Conference Agenda

That migration is high on the EU’s agenda is not contested, as is the fact that its salience has been on the rise in almost all the Member States. Yet, over recent years the European Union has emphasized a ‘strategic’ dimension of migration: coexisting with other facets of migration, this strategic vision has been accompanied by a narrative accentuating the use of migration as a ‘hybrid threat’ by hostile powers as well as the urgent need for the development of specific tools to cope. The combination of distinctive geopolitical challenges with the plan for the Pact on Migration and Asylum as one of the 2019 Commission's top priorities has created the moment for the progression of this strategic dimension. Does this mean that the EU is capable of and has in fact geopoliticized migration? That is, can we talk of a veritable geopolitical turn? The EU has certainly adopted a more forceful and geopolitically-flavoured language on migration, alluding to the prevention of malevolent uses and their disruptive effects on the Union and the Member States. Policies have followed on, even though their drivers cannot entirely be associated with a geopolitical awakening. Yet, disclaimers are required: the arguments raised and the policies begun come with limitations (the EU’s limited capacity) and contradictions (even ontological). The manifest role of the Commission in securitizing the topic has not been matched by a veritable foundational turn in the distribution of competencies among EU institutions, limiting the reach of the geopoliticization effort.

This paper explores the recent reforms of the European Union (EU) aimed at strengthening the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing, with a focus on the creation of the new EU Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA). The article provides a comprehensive analysis of both the legal and institutional innovations introduced by the new framework, evaluating their potential impact on counter-terrorist financing (CTF) efforts across the EU. It identifies key shortcomings in the previous EU CTF measures, such as inconsistent national implementations, overreporting, and the challenges posed by de-risking practices. While the establishment of AMLA represents a significant step towards a more coordinated and harmonized approach to CTF, its success will depend on the EU’s ability to ensure the long-term implementation of not only preventive but also repressive tools in the fight against terrorist financing, which were not covered within the new EU CTF framework.

With the upcoming energy transition in the European Union, it has become clear that the process of moving away from fossil fuels hinges on the supply of critical raw materials (CRMs) used to produce the ‘green technologies’ or even on supplies of the products themselves as the manufacturing process is often located outside the countries of end-use. Effectively, the ability to increase power generation using solar PVs or wind turbines, as well as the whole process of switching from combustion engines to electromobility, depends on establishing and maintaining new supply chains, which are often partly or entirely located outside the Union, or even the so-called global North.

The ever-growing demand for renewables, batteries, and other related technologies creates new dependencies, as the supply of these materials is often concentrated in just a few geographical areas. Although the EU may gradually shed its dependence on fossil fuels, a source of concern and politicization in the past, the dependence on foreign imports of CRMs and green tech supplies presents a new potentially significant risk. In essence, the EU risks exchanging one import dependence for another.

Unfortunately for the bloc, the CRMs pose similar qualities to fossil fuels in terms of potential manipulation or outright weaponization. They, too, are unevenly distributed and possessed by just a handful of states. The high concentration of these resources would not be an outright security issue alone; however, the fact that a significant portion or even the entirety of mining, processing, and manufacturing is located in China does pose a concern. Given the country´s geopolitical and power aspirations stretching beyond southeast Asia, the EU should not rely on China being the benign and like-minded power.

With this in mind, the research sets these goals:

1. Defining features of commodity and supply chain misuse and weaponization (conducted with exerting pressure and gaining geopolitical leverage as the main purpose)
2. Developing an analytical model featuring a set of indicators identifying the presence of supply misuse and weaponization. The model is embedded in the realist IR thinking tradition and the strategic approach to energy policy.
3. Applying the model to selected case studies to gauge the presence and extent of commodity or supply chain weaponization. The case studies are intended as theory-guided, disciplined interpretative case studies focusing on individual commodities and supply chains.

The paper applies the concept of turbulence (Dobbs et al., 2021) to the case study of the climate policy of the EU. While most studies analyze how critical junctures or turbulence such as the financial crisis in 2008/2009, the COVID-19 pandemic, or Russian aggression against Ukraine influence the development of European climate policy, we ask the research question of whether the turbulence is a window of opportunity for climate policy integration in other EU policies. We analyze the influence of three types of turbulence – reorganization of the structure of the European Commission under Jean-Claude Juncker as a case of organizational turbulence; the COVID-19 pandemic as so-called environmental turbulence; and the Russian invasion of Ukraine as scalar turbulence – on the CPI in European energy policy. The paper thus contributes to three bodies of the literature – policy development and/or dismantling in the EU environmental and climate policy context, policy integration literature, and foreign interference as the European climate policy is anchored in an international context.