There are exactly six months to go until the European elections, but the Liberals are already starting their showcase this Tuesday: At the Global Europe Forum in the European Parliament in Brussels, a number of the leading candidates from the member states will present themselves, including FDP leader Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann. However, the planned presence of liberal heads of state and government recently crumbled after Emmanuel Macron had to cancel his participation due to the government crisis at home.
In many member states, most of the parties in the family have largely sorted themselves out in terms of personnel, but not so at EU level: It is still unclear which line-up they will take into the election campaign. Renew Group leader Stéphane Séjourné sympathizes with the idea of fielding a single lead candidate. However, there is still resistance to this in the highly heterogeneous party family. In 2019, the Liberals ran with a top team. The liberal spokespeople around Macron only want to come together at an ALDE congress in March.
It remains to be seen what role Charles Michel will be assigned in this. The incumbent President of the European Council declared at the weekend that he wanted to stand in the election for his party, the Mouvement Réformateur (MR). The Liberals in Brussels have taken note of Michel’s ambitions, they say matter-of-factly, but no one can simply declare themselves the lead candidate in an interview. So there is still a lot to discuss among the Liberals.
It’s the end of a long hanging game in Paris: Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne has handed in her resignation. President Emmanuel Macron accepted this and thanked Borne “from the bottom of his heart” on X for her commitment. It is still unclear when a new government will be formed and who will lead it. Borne has held the office of Prime Minister since May 16, 2022.
With a new government, Macron wants to send a signal of change and renewal six months before the European elections, as an insider from Paris told Table.Media. This signal is more than necessary after two reforms that went badly for the presidential camp: the pension reform, which led to weeks of sometimes violent protests across the country.
There was also fierce criticism of the new immigration law, which was passed shortly before Christmas under strong pressure from the far right, which was followed by a political outcry in France. It had been expected that Macron would reorganize the government after the difficulties with the immigration law.
Over the past few days, the French head of state had received extensive advice from the Minister of the Economy, the Germanophile Bruno Le Maire, former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, and François Bayrou, the leader of the Modem, the French Liberal Party. Bayrou played a key role in Emmanuel Macron’s victory in the presidential elections.
On Sunday, he spoke out in favor of a “political change”, saying it was “necessary”. “We have reached the end of a sequence of difficult legislative texts: there is inevitably a new period that is opening up,” Bayrou told French news channel BFM-TV. “The challenge today is to rebuild trust.”
The Macron government has been in the difficult situation of not having an absolute majority in the National Assembly for a year and a half. It is therefore dependent on votes from the opposition for its plans. Prime Minister Borne tried tirelessly to find compromises. However, the government was unable to find a reliable partner in parliament. The government ultimately pushed through Macron’s core pension reform project without a final vote in the National Assembly.
There is an urgent need for action from the presidential camp, as the extreme right is leading the polls. 37% of French people consider the leader of the Rassemblement National, Marine Le Pen, to be the political figure most capable of “taking care of the lives of people like them”. This is according to a survey for BFM-TV published on Wednesday.
For his part, the President of the Republic is losing ground. In January 2024, only 28% of French voters trusted him, compared to 40% in April 2022, according to a survey for the business newspaper “Les Échos“. Emmanuel Macron is benefiting from “no momentum”, “he is stuck, with no wind in his sails, he is no longer making any progress”, states Bernard Sananès, President of the responsible opinion research institute Elabe.
Another political figure is making a name for himself a few months before the European elections: MEP Raphaël Glucksmann (S&D). “We have to take him seriously“, said a Paris-based advisor from the governing Renaissance party, which is part of the Renew Group in the European Parliament.
And for good reason: the MEP appears to be the candidate most likely to compete with the presidential camp in terms of his pro-European stance. If there are no surprises, the publicist Glucksmann will be nominated this month by the Parti socialiste to once again head the list for the European elections in June.
