Conference Agenda

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 objective of this paper is to understand the influence of the European Union (EU) in the High Seas Treaty negotiations. The High Seas Treaty was adopted on 19 June 2023 after almost 20 years of negotiations. The EU participated in the discussions since the beginning in 2004. The treaty is considered as “a historic achievement” by the EU. The European Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries at that time, Virginijus Sinkevicius, declared after the adoption that “the EU played a key role” in the negotiations and that he was “very proud of our outcome”. Exploratory interviews also seem to indicate that the EU had influence in the negotiations. However, the EU’s actual extent of influence and how it has influenced the negotiations remains to be determined. This paper thus answers the following question: to what extent and how did the EU influence the negotiations? The EU’s influence will be studied at two levels: EU influence on the outcome of the negotiations (at the outcome level) and EU influence in reaching an agreement (at the process level). First, the level of EU influence will be determined through a content analysis. Then, using process-tracing, the paper will develop a causal mechanism linking the EU’s position in the constellation of interests to its level of influence. The EU’s influence will be studied from the first session of the Intergovernmental Conference in 2018, when the discussions about the text of the agreement really started. The triangulation of official documents, reports and interviews will provide data to know and explain the EU’s influence in these negotiations.

With the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), questions about the emergence of European unity in the form of a common identity have arisen. Since then, European identity debates have often come to the fore of European Union (EU) developments. The paper explores the puzzle surrounding the EU’s climate actorness, asking how the Green Deal is contributing to the European identity construction and whether we are witnessing a ‘greening’ of European normative power.
Therefore, the paper tests the EU’s green power in the policy context of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). It aims to evaluate what role the CBAM plays in the construction of European identity and how it shapes the EU’s image as a climate actor both internally and externally. The investigation of European identity formation in the case of the CBAM is significant owing to the potentially wide-ranging impact of this policy, which has not been significantly studied hitherto owing to its relative novelty. The contrasting opinions on CBAM by third countries (non-EU member states), understood broadly as dissatisfaction with its present design, puts the issue of European identity as normative power at the heart of the policy debate. The paper adopts qualitative research methods with a single case study design. The analysis is framed within the boundaries of multi-level and network governance that draws attention not only to how institutions shape European identity, but also how non-state actors and different stakeholders.