Kosowo - przed ostatecznym rozwiazaniem. Proces uregulowania statusu miedzynarodowego = uwarunkowania polityczne i historyczne perspektywy rozwoju sytuacji. Prace OSW 2008. Kosovo before the final decision. Regulation Kosovo's international status - historical and political conditions and prospects for future developments. OSW Study 27/2008

The question of Kosovo's status is currently one of the most important issues in international politics. Since 1999, Kosovo has been an international protectorate which was created in the aftermath of the NATO intervention to stop the brutal pacification of the Albanian insurgency by Serb forces. The province has since de facto become independent of Serbia. Resolution 1244 of the UN Security Council, which established the protectorate, does not preclude any possible outcome as regards its status. Aware that after the crimes of 1999, any attempt to re-integrate Kosovo into Serbia would lead to a massive Albanian uprising, the West has decided that the best solution would be to award Kosovo internationally supervised independence, while at the same time granting very wide autonomy to the Kosovo Serbs. Serbia and Russia rejected the solution proposed by the West, and so Kosovo became an arena of international rivalry for influence in the Western Balkans as well as another element of rivalry, transcending the regional dimension, between Russia and the West. Russia has been using the Kosovo case to build a new model of its relations with the United States and the EU. Since there is a group of countries sceptical about, or even opposed to, Kosovo's independence within the EU, the Kosovo settlement will be a test of the EU's ability to speak with one voice with regard to its external policy.

On Political Union in Europe: The changing landscape of decisionmaking and political accountability. CEPS Essay No. 4, 21 February 2013

This essay discusses how recent developments have modified the existing allocation of tasks between the EU and national levels and the legitimising mechanisms in decision-making by the EU institutions. It examines in turn the increasing differentiation emerging in member states’ participation in EU policies and institutions, the changing configuration of executive powers and its relationship to the community method, the criteria governing the transfer of economic powers from the member states to the Union and the emerging democratic accountability and legitimising mechanisms before both the European and the national parliaments. Some main implications for the future of European institutions are summarised in the conclusions.

Hegemony Without Stability: The fiscal and political vulnerabilities of monetary union. ACES Cases No. 2011.2

The crisis has forced the Euro area to establish an emergency fund that supports member states experiencing a sovereign debt crisis. The difficulties of coming up with such a fund for Greece and other Euro area members stands in marked contrast to the balance of payments support that non-Euro members like Hungary received, swiftly and quietly. In order to solve this puzzle, we first establish the difference between EU interventions and IMF programs and, second, trace the evolution of crisis management with France and Germany in the lead. The lens of hegemonic stability theory suggests that the Franco-German leadership is too weak to provide stability and the extensive use of conditionality is one symptom of this weakness. Providing incentives for cooperation "after hegemony" (Keohane) is the unresolved issues troubling the monetary union. Its dominant powers must acknowledge that markets perceive monetary union to be already politically more integrated than its lack of fiscal integration suggests.

Repurposing Globalization: Discourse and Political Strategy in New Labour Britain. ACES Working Papers, 2012

As elsewhere in Europe and around the world, the discourse of globalization in the United Kingdom—the particular representation of the world as undergoing an epochal shift away from the traditional autonomy of the nation-state—has powerfully reshaped political debate. And this has had important distributional effects on the balance of power in the political party system, most notably in the return to power of the Labour Party as “New Labour” under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. But while it is known that articulations of globalization are embedded in the political system, a systematic analysis linking such discourse with party competition is lacking. In this paper, I propose that many features of the globalist language invoked by New Labour can be explained in terms of concrete strategic aims. Working with concepts of “heresthetics” and “bricolage” drawn from a synthesis of literatures, I illustrate this approach through several representative texts. These findings are then used to make predictions about the kind of globalization discourse to expect in the communications of two nationalist parties in the UK—“least likely” cases for globalism—which can be explored further as part of a larger research program.

Eurodéputé: «Seconde chance» ou «Tremplin» – Comparaisons des trajectoires politiques de candidats PSE et PPE aux élections européennes de 2014 en France et en Suède. = MEP: "Second Chance" or "Jump" - comparisons of PSE candidates and political trajectories EPP in European elections 2014 in France and Sweden. Bruges Political Research Paper No. 40, February 2015

Le mandat d’eurodéputé est conçu différemment dans chaque état membre. Cet article teste la validité des cultures politiques inclusive et exclusive, créées pour l’analyse des sélections des candidats français et suédois et leur conception du mandat européen. Leur sélection demeure un monopole partisan national où l’adhésion à un parti et la professionnalisation politique priment. La distinction apparait dans le degré d’ouverture de la sélection et la conception de la fonction d’eurodéputé et du Parlement européen. Les conclusions valident l’approche créée, montrant un déplacement du curseur le long des continuums formés par les cultures inclusive et exclusive. La France, «exclusive», reste centrée sur Paris et des élections ayant des conséquences sur le pouvoir exécutif. La Suède est plus inclusive tant dans les profils des candidats que dans les processus qui les intègrent aux listes et dans la façon de concevoir le rôle des MEP et du Parlement européen. Cet article se fonde sur un mémoire de Master: E. Cazenave, Eurodéputé: «Seconde chance» ou «Tremplin»? Comparaison des trajectoires politiques de candidats PPE et PSE aux élections européennes de 2014 en France et en Suède, Bruges, Collège d’Europe, 2014

Gazprom’s evolving strategy in a new commercial and political context: how should the EU react? EPC Policy Brief, 27 April 2015