For several months now, the MEP has been in third place in the polls with ten percent of the vote, ahead of all other left-wing lists. For the weekly newspaper “Le Point“, Glucksmann would be the “new hope for the left”. However, the Paris-based consultant also points out that the MEP had already appeared “on the front pages of many magazines” in 2019 and only received 6.2% of the vote in the end. With dpa
Who has more staying power in the conflict over Ukraine: the Western helpers or Moscow? The case should actually be clear in the relationship between the world’s most powerful economies and Russia. But while Russian President Vladimir Putin has single-handedly put his country on a war footing, Kyiv’s Western allies are finding it difficult to sustainably strengthen Ukraine’s resilience.
Russia is said to have already deployed North Korean missiles in Ukraine and will soon also receive short-range missiles from Iran. Despite its own production problems, Moscow is therefore opening up further sources of supply for ammunition and weapons. On the other side is Ukraine, which is dependent on the West and has to be more economical than Russia when it comes to ammunition. This is because the EU is behind schedule with the promised delivery of one million rounds of artillery ammunition by March 2024. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Russian army currently uses 10,000 rounds of artillery ammunition per day, while Ukraine can fire 2,000 rounds.
In the early summer of 2023, EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton met with criticism when he demanded that Europeans should follow Russia’s example and also trim the defense industry to a war economy. At the time, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius not only rejected the term, but also the idea that Europe’s economy should be subordinated to the needs of the arms industry. But the tone is changing.
Putin is significantly increasing Russia’s arms production, according to official figures by more than 60 percent, said Pistorius in a recent interview with the newspaper “Welt am Sonntag”. NATO and Germany have some catching up to do and should be ready in “five to eight years”. He was referring to a possible confrontation with Russia.
In any case, Moscow has planned a budget for the next three years that will secure large shares for the military. This year alone, more than seven percent of gross domestic product is earmarked for the war machine. In 2025 and 2026, the share is also expected to remain high. Even if the plans are based on the assumption that revenues from the oil export trade will be too high, Putin’s premise – to wrestle Ukraine down – is likely to remain intact.
In the long term, this is not a good development for Russia, says sociologist and economist Alexandra Prokopenko in an interview with Table.Media. The former employee of the Russian Central Bank left Russia after the start of the war in February 2022 and now works as an analyst for the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. “If so-called non-productive sectors, which include the defense industry, are financed too heavily, this slows down development in other areas“, explains Prokopenko.
The labor shortage in Russia, which is linked to conscription for the war, the war-related emigration of hundreds of thousands of well-qualified people and the poaching of workers for the arms industry, is already showing the first signs of problems. In the short term, however, they will not have a noticeable impact on the Russian economy. In the short term, things look rather bleak for Ukraine.
As feared, the latest missile and drone attacks are targeting civilian critical infrastructure. Russia is trying to circumvent Ukraine’s improved air defense with mass. In return, Ukraine is receiving additional air defense systems from Germany and other NATO states. The NATO-Ukraine meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 10, hastily requested by Kyiv, will once again explicitly address this topic.
Both Ukraine and Russia have used the two years of war to expand and develop their drone fleets. Defense in and from the air will therefore have a major impact on the next phase of the war. The fact that Europe has not strengthened Ukraine as much as it could have done for and before the spring offensive in 2023 is not only due to a lack of its own production capacities for ammunition. According to EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, Europe’s arms industry continues to export a large proportion of its production to third countries. The Frenchman wanted to have the option of obliging companies to prioritize their exports in favor of Ukraine. However, the member states rejected this.
France and others prevented EU funds from being used to purchase bullets from manufacturers outside the EU. South Korean manufacturers, for example, would have been an option. In addition, the EU member states have been slow to respond to the framework agreements with Rheinmetall and Co. and have only placed a few orders so far, according to reports in Brussels.
The example of ammunition is a good illustration of how solidarity with Ukraine sometimes ends at the economic interests of the EU states. However, Thierry Breton remains confident that the production capacity for artillery shells can be increased to one million per year by the spring. The target of one million shells for Ukraine could also be achieved with a delay.
The prospects for Ukraine look better in the medium term. EU Council President Charles Michel has convened a special summit for February 1. The 50 billion euros in financial and economic aid for Ukraine should be approved there at the second attempt. If necessary, 26 member states want to do this outside the EU budget if Viktor Orbán continues to block it.
