European solidarity, or more precisely the lack thereof, has been a contentious issue that resurfaces regularly, most noticeably in times of crisis. Despite repeated attempts to promote solidarity and the establishment of a supporting legal framework, the EU has struggled to enhance solidarity even when facing major emergencies, such as the sovereign debt and asylum crises, which caused deep divisions among EU Member States. In contrast, in response to the arrival of Ukrainian refugees, the EU, for the first time, activated the Temporary Protection Directive, which involves a built-in solidarity mechanism. Furthermore, the EU has setup a Covid-19 recovery fund worth €800 billion to support Europe’s economies and societies in their recovery from the pandemic. These recent developments, thus, call for a fresh and integrated discussion of the idea of European solidarity to chart its changing contours and prospects.

In our panel, we will explore how these developments mark a change in the landscape of European solidarity. Has the perception of solidarity and its importance changed in the EU and its member stets, and if so, how? To what extent has the legal framework facilitated this change? What do the ongoing challenges tell us about the prospects of extending solidarity in Europe beyond emergencies? Addressing these questions will not only allow us to understand and map the evolving nature of European solidarity, but also provide valuable insights for developing, testing, and challenging theories that seek to explain meaning and reach of solidarity in the European Union.

Solidarity has been a key concept since the very beginnings of the European project when Robert Schuman called for a ‘de facto solidarity’ to build a unified Europe. Ever since, solidarity has incrementally gained significance in the course of European integration, cumulating in the Lisbon Treaty where it has been settled as one of the central precepts of the EU. Nonetheless, there is no agreed understanding in the European legal or political sphere on what the concept entails, in part because there has not been a sufficient theoretical debate yet to inform and frame the search for the concept’s meaning.

My research aims at contributing to a profound and empirically informed debate on this fundamental EU principle to reduce arbitrariness in research and ultimately inform policymakers as well as courts in their decision-making. To this end, I provide an analytical framework for solidarity in the European Union that can render research more precise in terms of polity, politics, and policies of the EU. By showcasing findings from extensive document analysis and based on an interdisciplinary conceptual history approach, I demonstrate role, scope, shape, and content of solidarity in the EU and explain its specific expression in the European asylum system. The findings set out in my presentation seek to stimulate debates within European Union studies and aim at building bridges between the fields of study in political science as well as to adjacent disciplines.

From Nord Stream 1 to the ‘Doppelwumms’, energy solidarity has been part and parcel of European discussions on a common energy policy. Member states struggle to find joint solutions for the gas crisis debating the limits and conditions of solidarity. Germany acts as the black sheep in the story, pursuing national solo actions, as shown by the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines. The main point of conflict is that member states are individually responsible for security of supply, but at the same time are supposed to follow the principle of solidarity at the EU level. This paper takes a closer look at the characteristics of solidarity by comparing the pre-war and current solidarity discourse and legislation in the gas sector. The analysis focuses on the notions of (self-)responsibility and deservingness and their interrelation concerning solidarity. The paper concludes that solidarity emerged as a leading value; the success or failure of solidarity is, however, predetermined by the willingness of actors to consider the other members’ interests. This observation opens up the debate on solidarity as a behavioural norm that puts the solidarity community at the centre of attention, but equally considers rational-choice induced reflections on self-responsibility and credible commitments.

Temporary protection has been gaining ground in recent years, establishing itself as a conventional form of international protection in many jurisdictions. Most recently, as a response to the Ukrainian refugee emergency, the EU has triggered the Temporary Protection Directive, which had not been used for decades since it came into force. Many, including the UNHCR, welcomed the activation of the Directive, considering it a positive step towards the management of a large-scale refugee arrival.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: Focusing on the specific case of Ukrainian refugees, this paper explores whether the activation of the Temporary Protection Directive was in fact a fitting policy response. The paper challenges the presumed benefits of the Directive in terms of asylum solidarity. It evaluates the efficacy of the Directive against its objectives, which broadly correspond to two dimensions of asylum solidarity: solidarity towards refugees and solidarity between the Member States. The paper also seeks to provide a roadmap that outlines the best way forward in tackling refugee emergencies, by focusing on the free choice of asylum state. It explores whether free choice of asylum state can, in fact, improve asylum management in times of crisis by reflecting on the free choice model that was incidentally created through visa exemptions during Ukraine refugee emergency.

In this paper I want to offer some of my very preliminary thoughts on a possible link between border policies and climate change. Increasingly, the EU is drawing up its bridges in an attempt to secure its borders against outsiders; the paper will give a brief account of these developments.

In a next step the focus will then turn to the normative concept of responsibility which I draw upon in order to call this practice into question. In particular the question which I want to examine is whether the EU can have responsibilities beyond its own boundaries and under what circumstances this may be the case. The field of my analysis will be climate change and the question which I hope to answer is whether the EU may have obligations in relation to refugees when they migrate because of changed living conditions in their respective home countries.