Latest posts
Is this the beginning of Putin’s end?
OpenDemocracy.net: The preliminary results from Russia’s parliamentary elections are bad news for the Kremlin. Putin’s pet party, United Russia, got slightly less than 50% and it lost its constitutional majority in the Duma. That translat...
Dealing with a post-BRIC Russia
I just co-authored a new ECFR report on Dealing with a post-BRIC Russia, some kind of a follow-up to the 2007 Power Audit of EU-Russia Relations. This new report deals with the impact of the economic crisis on Russian foreign policy and Moscow’...
How the eurozone crisis undermines EU power
It is clear that the Euro-crisis has and will have huge implications for EU foreign policy. A lot depends on what happens in the next months – the solution to the Greek or Italian problems, the contours of a multi-speed Europe and how messy a solut...
Ukraine-Moldova race to EU visa-free regime
This will probably make boring reading, but for those with some stamina to go through typically unreadable, but important, EU-speak here is a comparison of how Ukraine and Moldova perform on their way towards a visa-free regime with the EU. The asses...
On EU-Russia visa-free travel (Part 2)
This is a continuation of Part 1 EU member states differ widely not just in the application of visa procedures, but also on how fast the EU should move towards a visa-free regime withRussia. Russia and the EU apparently agreed on a set of common ste...
On EU-Russia visa free travel (Part 1)
A visa-free regime with the EU is perhaps the one thing that most Russians want most from the EU and is a key priority for Russia’s EU policy. The EU and Russia have agreed on a set of ‘joint steps’ towards a visa-free regime. The issue...
How China sees Russia
On a recent trip to China, I asked Chinese thinkers and researchers how do they see Europe, Russia, the Putin-Medvedev dynamic and the post-Soviet space. Virtually all were very positive about Russia. Despite a lack of trust between Beijing and Mosco...
Morocco: the King’s Speech (2)
This is a continuation of the previous post on Morocco’s political system. The 20 February movement Speaking at an Italian restaurant in Rabat some early-twenties activists from the ’20 February movement’ are saying that ‘We do not feel repre...
Morocco’s non-revolution (1)
[the first part of some of my notes from a recent research trip to Morocco] The ‘Arab spring’ has not left Kingdom of Morocco untouched. Protesters across the country demand more limits on royal power and less corruption and clientelism around th...
On ‘friendships’ in foreign policy
The notion of ‘friendship’ in foreign policy is an elusive one. It is often stereotypical, yet publics and policy-makers often think in terms of ‘friendly’ and ‘less friendly’ countries. The notion of ‘friendship’ also often hides pre...
Revolutions and youth movements
One of the main stories of the 2000-2005 wave of revolutions – successful in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and failed in Belarus, Azerbaijan and Egypt – were the existence of organised youth movements with names which were variations on the i...
More for More in the Neighbourhood
The revolutionary upheaval in the Southern neighbourhood and the failures of reforms in most of the Eastern neighbourhood are begging for a revised EU approach to the neighbourhood policy (ENP). In March the EU presented some ideas on ‘a partnershi...
EU and transition in Tunisia
This blog which is called ‘Neighbourhood’, rather than ‘Eastern neighbourhood’, makes a small step towards living up to its name… As a more substantial follow up to my post on post-revolutionary Tunisia, here is an ECFR...
Democracy-promotion.Now what?
As the ‘post-Cold War era’ turned into the ‘multipolar world’ era, the notion of Western democracy promotion underwent similarly dramatic changes. The West became too weak to pursue democracy-promotion head-on and was seen as...
Post-revolutionary Tunisia
Having spent most of the week in Tunisia, here are some thoughts and observations. The mood … is very positive. It is not the end of a president (like Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004), but the end of an era. Since independence in 1956, Tuni...
Of Eastern & Southern neighbours
Just when the southern neighbourhood of the EU is shaken by a wave of revolutionary situations that toppled consolidated dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt, the eastern neighbourhood seems to be in the middle of a trend towards authoritarian consolid...
On Revolutions
In 2003 -2005 revolutions in the neighbourhood were all the rage. Georgia, Ukraine and Lebanon have all inspired high-hopes among their own populations, as well as the EU and US. Then, many of those hopes collapsed, the revolutions lost their glitz,...
Is soft power freeriding?
The EU is proud that it is a ‘soft power’ (when you make others what you want through attraction, rather than coercion). It also thinks this is the most sophisticated and benefic way to exercise power (‘post-modern’ in other w...
Democracy and reformism in EU’s neighbourhood
Throughout the 90s in Central and Eastern Europe, and later in the Balkans reformism and democracy tended to go hand in hand. Governments which were more respectful of democratic norms, also tended to be more reformist. (By ‘democracy’ I mean res...
Back to blogging
After a year-long break, I am back to blogging at EU Observer. Before I start blogging properly – here is a quick update on my whereabouts in 2010. The last year from January to December I worked as advisor to the Moldovan prime-minister on for...