In principle, NATO is not showing any signs of fatigue: “We will stand by Ukraine for as long as necessary”, said Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg after the last NATO-Ukraine Council. The NATO states have bilaterally pledged 100 billion euros in military aid to Ukraine, half of which now comes from the European allies.
In April, the alliance celebrates its 75th anniversary and the next summit is planned for July in Washington. Joe Biden also wants to use this for his election campaign. Against this backdrop, the NATO states can hardly afford to slacken their support. In Washington, Mark Rutte, the current favorite in the race to succeed Stoltenberg, could also formally take over the post of NATO Secretary General. The current Dutch head of government is firmly on the side of Ukraine.
However, the USA alone is unlikely to deliver further large aid packages to Ukraine any time soon. At least they would not be as large as 2022 and 2023, a White House spokesperson said last week. The EU therefore has a growing role to play. The plan of the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, to secure the financing of military aid with €20 billion for the next four years has failed. However, the EU should soon decide on a first annual tranche of five billion euros. Berlin alone has also pledged eight billion euros in aid. This year, Ukraine is therefore likely to receive more Leopard battle tanks, air defense systems and the first F-16 fighter jets. A coalition with the USA, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and the UK is currently training Ukrainian pilots for the aircraft.
For the EU and other countries, the question arises as to how Russia can be put under further economic pressure. After twelve sanctions packages, Moscow is still managing to find loopholes. Economic expert Alexandra Prokopenko therefore says: “This year will not just be about new sanctions, but about enforcing them.” Russian companies and the government are devoting considerable resources to circumventing the sanctions. “I think the West needs to be more active in approaching the countries that are helping Russia, i.e. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.”
Research collaboration between the EU and China continues to increase even during times of de-risking. This resulted from a recent study on joint publications by European and Chinese researchers on digital topics and artificial intelligence in various disciplines. According to the study, the output of co-publications has been consistently increasing since 2011. The vast majority of tech-related cooperation, 65 percent, focused on applied sciences – research aimed at practical solutions – followed by natural sciences at 18 percent.
The study is part of the EU project ReConnect China, which aims to determine in which fields cooperation between the EU and China is “desirable, possible or impossible”. The researchers examine collaborations in science and technology, economics and trade, as well as governance and foreign policy, with a focus on the key disciplines and institutions in China and the EU, including the UK, Norway and Switzerland (EU-27/AC). The ultimate goal is to create independent knowledge for a resilient approach to the People’s Republic, fostering higher China expertise, even in specialized areas.
To do this, the authors combed through the scientific citation database “Web of Science” from the research firm Clarivate – specifically using keywords related to digital topics such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and big data. The entire study revolves exclusively around these tech aspects, covering collaborations in various fields: For the period from 2011 to 2022, the researchers found tens of thousands of co-publications related to their focus.
While the United States still leads, they have been publishing less with China since 2021. In 2022, according to the study, co-publications between Europe and China already surpassed those between the USA and China. “We believe that this downward trend is related, among other things, to the larger geopolitical situation and the tense relationship between China and the USA,” says Philipp Brugner, one of the authors of the study, in an interview with Table.Media.
“China’s interest is, therefore, to increasingly focus on Europe because we are more accessible in research cooperation and the rhetoric towards China is not as harsh yet,” says Brugner. “We need to be very aware of this interest – and when there are inquiries, look much more closely than we have in recent years.” The goal is to prevent misuse: Especially the digital applications covered in the study could easily be used for surveillance or military purposes outside the agreed research purpose.
However, Brugner does not believe that Europe will turn away from research cooperation with China as clearly as the USA currently is; rather, it will maintain a balance. “I think we will proceed very selectively in the future.” The authors recommend greater awareness of risks with the aim of making informed decisions. However, they explicitly do not advocate for stopping cooperation.
According to the study, co-publications in applied sciences focused mainly on the following sub-disciplines:
In the natural sciences, physics and astronomy dominated cooperation (seven percent). Another significant field was clinical medicine (also seven percent).
The researchers also explored who collaborates with whom. They found 17,000 institutions in the EU-27/AC and China involved in joint publications. In Europe, this mainly includes universities and institutes from Germany, the UK and France. The authors then focused on the most active institutions.