After years of unchallenged commercial domination of a sizeable portion of the EU's gas market, Gazprom is confronted with a statement of objections issued on 22 April by the EU Commission for abusing its dominant market position. The company was already prevented from going ahead with its South Stream project aimed at consolidating Gazprom's grip on Southeast Europe's markets by bypassing Ukraine – due to alleged non-compliance of intergovernmental agreements with the EU regulatory framework. Furthermore, it walked away from negotiations that could have allowed it to access more than 50% of the OPAL pipeline – an onshore branch of the offshore Russian German Nord Stream pipeline –, whilst its attempts to go downstream through the acquisition of European distribution and transmission operators, such as Wingas and DESFA, failed due to current political tensions and the risk of a negative Commission ruling on the operation. Does this mean that the Russian gas behemoth – so often portrayed as the energy arm of the Kremlin – is not so powerful after all? This Policy Brief aims to frame the erosion of Gazprom's power in a wider perspective, analysing its peculiar position at a time of transition, with the global gas business going from a sellers' to a buyers' market, and providing recommendations on how Europe should deal with it. It will be argued that Gazprom – despite still being affected by the Kremlin's political priorities – is moving towards more commercially sound behavior. The EU should profit from this evolution without being tempted by mercantilist options, and rather use the political momentum provided by the energy union to remove barriers to solidarity and to increase competition on the trading platforms.

Access to Electronic Data by Third-Country Law Enforcement Authorities, Challenges to EU Rule of Law and Fundamental Rights. Center for European Policy Studies, 2015

This study examines the challenges posed to European law by third country access to data held by private companies for the purposes of law enforcement. It pays particular attention to the implications for rule of law and fundamental rights of foreign authorities’ direct access to electronic information falling outside pre-established channels of supranational cooperation. A special focus is given to EU-US relations and the practical issues emerging in transatlantic relations covering mutual legal assistance and evidence gathering for law enforcement purposes in criminal proceedings.

The Fundamental Rights Agency and Civil Society: Reminding the Gardeners of their Plants' Roots. EDAP 02/2012, 2012

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), the EU body responsible for advising EU institutions on fundamental rights, is equipped with a Fundamental Rights Platform (FRP) to ensure an on-going and structured exchange of information and feedback between the FRA and Civil Society. When the FRA was founded in 2007, there was little pre-existing knowledge on how to design such a Platform; hence, the development of the relationship between the FRA and Civil Society over the first five years proved an interesting experiment. Although the Platform was never intended as a mechanism of democratic co-decision making, it is far more than a loose marketplace where Civil Society actors across the spectrum of fundamental rights themes gather. The Platform offers channels of consultation and exchange not only among the participants but also with the FRA. It allows for cross-pollination, ensuring informed grassroots input into FRA work and FRA expertise flow to Civil Society actors. This synergetic relationship builds upon both the self-organising forces of Civil Society and the terms of references of the FRP as defined by the FRA. The Platform allows to find a certain unity in the remarkable diversity of fundamental rights voices. To what degree, however, the Platform’s dynamics allow the transformation of sometimes ‘compartmentalised’ single human rights discussions into wider trans-sectoral and transnational debates within the Human Rights Community depends on the motivation and the interest(s) of the different Civil Society players.

The Theory of Interhybridity: Socio-political Dimensions and Migration Experiences of Post-communist Western Balkan States

The Western Balkans integration within the EU has started a legal process which is the rejection of former communist legal/political approaches and the transformation of former communist institutions. Indeed, the EU agenda has brought vertical/horizontal integration and Europeanization of national institutions (i.e. shifting power to the EU institutions and international authorities). At this point, it is very crucial to emphasize the fact that the Western Balkans as a whole region has currently an image that includes characteristics of both the Soviet socialism and the European democracy. The EU foreign policies and enlargement strategy for Western Balkans have significant effects on four core factors (i.e. Schengen visa regulations, remittances, asylum and migration as an aggregate process). The convergence/divergence of EU member states’ priorities for migration policies regulate and even shape directly the migration dynamics in migrant sender countries. From this standpoint, the research explores how main migration factors are influenced by political and judicial factors such as; rule of law and democracy score, the economic liberation score, political and human rights, civil society score and citizenship rights in Western Balkan countries. The proposal of interhybridity explores how the hybridization of state and non-state actors within home and host countries can solve labor migration-related problems. The economical and sociopolitical labor-migration model of Basu (2009) is overlapping with the multidimensional empirical framework of interhybridity. Indisputably, hybrid model (i.e. collaboration state and non-state actors) has a catalyst role in terms of balancing social problems and civil society needs. Paradigmatically, it is better to perceive the hybrid model as a combination of communicative and strategic action that means the reciprocal recognition within the model is precondition for significant functionality. This will shape social and industrial relations with moral meanings of communication.

Morocco’s illiberal regime and fragmented political society. Arab Citizenship Review No. 10, October 2015

The post-Arab Spring period in Morocco has undergone different stages of changing state-society relations with regard to democracy, citizenship and human rights. The first stage, between February 2011 and the summer of 2013, was characterised by popular protests demanding democracy and freedom. People criticised public policies related to civil, political and social rights (employment, health, education, the status of women, and the issue of Amazigh). This outburst put the state in an awkward, defensive position. If we compare Morocco with the other Arab Spring countries, the Moroccan state’s reaction was moderate in its use of violence and repression, and it was positive, in that it resulted in the implicit, yet official acceptance of the demands for democracy, citizenship and battling corruption. In his speech on 9 March 2011, the king pledged to modify the Constitution and democratise the institutions.