The Fifth Enlargement of the EU, Five Years On: The Case of Poland and the Czech Republic
In 2009, Europe will celebrate many anniversaries, all of which are of special importance for the new member states. It will be five years since the European Union"s (EU) big bang enlargement of 2004; ten years since the first enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to post-communist states; twenty years after the round-table negotiations in Poland and the fall of the Berlin Wall; seventy years since the beginning of World War II. With the exception of the Berlin Wall and the start of World War II, all other anniversaries will be celebrated during a new member state"s (the Czech Republic"s) EU Presidency: NATO enlarged in March, the EU in May, and the first partially-free elections were held in Poland in June.
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The Fifth Enlargement of the EU, Five Years On: The Case of Poland and the Czech Republic
Trump II, the Crisis of the Rules-Based Order and Europe’s Indo-Pacific Strategy
This article examines the implications of Trump II for Europe’s engagement in the Indo-Pacific. The piece contends that Trump II is accelerating the erosion of the rules-based order and undermining the relevance of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) concept, while forcing Europe to refocus on its own continental security amid US retrenchment. Paradoxically, these very constraints create conditions for a more autonomous, pragmatic, and explicitly interest-driven European engagement in the Indo-Pacific, rather than outright withdrawal.
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The 2026 Hormuz crisis has strengthened rather than weakened the rationale for Japan’s decarbonization strategy, contrary to what might have been expected. Rather than energy policy supplanting climate policy, the two should actually be viewed as inseparable.
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