They noticed that on the Chinese side, the state-owned Academy of Sciences dominated (with over 4,600 co-publications between 2011 and 2022), followed by Beijing’s Tsinghua University (just over 1,900) and Shanghai Jiaotong University (just under 1,600).
In Europe, especially universities from the UK cooperate. 44 percent of co-publications between the EU-27/AC and China had at least one author from the United Kingdom – more than Germany (15 percent) and France (11 percent) combined. Among the top 25 universities involved in co-publications with China, the study identified six outside the UK, including the Technical University of Munich, the Swiss ETH Zurich, the Delft University of Technology from the Netherlands, and three Scandinavian universities.
“The high participation of the UK surprised us,” says co-author Gábor Szüdi. According to him, this is due to the high level and good reputation of universities there and the English language, not so much political preferences. The researchers found the most intense bilateral collaboration between the University of Oxford and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with 189 co-publications. They also identified a dynamic relationship between TUM and Shanghai’s Tongji University, with 61 joint publications.
Chinese researchers did not specifically seek cooperation with politically inclined states such as Hungary, according to Szüdi. “They want to cooperate with the very best, even in Germany or the Netherlands.” Generally, collaboration is concentrated on a few countries and institutes. In Eastern Europe, only a few institutes collaborate with China; a significant exception is the very active Polish Academy of Sciences.
This corresponds to an observation the authors made in the data. “We suspect that partnerships are deliberately formed with universities whose name may not be the biggest overall but are leading in a niche discipline or technology,” says Brugner. This could be rewarding for both sides. However, he also warns: In general, one must “learn to deal better with this type of intelligence, meaning to understand that some inquiries do not happen by chance.” China observes the research and technology sector in Europe and then knocks very specifically where there may still be a missing piece for research and development to achieve its technological maturity breakthrough.
Dominik Hierlemann experienced first-hand what it means to opt for the EU in 2004. In the year that Poland became a member of the EU, the now 47-year-old lived and completed his doctorate there. Accession changed the country enormously: “Life in Poland was completely different back then. We in Western Europe often don’t understand how great the transformation of the Central Eastern European countries is and what that means for the people.” It was therefore with great interest that he looked at Poland in mid-October when the political center around Donald Tusk prevailed in the parliamentary elections.
Hierlemann’s interest in the event was not just personal – the election was also of professional interest to him: he works as a Senior Advisor at the Bertelsmann Stiftung and is active in projects such as the EU Democracy Reform Observatory. The election result in Poland did not surprise him, as he says: “I was convinced that Polish civil society would rise up at some point and no longer put up with it.”
Hierlemann sees Poland as a step in the right direction – however, the EU as a whole is on the wrong track in terms of democratic policy. Hierlemann is particularly critical of the initiatives to enable EU citizens to participate. The offer, says the political scientist, is not the problem. With the European Citizens’ Initiative, consultations or the European Citizens’ Panel, the EU offers more opportunities for participation than most member states. But: “The procedures are largely unknown, are hardly used and are not very effective.”
The EU institutions have long struggled to reach the European public adequately. For Hierlemann, the general starting point for improvement is to “finally have a European debate“. He sees potential in European elections in particular: “It’s the same old problem, European elections are national debates against the backdrop of European elections.” He sees the ideas of transnational constituencies and European top candidates as possible levers for improving the democratic legitimacy of the EU.
However, even beyond elections, EU citizens should be granted more and better participation in order to create a broad European public. “Participation procedures to date have mostly only reached the group of already convinced Europeans and Europhiles,” says Hierlemann. For him, it is clear what is needed: more direct options for exerting influence on critical issues such as migration and integration. “You only appeal to the public if they feel that these are the current and important issues in which they are involved.” In the future, the EU should develop a “participation infrastructure” based on participation opportunities in member states such as Ireland.
