This paper focuses on the European Union’s humanitarian aid policy and more particularly on the contemporary types of collaboration practices between the European Commission’s Office for Humanitarian Aid (DG ECHO) and local NGOs. Considering the recent global dynamics composing the international humanitarian aid, the EU is also struck by the growing importance of collaborating with local partners when implementing the aid in the field. The ‘localisation’ of the aid, understood as empowering local partners (NGOs) in affected countries to lead and deliver humanitarian aid, is depicted as an answer to inefficient aid. Indeed, given the growing number and complexity of crises, localisation offers a comprehensive answer to them. However, and mainly due to the difficulty to adopt such an approach, little evidence in the field supports this claim of a growing importance of localisation from DG ECHO. The paper answers the following question: To what extent has DG ECHO developed in the last decade its types of collaboration practices towards NGOs to localise its humanitarian aid policy? The triangulation of official documents and a dozen of semi-structured interviews analyses the phenomenon of localisation and its recent evolution in the EU’s humanitarian policymaking. By applying a Social Network Analysis, the paper performs a mapping of this policy to study the network and to comprehend the importance of local NGOs in the implementation of the aid in terms of number and strength of connections with DG ECHO. By focusing on the relationship between DG ECHO and local NGOs, this paper has a twofold purpose: firstly, to contribute to the recent academic field on the analysis of the depth and nature of interactions (fundings, exchange of information, etc.) between these two types of actors; secondly, to further contribute to the understanding of the global concept of ‘localisation’ as an answer to inefficient aid.

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has acquired long-standing experience in investing in fragile and conflict-affected countries. Its focus on these contexts received additional impetus due to the Russian aggression against Ukraine. In 2022, the EIB adopted its first-ever Strategic Approach to Fragility and Conflict. Despite these commitments, it is somewhat puzzling that development finance institutions (DFIs) such as the EIB engage in country contexts that bear a high risk for their investments.

Addressing this puzzle, the paper examines the bank's comprehension of fragility and explores potential remedies, focusing on the instruments accessible to a financial institution. The paper delves into the bank's conceptualization of its role in conflict-affected and fragile environments, drawing a comparison between the strategic rhetoric and the practical implementation of its lending operations on the ground. Centering on the EIB's lending activities in two fragile or conflict-affected countries, namely Ukraine and Ethiopia, the paper further explores how the EIB implements EU policy mandates and contributes to the EU's engagement in these contexts.

The paper’s contribution to existing research is twofold. First, the paper enhances the academic discourse on international development finance institutions in conflict-affected and fragile states, particularly given the increasing importance of these institutions in international cooperation. Second, the paper adds to the existing literature on the EU’s approach to conflict prevention and peacebuilding in fragile and conflict-affected states by providing a novel perspective on an actor that has been overlooked in that strand of research so far.

The success of populist radical right parties in the EU has raised questions about the direction of the European Union and the Western liberal order. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to tensions between the two most successful populist radical right parties, Fidesz and PiS, and to a softening of the anti-Western rhetoric in SDS and FdI. Research on populist foreign policy has mostly focused on populism as a broader phenomenon and analysed populist governments’ and parties' foreign policy through case studies (Destradi, Cadier & Plagemann, 2021). We focus on the populist radical right because it is becoming a major actor in the EU and is playing an increasing role in national and European foreign policy. Therefore, we analyse all populist radical right prime minister’s parties in the EU. We use the PopuList database (Rooduijn et al. 2019) for the classification of parties as populist radical right. In order of coming to power, these are Hungarian Fidesz (2010-), Polish PiS (2015-2023), Slovenian SDS (2020-2022) and Italian FdI (2022-). By analysing these parties’ histories, manifestos and leaders’ speeches, we compare their attitudes towards foreign affairs, with a particular focus on their positions on two wars that are perceived as disrupting the international world order. We use both diachronic and synchronic comparisons. In order to show changes in each populist radical right prime minister party, we examine their attitudes before and after coming to power and before and after significant events, i.e. the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the 2023 Israel–Hamas war. We also analyse the differences between these parties’ statements and decisions regarding these two wars.

The paper tries to analyse why some populist radical right leaders have reacted differently to the War in Ukraine and the 2023 Israel–Hamas war? Or, to put it more bluntly why does Orbán’s Fidesz differ from other populist radical right parties in its positions on these two wars? We argue that idiosyncratic ideologies within the populist radical right ideology, the geopolitical positioning of their countries, the durability of their regimes, and different visions of history all play a role in solving this puzzle.

Developing a novel theoretical conceptualization of hostage-taking as a strategy within EU bargaining, this article explores how the Hungarian government under Viktor Orbán has used foreign policy issues within the CFSP and NATO as a leverage with the aim to gain concessions in its rule-of-law dispute with EU institutions. Yet, in the particular institutional context of EU policymaking, we argue that Hungary has thus far opted for a strategy of what we call “soft hostage-taking”. In so doing, the Hungarian government has sought to avoid the public impression to explicitly instrumentalize key foreign policy decisions like Sweden´s NATO membership, sanctions against Russia, or aid packages to Ukraine and opening accession negotiations, relying on what we call “soft-hostage taking” that refrains from explicit issue linkage. Hungary’s soft hostage-taking approach has allowed key EU institutions like the European Commission, to engage in a constructive manner with Hungary. Whilst the EU has on the one hand stepped up the pressure on Hungary by (threatening) financial sanctions, it has left the door open for reconciliatory gestures whilst carefully avoiding them to appear as compromises regarding its constitutional principles. The paper speaks in important ways to works on post-accession conditionality, research on inter-institutional overlap, and scholarship on the role of populist parties in government on EU foreign policymaking.

What explains MEPs’ positions on the foreign policy of the European Union? We compare how MEPs debate the EU’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and annexation of Crimea in 2014. Considering that these events have alarmed East Europeans who perceive these events as existential threat to their national security, we juxtapose national and party characteristics using an original dataset of hand-coded speeches of MEPs in the EP debates. We use role theory as a framework for analysis and explore how MEPs conceive of the EU’s international role. We first identified what roles scholars assign to the EU in the literature and divided them into two categories: roles driven by values, e.g., normative, transformative, or ethical powers; and roles driven by material capabilities, e.g., military, or civilian powers. We then coded 12 EP debates and inductively identified a third role – inert power Europe, which is prevalent among radical right and left MEPs and is based on the idea that the EU should not intervene in other states’ bilateral relations. We measure and explain role salience and role preference. Role salience is an outcome variable describing the percentage of coded segments falling under each of the three roles for an individual MEP, while role preference is a single role that has the highest share of coded segments in each MEP’s speeches. We use OLS regression and multinomial regression to analyze the two variables respectively. We find that EP party group is a significant predictor for both outcome variables, while characteristics of MEPs’ countries and national parties do not matter. Furthermore, in 2022, MEPs reflect not only on how to help Ukraine but also on what reforms the EU needs to undertake to become a stronger international actor in the “new world” that the Russian invasion has created.