Conference Agenda

In the aftermath of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Britain has reconsidered the priorities set in its strategic documents. The 2023 Integrated Review refresh aimed to rebalance Britain’s immediate post-Brexit ‘tilt’ to the Indo-Pacific and the country’s aspiration to reinforce bonds with Anglosphere countries in the region.

The country’s involvement in the security of the Euro-Atlantic area has since been revived, and the British government has displayed renewed interest for stronger cooperation with European allies, especially in the Nordic-Baltic area. Besides, the UK has once again defined itself as ‘the nearest neighbour to the Arctic region’ in its 2023 Arctic Policy Framework. With the militarisation of Russia’s arctic policy and the multiplication of actors with potentially conflicting political and economic interests in the region, the UK has sought to reinforce its presence in the Arctic, as well as in the Nordic-Baltic region.

Conversely, Russia’s attitude has reinforced Nordic and Baltic states’ reliance on NATO and their involvement in a variety of bilateral and minilateral cooperation formats, such as the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF).

This paper thus aims to analyse the possible tensions between the UK’s post-Brexit aspiration to reinforce bonds with the ‘Anglosphere’ and the prevalence of security interests within a ‘Eurosphere’. I will examine the UK’s role in Nordic-Baltic security and seek to assess whether close security relations with the states of the region also reflect enduring shared interests and values that could simultaneously lead to include the UK within a ‘Wider North’ and to consider Nordic-Baltic states as members of a larger Anglosphere.

Since the United Kingdom (UK)’s departure from the European Union (EU), Euro-British cooperation on security and defence appears uncertain and problematic. In the field of foreign intelligence, observers speculate about the current and future state of the relationship: the UK appears less influential, while the EU has lost a prominent Member State at a time when its foreign policymaking relies on enhancing shared strategic intelligence.
This article approaches the EU’s intelligence framework from a network analysis perspective, in a longitudinal study that compares the UK’s ties with the EU structures before and after Brexit. It unveils how intelligence cooperation consists of a multitude of relationships on three levels: interpolity relations, interorganizational ones, and interpersonal exchanges among practitioners. Through semi-structured elite interviews with security and intelligence professionals, it explores how these ties have changed with Brexit and how trust, resilience, and the UK’s departure are understood differently on each level of interaction.
The data show how the EU’s intelligence network presents various degrees of resistance to change, depending on the level of ties under study. Each presents different priorities and needs, the understanding of which is crucial for European and British policymakers for future security negotiations. This article contends that, despite the British position appearing less central since Brexit, its informal linkages with the EU at interorganization and inter-personal level ensure that London remains an influential player in the European intelligence stage. Moreover, the proposed differentiation of ties (interpolity, interorganizational, interpersonal) advances the application of network analysis to the broader field of international relations, allowing more insight in terms of tie formation and network evolution.

In the last few years, European counties have securitized China’s economic presence into a threat to their economic security. While existing studies have focused on the key securitizing actors such as think tanks (e.g. Rogelja and Tsimonis 2019) and the securitization moves from the key EU member states such as Germany (e.g. Cai and Efastathopoulos 2023), few has looked into the different types of threats that China is claimed to pose. This article uses the British case to show how China’s economic presence is constructed as threatening the UK’s economic security in five ways: economic coercion; dependence; investment to control British infrastructure and technology; distortion of market and competition; state capitalism and subsidiary. As a result, the referent objects change accordingly: state sovereignty; political autonomy; economic survival; fairness in market; authoritarian model of capitalism. The securitization is made possible by a coalition of British leaders, parliamentarians (e.g. Foreign Affairs Committee), pressure group (e.g. the China Research Group), newspapers (The Times and The Telegraph), and think tanks (Henry Jackson Society and Policy Exchange). In conclusion, the attention to the British case makes two contributions. First, it highlights the complexity of securitization in the economic sector. The referent objects in need of protection goes significantly beyond wellbeing/wealth, as opposed to Buzan et al. Second, it shows how the line between securitizing actor and audience can be blurred.

Ongoing global geopolitical developments underscore the urgency for the European Union to effectively navigate non-traditional security threats related to its Green Transition. The EU has paid increasing attention to critical energy and green technology supply chains, with China, a pivotal source of critical minerals and green tech components, sparking considerable debate.

Scholarly literature identifies a significant shift in China's environmental policy narratives. What was once considered an external topic to be discussed in multilateral fora has become integral to China's socio-economic development under the 'New Normal' paradigm, through a shift from a pollution-intensive, growth-at-any-cost model to a resource-efficient and sustainable one, culminating in the adoption of the ‘environmental civilization’ paradigm. The New Normal model emphasizes self-sufficiency and technological innovation in green industries, raising concerns in the EU and elsewhere regarding potential monopolies, overdependency, and intellectual property, among others.

This paper explores the dynamic evolution of Chinese environmental policy narratives and their potential security implications for the EU. It first presents the findings from a comprehensive content analysis of Chinese environmental policies spanning from the adoption of the UNFCCC (1992) to 2023. Keywords selected on the basis of frequency per million words are diachronically analysed in order to determine how China’s environmental priorities have changed. The second section contrasts these findings with the EU's current Green Transition imperatives, assessing the potential impact of China’s new priorities on the Union’s ability to combat non-traditional threats related to environmental issues, and any broader security implications.