Dominik Hierlemann supports policymakers in this as an expert at the Bertelsmann Stiftung. At the same time, however, it is important to him that the organization is in regular contact with civil society through participation projects. “This is particularly exciting when it comes to citizen participation, because – to put it bluntly – we don’t just talk the talk, we also implement it ourselves.” Jasper Bennink
There are exactly six months to go until the European elections, but the Liberals are already starting their showcase this Tuesday: At the Global Europe Forum in the European Parliament in Brussels, a number of the leading candidates from the member states will present themselves, including FDP leader Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann. However, the planned presence of liberal heads of state and government recently crumbled after Emmanuel Macron had to cancel his participation due to the government crisis at home.
In many member states, most of the parties in the family have largely sorted themselves out in terms of personnel, but not so at EU level: It is still unclear which line-up they will take into the election campaign. Renew Group leader Stéphane Séjourné sympathizes with the idea of fielding a single lead candidate. However, there is still resistance to this in the highly heterogeneous party family. In 2019, the Liberals ran with a top team. The liberal spokespeople around Macron only want to come together at an ALDE congress in March.
It remains to be seen what role Charles Michel will be assigned in this. The incumbent President of the European Council declared at the weekend that he wanted to stand in the election for his party, the Mouvement Réformateur (MR). The Liberals in Brussels have taken note of Michel’s ambitions, they say matter-of-factly, but no one can simply declare themselves the lead candidate in an interview. So there is still a lot to discuss among the Liberals.
It’s the end of a long hanging game in Paris: Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne has handed in her resignation. President Emmanuel Macron accepted this and thanked Borne “from the bottom of his heart” on X for her commitment. It is still unclear when a new government will be formed and who will lead it. Borne has held the office of Prime Minister since May 16, 2022.
With a new government, Macron wants to send a signal of change and renewal six months before the European elections, as an insider from Paris told Table.Media. This signal is more than necessary after two reforms that went badly for the presidential camp: the pension reform, which led to weeks of sometimes violent protests across the country.
There was also fierce criticism of the new immigration law, which was passed shortly before Christmas under strong pressure from the far right, which was followed by a political outcry in France. It had been expected that Macron would reorganize the government after the difficulties with the immigration law.
Over the past few days, the French head of state had received extensive advice from the Minister of the Economy, the Germanophile Bruno Le Maire, former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, and François Bayrou, the leader of the Modem, the French Liberal Party. Bayrou played a key role in Emmanuel Macron’s victory in the presidential elections.
On Sunday, he spoke out in favor of a “political change”, saying it was “necessary”. “We have reached the end of a sequence of difficult legislative texts: there is inevitably a new period that is opening up,” Bayrou told French news channel BFM-TV. “The challenge today is to rebuild trust.”
The Macron government has been in the difficult situation of not having an absolute majority in the National Assembly for a year and a half. It is therefore dependent on votes from the opposition for its plans. Prime Minister Borne tried tirelessly to find compromises. However, the government was unable to find a reliable partner in parliament. The government ultimately pushed through Macron’s core pension reform project without a final vote in the National Assembly.
There is an urgent need for action from the presidential camp, as the extreme right is leading the polls. 37% of French people consider the leader of the Rassemblement National, Marine Le Pen, to be the political figure most capable of “taking care of the lives of people like them”. This is according to a survey for BFM-TV published on Wednesday.
For his part, the President of the Republic is losing ground. In January 2024, only 28% of French voters trusted him, compared to 40% in April 2022, according to a survey for the business newspaper “Les Échos“. Emmanuel Macron is benefiting from “no momentum”, “he is stuck, with no wind in his sails, he is no longer making any progress”, states Bernard Sananès, President of the responsible opinion research institute Elabe.
Another political figure is making a name for himself a few months before the European elections: MEP Raphaël Glucksmann (S&D). “We have to take him seriously“, said a Paris-based advisor from the governing Renaissance party, which is part of the Renew Group in the European Parliament.
And for good reason: the MEP appears to be the candidate most likely to compete with the presidential camp in terms of his pro-European stance. If there are no surprises, the publicist Glucksmann will be nominated this month by the Parti socialiste to once again head the list for the European elections in June.
