The New EU Foreign Policy Architecture: Reviewing the first two years of the EEAS. CEPS Paperbacks. February 2013

This CEPS book examines two interrelated questions: 1) How has the European External Action Service (EEAS) functioned in the EU institutional architecture in the first two years of its existence? 2) What improvements can be made through the 2013 review and the 2014 revision of the EEAS’ mandate? The study contributes to the current debate through an in-depth examination of the EEAS’ relations with the EU member states, the European Commission, the European Parliament and its Delegations. The analysis is complemented by in-depth interviews conducted with senior officials from the relevant institutions. The authors put forward specific recommendations, organised around three basic roles that the EEAS plays in the EU’s external relations: a) leader, b) coordinator and c) information hub.

Hostages to Moscow, clients of Beijing. Security in Central Asia as the role of the West diminishes. OSW Study 10/2014

The goal of this publication is to attempt to assess the thirteen years (2001- -2014) of the West’s military presence in the countries of post-Soviet Central Asia, closely associated with the ISAF and OEF-A (Operation Enduring Freedom – Afghanistan) missions in Afghanistan. There will also be an analysis of the actual challenges for the region’s stability after 2014. The current and future security architecture in Central Asia will also be looked at closely, as will the actual capabilities to counteract the most serious threats within its framework. The need to separately handle the security system in Central Asia and security as such is dictated by the particularities of political situation in the region, the key mechanism of which is geopolitics understood as global superpower rivalry for influence with a secondary or even instrumental role of the five regional states, while ignoring their internal problems. Such an approach is especially present in Russia’s perception of Central Asia, as it views security issues in geopolitical categories. Because of this, security analysis in the Central Asian region requires a broader geopolitical context, which was taken into account in this publication. The first part investigates the impact of the Western (primarily US) military and political presence on the region’s geopolitical architecture between 2001 and 2014. The second chapter is an attempt to take an objective look at the real challenges to regional security after the withdrawal of the coalition forces from Afghanistan, while the third chapter is dedicated to analysing the probable course of events in the security dimension following 2014. The accuracy of predictions time-wise included in the below publication does not exceed three to five years due to the dynamic developments in Central Asia and its immediate vicinity (the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran), and because of the large degree of unpredictability of policies of one of the key regional actors – Russia (both in the terms of its activity on the international arena, and its internal developments).

Reviewing Member States’ Commitment to the European External Action Service. EPIN Working Paper No. 34, 20 November 2012

Based on interviews with diplomats from a representative cross-section of nine member states and members of the EEAS itself, the research findings of this EPIN Working Paper confirm long-standing traditions and member state perceptions of cooperation with European institutions. The paper also reveals new aspects of the intergovernmental method of foreign policy shaping and making in the European Union; in particular how different national positions can positively or negatively affect the consolidation of the EEAS and the role of the EU as an international actor. As such, the Working Paper makes an original contribution to the existing literature on one of most discussed actors in the European Union’s post-Lisbon architecture in the domain of EU external action.