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The European Union (EU) integration project is under attack from a reassertion of national sovereignty following Brexit and the Covid-19 crisis. Our analysis examines the impact that traditional forms of sovereignty and national interests will have on the conduct of EU foreign and security policy post-Brexit. We focus on the Brexit challenge to the EU mode of regulation and diplomacy in internal/external policies in Common Foreign and Security Policy, Common Security and Defence Policy, and Justice and Home Affairs. The article also considers key scenarios for future UK-EU security cooperation to inform analysis of likely policy outcomes for the UK and the EU. The article concludes that the EU will have a greater impact through its laws and regulations on the post-Brexit UK than vice versa and that Brexit is not an immediate threat to the EU's regulatory mode of security governance. The new realities of internal/external security governance in Europe post-Brexit will mean weakened EU–UK security arrangements, which will impact the scope and quality of European security cooperation beyond traditional defence. This is both undesirable and potentially dangerous for European security cooperation and for Europe's position in the wider world.

The quest for substance, capability, and strategic autonomy goes on – or does it? Is the objective of CSDP territorial defence and strategic autonomy, or crisis management and softer security concerns like peacekeeping, border management, protection of shipping lanes, and/or cyber security? The Union needs to move beyond familiar complaints about the lack of common strategic culture and EU intrusion into NATO responsibilities. Geostrategic and economic imperatives dictate that the EU should progress CSDP beyond civilian crisis management in the EU Neighbourhood, and military training and security sector reform (SSR). The Strategic Compass must signal CSDP clarity of objectives, coherence, enhanced capability, and appropriate burden sharing with NATO. The response to the Strategic Compass must build European strategic autonomy in ways that strengthen NATO. For military strategic and economic reasons, both the EU and the post-Brexit UK need intensive cooperation to maintain their geostrategic relevance and strengthen the NATO alliance. This paper reflects on prospects for the EU Strategic Compass and offers timely analysis of recent trends in EU foreign and security policy and expresses cautious optimism regarding the enhanced European strategic autonomy/actorness.

Has the United Kingdom(UK) Brexit referendum been a catalyst for more European Union security cooperation? How significant are post-referendum initiatives in security and defence? What are the implications of Brexit for European Union (EU) and UK security and defence? This article analyses EU post-Brexit strategic choices following the launch of the EU Global Strategy (2016). EU autonomy in security and defence requires close cooperation with third countries, including Norway and post-Brexit UK. It remains to be seen whether the EU and the UK can forge a new bespoke security and defence relationship that delivers mutual benefits through shared strategic ambitions, while also protecting their various interests. We suggest there will be serious collateral damage to UK-EU security and defence cooperation if post-Brexit trade negotiations descend into acrimony and mistrust, especially in the event of “no-deal” once the “transition period” ends. This would undermine European security and the EU’s quest for strategic autonomy in world affairs and have serious implications for both UK and EU security. We conclude that the EU needs to work with the UK on a plan to achieve global strategic autonomy, or both risk reduced influence in the wider world in the years ahead.

This article assesses the EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) in the Western Balkans, with a focus on EUFOR Althea in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Althea is a military operation that conducts mainly civilian functions as well as the training of the Bah Armed Forces; its 'civilianisation' is symptomatic of CSDP's orientation as a mainly civilian crisis management instrument. Althea works within the framework of the Union's 'comprehensive approach' to regional development and the accession process of the Western Balkans to the EU. I argue that the mission displays the bureaucratic modus operandi of CSDP and not a Grand Strategy approach. Nevertheless, CSDP's incremental, lowest-common-denominator, low cost, low risk bureaucratic politics have enabled a form of emergent strategy that complements the Union's multi-instrument and comprehensive approach to development throughout the Western Balkans. I further suggest that the EU Global Strategy (EUGS) and the newly activated Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) provides opportunities for EU member states to build on low key emergent strategy to ensure that CSDP develops the substance and actor ness needed to address current threats.

The question running through Petros Violakis’s account is not a new one in EU studies. How in an intergovernmental field can the European Union overcome the state-rooted barriers both psychological...

How can we best describe the operation of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), and how can we improve policy-making in CSDP? The Open Method of Coordination (OMC) is predicated on the conviction that there are clear limits to the extent that European Union (EU) foreign and security policy can be strengthened through the restricting tendencies of intergovernmental cooperation between EU member states. Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) - agreed by the European Council and 25 EU member states in 2017 - offers practical instruments towards delivering value-added capacity to the process of crisis management beyond intergovernmentalism. As a process, PESCO is analogous to the logic of OMC, including more appropriate levels of coordination at the national organisational level in order to effectively facilitate the EU's comprehensive approach to conflict prevention and crisis management. The requirement for new and 'open' types of EU foreign and security policy coordination is underlined by the immense differences between EU member states in external policy, both concerning national crisis management structures and the resulting inefficient segmentation of policy at the EU level. .

Teaching a popular postgraduate political economy module to around 50 international business and environment students (mainly Chinese) had always gone well. Delivery consisted of lectures and seminars with assessment via a 3,000-word essay. But with a three times larger cohort in 2017 things went wrong. The response from the teaching team was twofold. First to replace seminars with team-taught 2-hour workshops, to provide fewer targeted readings accompanied by specific questions for groups to answer, plus a redesign of the assessment, introducing a shorter more issue-specific approach based on short (500-word) answers to five questions chosen from ten, all tied to module learning outcomes and content. How did all this go? The paper highlights problems with the traditional approach and offers an initial evaluation of the changes introduced in 2018. Ultimately the paper addresses the strengths and weaknesses of the before and after and relates this to the changing demands placed on tutors charged with teaching large cohorts in a department going through rapid expansion. The case highlights the critical balance between volume and quality and asks difficult questions about the student experience and how universities respond to an increasingly marketized higher education sector.

The ITER Tokamak complex consists of Tokamak, diagnostic and tritium buildings. The Tokamak machine is located in the bioshield pit of the Tokamak building. Plant systems are implemented in the three buildings and are strongly interfacing with the Tokamak. The reference baseline (3D) configuration is a set of over 1000 models that today defines in an exhaustive way the overall layout of Tokamak and plant systems, needed for fixing the interfaces and to complete the construction design of the buildings. During the last two years, one of the main ITER challenges was to improve the maturity of the plant systems layout in order to confirm their integration in the building final design and freeze the interface definitions in-between the systems and to the buildings. The propagation of safety requirements in the design of the nuclear building like confinement, fire zoning and radiation shielding is of first priority. A major effort was placed by ITER Organization together with the European Domestic Agency (F4E) and the Architect Engineer as a joint team to fix the interfaces and the loading conditions to buildings. The most demanding systems in terms of interface definition are water cooling, cryogenic, detritiation, vacuum, cable trays and building services. All penetrations through the walls for piping, cables and other equipment have been defined, as well as all temporary openings needed for the installation phase. Project change requests (PCR) impacting the Tokamak complex buildings have been implemented in a tight allocated time schedule. The most demanding change was to implement a new design of the Tokamak basic machine supporting system. The 18 supporting columns of the cryostat (2001 baseline) were replaced at the end of 2012 by a concrete crown and radial concrete ribs linked to the basemat and to the bioshield surrounding the Tokamak. The change was implemented successfully in the building construction design to allow basemat construction phase being performed at mid-2014. The paper gives an overview of the final configuration of the ITER nuclear buildings and highlights the large progress made on the final integration of the plant systems in the Tokamak complex. The revised design of the Tokamak machine supporting system is also described.