Join this webinar on Lebanon’s security assistance and border management, where experts will explore the impact and future of UNSCR 1701.
After months of intense hostilities between the IDF and Hezbollah across the Lebanon-Israel border, calls have grown stronger to re-evaluate, and potentially re-define UNSC Resolution 1701.
UNSCR 1701, aimed at creating lasting stability after the 2006 war, mandated Hezbollah’s withdrawal from south of the Litani River and required Israel to halt incursions beyond the Blue Line. This webinar discusses the role of international security assistance in producing and protecting sovereign borders in Lebanon as authorised and encouraged by UNSCR 1701. While such call has proved effective in purely material terms – since 2006, over $5 billion in security assistance has been delivered – a more critical analysis is needed to understand how, and to what end, these programmes have contributed to the effective security governance of Lebanon.
This webinar presents findings from the XCEPT-funded research project ‘Security Assistance and Border Management in Lebanon’ conducted during the second half of 2023. Drawing on interviews with donor representatives, embassy staff, security agency personnel, and civil society organisations we discuss the evolution of security assistance over the past 18 years. The findings stress that assistance programmes have been primarily driven by donor priorities, prioritised the green border with Syria over the southern borders, and disproportionally benefitted the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) relative to other security agencies. Societal participation in donor-funded security programming is largely absent, as coordination remains an informal, ad-hoc practice carried out bilaterally between donors and security providers.
Creating a relevant foundation for the re-evaluation of effective security assistance and of UNSCR 1701 specifically, this webinar thus highlights challenges and opportunities of security assistance provision in Lebanon and emphasises the need for a more organic and participatory vision of the future Lebanese state.
This project is funded by The Cross-Border Conflict, Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) programme.
Join Věra Stojarová as she explores the influence of Russia in the Western Balkans, examining the role of proxy actors and the narratives shaping the region’s political and social landscape.
Join this webinar to understand the data collection difficulties in researching Montenegro’s politics and society within the Western Balkans.
Recent global developments have highlighted the importance of understanding politics and societies in Europe’s neighbourhood, including the Western Balkans. Even so, scholarship on the region across a number of disciplines remains limited, amongst other things due to difficulties in data collection.
This webinar gathers scholars from different backgrounds, who have researched history, politics and society of Montenegro – the smallest among the post-Yugoslav states. The discussion seeks to unpack challenges for knowledge production and exchange, and raise awareness on the issues faced by local and international scholars studying contested political environments.
This event is organised in the framework of the EUI’s Widening Europe initiative through collaboration with Andrassy University (Budapest) and Graduate Institute (Geneva).
Zoom link will be sent upon registration.
Join Eleanor Knott exploring the evolving nature of citizenship in post-Communist Europe
At this KFAS-EUI roundtable, experts come together to share insights on critical issues and the challenges facing both Korea and Europe’s democratic systems.
The very foundations of liberal democracy and the people’s belief in its values are being challenged across the world. Against this backdrop, KFAS and EUI will create a platform to bring together a diverse group of scholars and experts from various academic backgrounds. This closed roundtable aims to derive shared understanding and solutions to common challenges faced by Korea and Europe in issues such as economic inequality, demographic change, populism and migration.
Sub-topics
- Tackling economic inequality
- Consequences of aging society and its impact on democracy
- Populism: is it necessarily bad for democracy?
- Migration policy, etc.
Join Antoaneta Dimitrova as she discusses the challenges with Western Balkans EU candidacy, and the potential impact of Ukraine’s membership application amidst the war.
The European Union’s enlargement policy has been in deadlock for the last decade. Both aspects of the policy of enlargement, as a process of negotiations towards accession and as a process of reform and preparation of future member states, have been unsuccessful with respect to the long standing candidates in the Western Balkans. The war against Ukraine and Ukraine’s application for membership may represent an opening for fundamental change in the EU’s enlargement policy, a critical juncture. This paper discusses the conditions and mechanisms under which enlargement policy can re-orient towards a new path, utilising the logics of institutionalist theories. Under conditions of unanimity decision making, the deadlock on enlargement may be resolved when preferences of the member states change or when rhetorical action increases the costs of a veto on enlargement.
Examining two years of decision making after the start of the war, the paper argues that the enlargement policy is on a new path, yet existing constraints have not been entirely removed. The prospect of enlargement of the European Union has always opened the debate between widening and deepening, between adding new members and reform of existing institutions and policies. This is especially the case when prospective new members have the potential to affect and unbalance the policies and distributive bargains inside the EU. With respect to the CAP and the budget, the costs of future reform of the EU continue to be high for member states and therefore, next to war, instability and credibility of reforms in candidate states, the key issue regarding accession may be whether debates on reform can find low-cost solutions.
This workshop explores the politics of nuclear sharing in Europe, examining the pressures from public opinion, political parties and civil society, and the role of NATO allies in the context of European security.
Nuclear weapons are a crucial element of European security. For most European countries, nuclear deterrence is provided by the NATO nuclear umbrella, which is intended to protect European countries against external adversaries. As part of this umbrella, the United States stations nuclear weapons in five European countries as a part of the so-called ‘nuclear sharing’.
However, in recent years, nuclear sharing has been heavily contested in four of the countries where these weapons are believed to be stationed today. Whether in the public opinion or parliamentary debates, pro-disarmament voices have been very vocal creating significant pressure on governments, and indirectly on the alliance. For instance, ahead of the German elections in 2021, renewing infrastructure for supporting nuclear sharing was a major point of contention.
At the same time, NATO allies support nuclear sharing. The 2020 NATO Reflection Group recalled that “nuclear sharing arrangements play a vital role in the interconnection of the Alliance and should remain one of the main components of security guarantees and the indivisibility of security of the whole Euro-Atlantic area . The 2022 NATO Strategic Concept officially underlines the importance of this arrangement.
This workshop will study the politics surrounding debates on nuclear sharing in Europe, focusing on the role of public opinion, parties and civil society, and looking at the patterns of contestation in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey.
The workshop is by invitation only.