For several months now, the MEP has been in third place in the polls with ten percent of the vote, ahead of all other left-wing lists. For the weekly newspaper “Le Point“, Glucksmann would be the “new hope for the left”. However, the Paris-based consultant also points out that the MEP had already appeared “on the front pages of many magazines” in 2019 and only received 6.2% of the vote in the end. With dpa
Who has more staying power in the conflict over Ukraine: the Western helpers or Moscow? The case should actually be clear in the relationship between the world’s most powerful economies and Russia. But while Russian President Vladimir Putin has single-handedly put his country on a war footing, Kyiv’s Western allies are finding it difficult to sustainably strengthen Ukraine’s resilience.
Russia is said to have already deployed North Korean missiles in Ukraine and will soon also receive short-range missiles from Iran. Despite its own production problems, Moscow is therefore opening up further sources of supply for ammunition and weapons. On the other side is Ukraine, which is dependent on the West and has to be more economical than Russia when it comes to ammunition. This is because the EU is behind schedule with the promised delivery of one million rounds of artillery ammunition by March 2024. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Russian army currently uses 10,000 rounds of artillery ammunition per day, while Ukraine can fire 2,000 rounds.
In the early summer of 2023, EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton met with criticism when he demanded that Europeans should follow Russia’s example and also trim the defense industry to a war economy. At the time, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius not only rejected the term, but also the idea that Europe’s economy should be subordinated to the needs of the arms industry. But the tone is changing.
Putin is significantly increasing Russia’s arms production, according to official figures by more than 60 percent, said Pistorius in a recent interview with the newspaper “Welt am Sonntag”. NATO and Germany have some catching up to do and should be ready in “five to eight years”. He was referring to a possible confrontation with Russia.
In any case, Moscow has planned a budget for the next three years that will secure large shares for the military. This year alone, more than seven percent of gross domestic product is earmarked for the war machine. In 2025 and 2026, the share is also expected to remain high. Even if the plans are based on the assumption that revenues from the oil export trade will be too high, Putin’s premise – to wrestle Ukraine down – is likely to remain intact.
In the long term, this is not a good development for Russia, says sociologist and economist Alexandra Prokopenko in an interview with Table.Media. The former employee of the Russian Central Bank left Russia after the start of the war in February 2022 and now works as an analyst for the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. “If so-called non-productive sectors, which include the defense industry, are financed too heavily, this slows down development in other areas“, explains Prokopenko.
The labor shortage in Russia, which is linked to conscription for the war, the war-related emigration of hundreds of thousands of well-qualified people and the poaching of workers for the arms industry, is already showing the first signs of problems. In the short term, however, they will not have a noticeable impact on the Russian economy. In the short term, things look rather bleak for Ukraine.
As feared, the latest missile and drone attacks are targeting civilian critical infrastructure. Russia is trying to circumvent Ukraine’s improved air defense with mass. In return, Ukraine is receiving additional air defense systems from Germany and other NATO states. The NATO-Ukraine meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 10, hastily requested by Kyiv, will once again explicitly address this topic.
Both Ukraine and Russia have used the two years of war to expand and develop their drone fleets. Defense in and from the air will therefore have a major impact on the next phase of the war. The fact that Europe has not strengthened Ukraine as much as it could have done for and before the spring offensive in 2023 is not only due to a lack of its own production capacities for ammunition. According to EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, Europe’s arms industry continues to export a large proportion of its production to third countries. The Frenchman wanted to have the option of obliging companies to prioritize their exports in favor of Ukraine. However, the member states rejected this.
France and others prevented EU funds from being used to purchase bullets from manufacturers outside the EU. South Korean manufacturers, for example, would have been an option. In addition, the EU member states have been slow to respond to the framework agreements with Rheinmetall and Co. and have only placed a few orders so far, according to reports in Brussels.
The example of ammunition is a good illustration of how solidarity with Ukraine sometimes ends at the economic interests of the EU states. However, Thierry Breton remains confident that the production capacity for artillery shells can be increased to one million per year by the spring. The target of one million shells for Ukraine could also be achieved with a delay.
The prospects for Ukraine look better in the medium term. EU Council President Charles Michel has convened a special summit for February 1. The 50 billion euros in financial and economic aid for Ukraine should be approved there at the second attempt. If necessary, 26 member states want to do this outside the EU budget if Viktor Orbán continues to block it.
