. The overall question is the following: What does a European social market economy model mean and what are the historical, political entrepreneurial visions behind such a model? It is argued that the European project has embedded an international, unique kind of European political entrepreneurship in which Europe has been founded on norms and values providing for a European liberal order of international collaboration, common institutions, democratic governance and a social market economy.