EU-Japan relations have undergone a major uplift over the past 5 years. Bound by the Economic and Strategic Partnership Agreements, as well as the Partnership on Sustainable Connectivity, the two once-distant players have been stepping up efforts to address the many shared security concerns in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. Ahead of the upcoming EU-Japan summit, this Policy Brief takes stock of the current state of play and offers some food for thought on how to move forward with the bilateral relationship.

Tensions at sea are growing and multiplying both in the East and the South China Seas.

In 2020-2021, Prime Minister Boris Johnson undertook to fundamentally change the operational mode and strategy of relations between the United Kingdom and the African continent bequeathed by his predecessors since 1997.

The Franco-Turkish standoff is first and foremost a geopolitical contest for influence in the EastMed area. It must be understood in light of Turkey’s rise as an emergent power in quest for geostrategic autonomy and France’s unease with Ankara’s growing assertiveness in a region that Paris traditionally views as part of its sphere of influence. 

In late February 2021, Germany’s left-wing party Die Linke gave themselves a new party executive. The new team is supposed to lead the party into the federal elections in September and, if possible, into a national center-left government.

The extraordinarily troublesome year 2020 tested many international institutions and bilateral ties, but few experienced sharper challenges than the complex relations between Russia and Turkey, which have a strong impact on crisis developments in Europe’s immediate neighborhood.

Turkey’s activism in the Eastern Mediterranean now appears to be guided by an ambitious legal and geopolitical doctrine, based on the claim of a vast maritime domain – the “Blue Homeland” or Mavi Vatan in Turkish. 

Lesotho is a landlocked mountain kingdom encased in South Africa for which it is a reservoir of water and labor. This kingdom of tormented creation is in a structural political and security crisis. Since 1993 and the return to multiparty politics, all elections, except that of 2002, needed regional mediation.