The 2019 UK General Election: towards a Brexit catharsis?
On 12 December 2019, UK voters confront another choice whether to advance Brexit or not. More than three years after the referendum, all issues have been scrutinized and the collective […]
Europe in the World
In a world that is largely driven by competition and rivalry (and partnership, yet) between great powers, understanding the Grand Strategy of each of these powers is crucial. So is developing a Grand Strategy for the EU itself. An EU that acts as one, as one pole of the multipolar world on a par with the other powers, is the only way to safeguard the way of life that the Member States of the EU have chosen, based on democracy, the free market, and equality.
Power cannot be divided: a global player must have political, economic, as well as military power. To that end, the Europe in the World Programme analyses the diplomacy and defence of the US, China, and Russia, and of the EU, NATO, and their members. We also focus on geoeconomics, researching Open Strategic Autonomy and the Global Gateway as key EU instruments, as well as the geoeconomic approaches of the other powers.
Defence policy is our third main axis of research, with a particular focus on European defence and its interaction with NATO, but also on nuclear deterrence and the deterrence of hybrid threats. Throughout all three research axis, we devote special attention to the role of Belgium, including notably the development of its own National Security Strategy and diplomatic and military capabilities.
Publications
Putting the Core at the Centre. The Crisis Response Operation Core (CROC) and the Future of PESCO
The reader who cannot readily identify the meaning of CROC (Croque Monsieur? Croque Madame?) in the context of European defence can be forgiven. The flurry of activity in the EU’s […]
External publications
EU-U.S. Consensus and NATO-EU Cooperation
Whether or not NATO will continue to exist into the next decades depends on whether the United States and the EU continue to share a broad outlook on the world. […]
Europe and China’s Belt and Road Initiative: growing concerns, more strategy
Geopolitical shifts are engendering a transformation of the globalized economic order that has flourished in the post-Cold War period. This trend runs deep and raises structural challenges, – such as […]
The EU-Mercosur agreement: towards integrated climate policy?
The recently signed EU-Mercosur agreement has met with criticism from civil society, farmers and politicians around the EU. These criticisms have been amplified by recent forest fires in the Amazon. […]
Challenges of radicalisation in prison
On 12 November, the UN Security Council organised an Arria meeting on the challenges of radicalisation in prison. Our Senior Fellow Thomas Renard was invited to share his academic expertise […]