Volume 10, No 2

The EU’s freedom of movement has increasingly been brought into question in the last few years as member states have restricted social benefits for EU migrants. Britain proposed in-work benefit restrictions for economically active EU migrants in intergovernmental negotiations leading up to the referendum on its membership to the EU. Access to social benefits is an important component of free movement. It provides EU citizens with social rights in host member states, which promotes internal migration. Restricting free movement threatens European integration because it is a fundamental EU treaty right. This article analyses Britain’s preferences towards the EU’s free movement and social security coordination policies leading up to the Brexit referendum. Britain’s identity, and conceptions of statehood and European.

This paper explores the meaning of the Italian anti-establishment voting and whether the Five Star Movement’s anti-establishment label is appropriate. More specifically the investigation addresses the policies of the Five Star Movement towards the now creaking European Union, especially as growing Euroscepticism has been boosted by the Brexit referendum and the Trump dismissal and disdain for the European Union. In doing so, the paper examines the historic approach of so-called ‘anti- establishment’ parties that have had an almost ‘normal’ occurrence within the Italian political environment since the end of the Second World War. In this sense the paper concludes that addressing parties and systems as anti-establishment does little to help our understanding of this most fluid political period in Italy and across Europe.

This paper examines the dynamics of sub-regional integration processes within the Danube region as an example of EU sub-regionalism by focusing on the European Strategy on the Danube River (EUSDR). The assumption is that sub-regional integration projects differ conceptually from regional level integration processes as they tend to focus on the local and provincial level rather than the national level. As such sub-regional integration processes are characterised by integration processes based on geographic proximity, shared historical and cultural awareness, and the perception that closer local co-operation will generate economic profits. However, the regional level (EU) which represents the higher level will exert a certain influence on the occurrence and the dynamics of sub- regional integration processes as they are not completely independent from each other. The formulation and implementation of the EUSDR offers an insightful example in this regard.

The world of global politics is composed of complex, interrelated and events. To obtain information, to form an opinion and to react to recent developments, policy makers as well as the public depend on news media. Decisions in the field of global politics, therefore, are based on perceptions and beliefs rather than on objective assessments. The following study takes the example of the German print media, analysing the German perception of Russia and Ukraine within the context of the ongoing Ukraine conflict. The current political development in Ukraine is complex, driven by geopolitical, economical and ideological factors. A mediation of these events by news media therefore requires a drastic reduction of complexity to inform readers and decision-makers on developments in this region. Through examination of conceptual metaphors used in the representation of the conflict, this study seeks to better understand how the two main state actors are comprehended and portrayed in German media discourse.

While the European Union (EU) discursively frames itself as a values-driven actor, the recent influx of individuals seeking asylum within its borders problematises this image. The EU-Turkey refugee agreement, signed in March 2016, has been embraced as a mode to offset the burden of mass migration to the EU and to reassert the EU’s image as an international human rights actor. This paper contends, however, that the agreement negates the EU’s capacity to actively promote human rights norms externally by: 1) compromising on its high standards in order to achieve internal cohesion and redress waning solidarity between member states; 2) transgressing EU and international laws and norms; and 3) relegating the previous approach it has taken to seeking structural reform in Turkey. Ultimately, this paper concludes that the EU’s participation in the refugee agreement with Turkey delegitimises the EU as an international human rights actor.

This essay will submit three arguments which will sustain this thesis respectively: 1) the incorporation of expellees, the expellee movement, and their irredentism which romanticised the Nazi period, saw a form political extremism rise as a direct consequence of the breakup of Germany after World War II (WWII)1; 2) the decline of the German Communist Party (KPD) and National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) reflected Germans becoming critical of the political extremism prevalent between the 1919 until 19452; 3) influenced by both the War and German history wholistically, the Allies and Germans crafted a Basic Law (Grundgesetz) which embodied a strong parliamentary and federal system.3 With all this in mind, the first argument to highlight how Germany drew upon its history to craft new political institutions and a new culture, is the incorporation of the expellees and their irredentism.