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From the Eurocrisis to the migration crisis, and from Brexit to a strengthening far right, the European Union (EU) faces multiple stressors. But while crises unleash anxiety, they do not necessarily portend the worst: because they disrupt old routines, crises can open space for new political possibilities. As a self-consciously hybrid, ‘post-national’ political form, the EU would seem poised to take advantage. Instead it is stuck. In this paper, taking an ontological security approach and focusing on EU migration governance, I propose that one cause of paralysis could lie - ironically - in an aspect of the EU that is crucial to its normative power: Europe’s long peace. An ontological security perspective highlights the management of existential anxiety as crucial to identity, suggesting how different modes of anxiety management have different political effects. Applied here, EU narratives and routines preserving ‘no war’ might suppress relations of structural power; they might mimic primitive defense mechanisms; or they might be symptoms pointing to unconscious processes keeping difficult knowledge - including colonial pasts - undealt with. I suggest how migration governance might manifest these mechanisms, contributing to the difficulties of desecuritising migration and linking its governance to EU values and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implementation has often been described as a key weakness affecting European Union (EU) counter-terrorism. However, this view is often adopted as a given and there has not been so far a systematic examination of the degree to which this represents an obstacle to the effectiveness of the EU response. This paper aims to contribute towards this goal through the use of primary sources in the study of the legal transposition of counter-terror instruments into national law, a key stage in the implementation process. It shows the presence of major implementation delays in this policy sector but, importantly, also significant cross-national variation with regards transposition failure associated with the administrative endowment of the individual member states. Furthermore, the mechanisms deployed by the Union to encourage a fluid implementation of European measures are critically evaluated and the potential impact in the process of the institutional transformations brought about by Lisbon is also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refugee protection efforts have been shown to suffer from substantial collective action problems due to the capacity of restrictive policy measures adopted by one region as a means of shifting refugee responsibilities to other regions. Such responsibility-shifting dynamics have been identified between north and south as well as within these regions. European Union (EU) cooperation on asylum and refugee policies has been criticised for facilitating the adoption of restrictive policy measures and the creation of a 'Fortress Europe'. Fears about the hollowing out of refugee standards have been coupled with concerns about the EU's free-riding on the refugee protection efforts of countries outside the EU. This paper shows that overcoming collective action problems between the Member States has indeed been a key motivation for EU cooperation in this area. However, a comparative analysis of EU asylum laws and refugee protection efforts with those of similar developed countries outside the EU leads to the rejection of some of the assumptions and implications of the 'Fortress Europe' thesis. While there is evidence of north/south burden-shirking and substantial room for improvement in the EU's asylum and refugee regimes, comparative legal research and the analysis of available UNHCR data on other OECD countries suggests that there is no evidence to support the claim that European cooperation has led to uniquely restrictive refugee policies and protection outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-communist states today are dealing with conflicting sources of ontological insecurity. They are anxious to be perceived as fully European by “core” European states, a status that remains fleeting. Being fully European, however, means sharing in the cosmopolitan European narratives of the twentieth century, perhaps the strongest being the narrative of the Holocaust. Influencing the European Union’s own memory politics and legislation in the process, post-communist states have attempted to resolve these insecurities by undergoing a radical revision of their respective Holocaust remembrance where the memory, symbols, and imagery of the Holocaust become appropriated to represent crimes of communism. By rejecting the cosmopolitan European narrative of the Holocaust, post-communist states have also removed anti-fascist resistance from the core memory of the Holocaust, allowing for a revival and ideological normalisation of contemporary fascist ideological movements. I illustrate the argument with an overview of contemporary Holocaust remembrance practices in the EU’s youngest member, Croatia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent developments in European security have shown the growing need for a better understanding of the security dynamics on the European continent. This article presents an analysis of differing Russian and European perceptions of European security in general, and concerning the crisis in Ukraine in particular. As much of the literature on these issues has been normatively driven, we aim to provide an impartial presentation and analysis of the dominant Russian and EU discourses. This we see as essential for investigating the potential for constructive dialogue between Russia and the EU. If simplistic assumptions about the motivations and intentions of other actors take hold in the public debate and policy analyses, the main actors may be drawn into a logic that is ultimately dangerous or counterproductive. With this article we offer a modest contribution towards discouraging such a development in Russia–EU relations. After presenting an analysis of the differing EU and Russian perceptions, we discuss the potential for dialogue between such different worldviews, and reflect on potential implications for European security. As the article shows, there are tendencies of a certain adjustment in the Union’s approach that may make a partial rapprochement between the two sides more likely. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article dicusses the conditions, obstacles and prospects for a modernisation partnership with Russia as a way to improve European security and relations between Russia and the West in general, including Russia's NATO membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon has raised new expectations in the area of freedom, security and justice (AFSJ). The extension of co-decision increases the capacity of the European Parliament (EP) to have an influence on decision-making. This article engages with securitisation theories in order to analyse the evolution of the AFSJ as well as the role of its main actors in the securitisation process. It evaluates the past role of the EP as well as the recent changes introduced by the extension of co-decision in order to establish whether it will become a new securitising actor or will have the potential for de-securitisation of the agenda. The macro-institutional changes in the Treaty of Lisbon indicate that the EP will have opportunities to de-securitise, although the emphasis on EU citizens' rights introduced in the Stockholm programme offers it a chance to appeal to domestic audiences at the expense of more diffuse issues such as immigration and asylum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internal abolition of borders in the European Union (EU) has created a security deficit that is supposed to be compensated by inventing a new border - the 'external frontier' - which is to protect the combined territory of the Member States. This article argues that the security deficit has not been fully compensated for due to uneven policy implementation. The overview of impending threats to the EU border security system stemming from climate change impacts and demographic pressures shows that the future holds even greater challenges to the implementation of the Schengen acquis. A new approach to border security is urgently needed. The introduction of a common European border security policy can become an adequate response to many of the otherwise imminent threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]