European Union

Promoting peace and preventing conflict are at the very heart of the European project. At the workshop, mediation experts discussed with German and European delegates, representatives from the European External Action Service (EEAS), and national diplomats the strengths and weaknesses of existing tools and the current allocation of tasks. Also on the agenda: ways of improving the EU’s mediating capacity, for example through the establishment of a European Institute for Peace.

Europe strives to conduct a foreign policy based on values. Its norms are intended to have an impact around the world – and reach its immediate neighbors in particular. But how successful is Europe as a normative power? This was the subject of the recent Brussels Briefing in which Sharon Pardo, who holds the Jean-Monnet Chair for European Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, talked to Krassimer Nikolov, desk officer on Isreal at the European External Action Service (EEAS).

The European Union’s common security and defense policy remains incomplete; only slowly is the EU becoming a strategic actor. Pieter Feith, international crisis management expert, and Claudia Major, deputy head of the research division for international security policy at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), discussed the current standstill on the establishment of a robust security and defense policy.

In Michael Endes berühmtem Kinderbuch „Jim Knopf“ gibt es den Scheinriesen Tur Tur: Je weiter man sich von ihm entfernt, desto größer wirkt er. Nähert man sich ihm, mutet er klein und unscheinbar an. „Genauso kommt mir die EU vor“, sagte Martin Schulz bei seiner Rede zur europäischen Außenpolitik in Berlin. Vor den Mitgliedern von DGAP und Atlantik-Brücke zeichnete der Europa-Parlamentarier seine Vision einer starken EU-Außenpolitik – und erläuterte, warum die Realität ganz anders aussieht.

Turkey’s EU membership would not only be an advantage for Turkey – Brussels, too, would gain, emphasized Turkey’s Minister for European Union Affairs Egemen Bağış at the alumni and interim seminar of the Goerdeler-Kolleg in Istanbul. In addition to EU accession, Turkish foreign policy, administration reform, and development plans for Istanbul’s infrastructure were discussed.