Recent years have seen an increase in the usage and normalisation of ‘anti-gender discourse’ across Europe, including by those ostensibly on the left-wing of the political spectrum. This paper would explore the construction of these discourses, focusing in particular on the political landscape of the UK as a case study.  It will seek to explain why these discourses have become so politically salient in the UK to a point where restrictive legal guidance and laws have been issued to curtail the rights of trans people, national news channels are able to refer to trans individuals by their assigned sex at birth without being challenged, and multiple international human rights bodies and NGOs have identified the UK as being a country of concern with respect to LGBTQI+ rights (including the Council of Europe, Human Rights Watch, Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security, and ILGA-Europe). It will use process-tracing and political discourse analysis to attempt to establish the causal mechanisms behind such a trajectory.

This project investigates whether the political discourse of Germany’s far-right party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and the mainstream centre-right Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU) has converged or diverged across the 2017 and 2025 federal elections. Party leader posts on X (formerly Twitter) are collected from the one-month period preceding each election. The study employs a comparative longitudinal qualitative analysis of 296 tweets using a codebook. The analysis, conducted in Excel and presented through graphs, reveals that convergence is more present than divergence in several categories: Legitimation strategies, General discourse strategies, Populist discourse strategies and Twitter-specific messaging enhancements. The latter includes original insights into the strategic use of platform-native features such as emojis or hashtags previously underexplored. Notably, convergence came from both AfD and CDU’s sides. The only category showing overall divergence is that of Policy issues, going against previous literature. In particular, the CDU’s reduced emphasis on Immigration contrasts with scholars’ view that mainstream parties increase anti-immigration rhetoric to recapture votes. This research may imply the normalisation and legitimation of far-right attitudes and discourse. However, future research would need to assess the public reception of these shifts to determine the accuracy of this implication.

The study focuses on maritime security in the Baltic Sea, interactions of multiple actors in the

region, including NATO, the European Union, Russia and China, an issue that has gained

heightened significance following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, where the paper

identifies overlooked hybrid defence and maritime infrastructure proposals within the Baltic

Sea region.

This research primarily employs a qualitative methodology, drawing on descriptive and non–

numeric data. It focuses on policy documents issued by NATO and the EU concerning security

in the Baltic Sea, as well as statements delivered at the Allies Summit last January 2025.

Furthermore, the research aims to conduct a comprehensive examination of the policy positions

and statements articulated by both NATO / EU and Russia regarding their strategic intentions

in the Baltic Sea region. The study analyses these communications and explores the underlying

relationships between the actors, maintaining a focus on contemporary security considerations

without delving extensively into historical context.

The research contains primary and secondary sources and incorporates grey literature to

provide a more comprehensive and multi–perspective analysis. It emphasises the use of

primary sources, as this approach enhances the reliability and validity of the findings. It

provides background on significant developments in the Baltic region, including incidents such

as Nord Stream 1 and 2, gas link disruptions, and other events that have heightened attention

to maritime security in recent years. Given that some of these incidents have been attributed by

media reports and NATO to actions by Russia and China, the research aims to examine their

impact on the security and strategic interests of the states benefiting from the Baltic Sea.

Additionally, the study includes multiple allied forums and considers the perspectives of

Russia, with a detailed examination of the policies and interests of each side, where it examines

Baltic Sea states and their allies envision the future of the region, assess implemented policy

initiatives and evaluate their potential effectiveness and implications for regional security.

Particular attention is given to proposals that were not adopted, in order to identify

opportunities for improvement and potential incorporation into new policies with updated implementation measures, while avoiding actions that could provoke confrontation with Russia

Two countries, Serbia and Georgia, that officially still are candidates for EU membership are facing massive waves of public protest. They are not only challenging autocratic practices of their own governments, but also the way how the EU shapes its enlargement policy. While protesters in Serbia have already become more sobered about what the EU does to protect their freedom of expression and back their demands, their Georgian counterparts are still speaking out in favour of EU-accession. The EU, in turn, is caught by its own lurching course between geopolitical and transactional considerations, paired with the efforts to uphold its identity as a normative actor by, for example, presenting its new Democracy Shield in November 2025. The paper will present insights on the interactional dynamics between protesters and EU institutions based on an in-depth document analysis and interviews. It will provide an understanding of policy-formation inside the EU, how this helps (or not) to support democratic resilience in countries with candidate status, creating a transnational arena, and how these processes influence the extent to which the social movements can uphold the support of their societies.

Civilian CSDP missions are one of the EU’s principal operational crisis management tools. With the main aims of promoting stability and security and building resilience in fragile environments, the missions conduct a broad range of activities such as monitoring, border security, supporting the reforms of the police, criminal and justice systems, with a focus human rights and the Rule of Law.

Among other events, the start of the conflict in Ukraine in February 2022 has raised questions about the future of Civilian CSDP missions in the European Eastern neighbourhood. Yet, over three years after, EUAM has actually confirmed its strategic importance for the EU. Even more, it has shown the levels of interdependence between the EU and the states of the region while highlighting the significance of other missions and their impact in different aspects, like energy, migration and security.

While this is going to be a long road, many steps have already been taken through a process of Europeanization: motivated to embark on the road of economic and democratic reforms in order to meet the criteria to get close to the EU, countries like Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia have all seen the deployment of a CSDP mission on their territories.

But are these missions sustainable for the EEAS? While the EEAS holds the crucial role to guide, support and monitor changes these countries, on the other side, leadership's decisions and communication in the new Rearm era are going to be crucial to foster trust, values and credibility.

This paper will assess two sets of elements: firstly, the key challenges and implications for the durability of the missions and, secondly, the Easter region integration in the EU’s policies in the medium to longer term.