In principle, NATO is not showing any signs of fatigue: “We will stand by Ukraine for as long as necessary”, said Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg after the last NATO-Ukraine Council. The NATO states have bilaterally pledged 100 billion euros in military aid to Ukraine, half of which now comes from the European allies.
In April, the alliance celebrates its 75th anniversary and the next summit is planned for July in Washington. Joe Biden also wants to use this for his election campaign. Against this backdrop, the NATO states can hardly afford to slacken their support. In Washington, Mark Rutte, the current favorite in the race to succeed Stoltenberg, could also formally take over the post of NATO Secretary General. The current Dutch head of government is firmly on the side of Ukraine.
However, the USA alone is unlikely to deliver further large aid packages to Ukraine any time soon. At least they would not be as large as 2022 and 2023, a White House spokesperson said last week. The EU therefore has a growing role to play. The plan of the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, to secure the financing of military aid with €20 billion for the next four years has failed. However, the EU should soon decide on a first annual tranche of five billion euros. Berlin alone has also pledged eight billion euros in aid. This year, Ukraine is therefore likely to receive more Leopard battle tanks, air defense systems and the first F-16 fighter jets. A coalition with the USA, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and the UK is currently training Ukrainian pilots for the aircraft.
For the EU and other countries, the question arises as to how Russia can be put under further economic pressure. After twelve sanctions packages, Moscow is still managing to find loopholes. Economic expert Alexandra Prokopenko therefore says: “This year will not just be about new sanctions, but about enforcing them.” Russian companies and the government are devoting considerable resources to circumventing the sanctions. “I think the West needs to be more active in approaching the countries that are helping Russia, i.e. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.”
Research collaboration between the EU and China continues to increase even during times of de-risking. This resulted from a recent study on joint publications by European and Chinese researchers on digital topics and artificial intelligence in various disciplines. According to the study, the output of co-publications has been consistently increasing since 2011. The vast majority of tech-related cooperation, 65 percent, focused on applied sciences – research aimed at practical solutions – followed by natural sciences at 18 percent.
The study is part of the EU project ReConnect China, which aims to determine in which fields cooperation between the EU and China is “desirable, possible or impossible”. The researchers examine collaborations in science and technology, economics and trade, as well as governance and foreign policy, with a focus on the key disciplines and institutions in China and the EU, including the UK, Norway and Switzerland (EU-27/AC). The ultimate goal is to create independent knowledge for a resilient approach to the People’s Republic, fostering higher China expertise, even in specialized areas.
To do this, the authors combed through the scientific citation database “Web of Science” from the research firm Clarivate – specifically using keywords related to digital topics such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and big data. The entire study revolves exclusively around these tech aspects, covering collaborations in various fields: For the period from 2011 to 2022, the researchers found tens of thousands of co-publications related to their focus.
While the United States still leads, they have been publishing less with China since 2021. In 2022, according to the study, co-publications between Europe and China already surpassed those between the USA and China. “We believe that this downward trend is related, among other things, to the larger geopolitical situation and the tense relationship between China and the USA,” says Philipp Brugner, one of the authors of the study, in an interview with Table.Media.
“China’s interest is, therefore, to increasingly focus on Europe because we are more accessible in research cooperation and the rhetoric towards China is not as harsh yet,” says Brugner. “We need to be very aware of this interest – and when there are inquiries, look much more closely than we have in recent years.” The goal is to prevent misuse: Especially the digital applications covered in the study could easily be used for surveillance or military purposes outside the agreed research purpose.
However, Brugner does not believe that Europe will turn away from research cooperation with China as clearly as the USA currently is; rather, it will maintain a balance. “I think we will proceed very selectively in the future.” The authors recommend greater awareness of risks with the aim of making informed decisions. However, they explicitly do not advocate for stopping cooperation.
According to the study, co-publications in applied sciences focused mainly on the following sub-disciplines:
In the natural sciences, physics and astronomy dominated cooperation (seven percent). Another significant field was clinical medicine (also seven percent).
The researchers also explored who collaborates with whom. They found 17,000 institutions in the EU-27/AC and China involved in joint publications. In Europe, this mainly includes universities and institutes from Germany, the UK and France. The authors then focused on the most active institutions.
They noticed that on the Chinese side, the state-owned Academy of Sciences dominated (with over 4,600 co-publications between 2011 and 2022), followed by Beijing’s Tsinghua University (just over 1,900) and Shanghai Jiaotong University (just under 1,600).
In Europe, especially universities from the UK cooperate. 44 percent of co-publications between the EU-27/AC and China had at least one author from the United Kingdom – more than Germany (15 percent) and France (11 percent) combined. Among the top 25 universities involved in co-publications with China, the study identified six outside the UK, including the Technical University of Munich, the Swiss ETH Zurich, the Delft University of Technology from the Netherlands, and three Scandinavian universities.
“The high participation of the UK surprised us,” says co-author Gábor Szüdi. According to him, this is due to the high level and good reputation of universities there and the English language, not so much political preferences. The researchers found the most intense bilateral collaboration between the University of Oxford and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with 189 co-publications. They also identified a dynamic relationship between TUM and Shanghai’s Tongji University, with 61 joint publications.
Chinese researchers did not specifically seek cooperation with politically inclined states such as Hungary, according to Szüdi. “They want to cooperate with the very best, even in Germany or the Netherlands.” Generally, collaboration is concentrated on a few countries and institutes. In Eastern Europe, only a few institutes collaborate with China; a significant exception is the very active Polish Academy of Sciences.
This corresponds to an observation the authors made in the data. “We suspect that partnerships are deliberately formed with universities whose name may not be the biggest overall but are leading in a niche discipline or technology,” says Brugner. This could be rewarding for both sides. However, he also warns: In general, one must “learn to deal better with this type of intelligence, meaning to understand that some inquiries do not happen by chance.” China observes the research and technology sector in Europe and then knocks very specifically where there may still be a missing piece for research and development to achieve its technological maturity breakthrough.
Dominik Hierlemann experienced first-hand what it means to opt for the EU in 2004. In the year that Poland became a member of the EU, the now 47-year-old lived and completed his doctorate there. Accession changed the country enormously: “Life in Poland was completely different back then. We in Western Europe often don’t understand how great the transformation of the Central Eastern European countries is and what that means for the people.” It was therefore with great interest that he looked at Poland in mid-October when the political center around Donald Tusk prevailed in the parliamentary elections.
Hierlemann’s interest in the event was not just personal – the election was also of professional interest to him: he works as a Senior Advisor at the Bertelsmann Stiftung and is active in projects such as the EU Democracy Reform Observatory. The election result in Poland did not surprise him, as he says: “I was convinced that Polish civil society would rise up at some point and no longer put up with it.”
Hierlemann sees Poland as a step in the right direction – however, the EU as a whole is on the wrong track in terms of democratic policy. Hierlemann is particularly critical of the initiatives to enable EU citizens to participate. The offer, says the political scientist, is not the problem. With the European Citizens’ Initiative, consultations or the European Citizens’ Panel, the EU offers more opportunities for participation than most member states. But: “The procedures are largely unknown, are hardly used and are not very effective.”
The EU institutions have long struggled to reach the European public adequately. For Hierlemann, the general starting point for improvement is to “finally have a European debate“. He sees potential in European elections in particular: “It’s the same old problem, European elections are national debates against the backdrop of European elections.” He sees the ideas of transnational constituencies and European top candidates as possible levers for improving the democratic legitimacy of the EU.
However, even beyond elections, EU citizens should be granted more and better participation in order to create a broad European public. “Participation procedures to date have mostly only reached the group of already convinced Europeans and Europhiles,” says Hierlemann. For him, it is clear what is needed: more direct options for exerting influence on critical issues such as migration and integration. “You only appeal to the public if they feel that these are the current and important issues in which they are involved.” In the future, the EU should develop a “participation infrastructure” based on participation opportunities in member states such as Ireland.
Dominik Hierlemann supports policymakers in this as an expert at the Bertelsmann Stiftung. At the same time, however, it is important to him that the organization is in regular contact with civil society through participation projects. “This is particularly exciting when it comes to citizen participation, because – to put it bluntly – we don’t just talk the talk, we also implement it ourselves.” Jasper Bennink
