Jan-Werner Müller in "Foreign Policy": on Angela Merkel and the "decisive moment ... not just for the EU, but also for Christian Democracy"

Network member Jan-Werner Müller (Princeton) has published a new piece in Foreign Policy entitled "Angela Merkel’s Misunderstood Christian Mission".  The opening paragraphs are below and the remainder of the article can be found here.

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Angela Merkel is in the curious position of having become one of Europe’s moral leaders without ever clearly articulating the real moral dimensions of her decisions. Her emphatic “We can do this” (Wir schaffen das) in response to the arrival in Germany of hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers has attained the status of a sort of proverb in that country. But she has never otherwise been one for rousing speeches that set out political visions. The sordid details of the deal that she helped seal on Friday with an increasingly repressive Turkey to help control the flow of migrants to the continent has also done little to burnish her reputation as a moral visionary.

But Merkel’s negotiations with Turkey can only be properly considered in the context of the broader moral campaign that she has been waging. It has not always been easy to perceive the distinctly religious aspect of her political agenda, but that does not mean it hasn’t been there. Like few others on the continent, Merkel seems to understand this is a decisive moment not just for Germany, and for the EU, but also for Christian Democracy, one of Europe’s leading governing ideologies of the post-war era.

[continue reading here]

Emilia Korkea-aho on Third-Country Lobbying in the EU

Network member Kenneth Armstrong (Cambridge) has written to let us know that friend of the network Emilia Korkea-aho (Helsinki) has just published a piece on third-country lobbying in the European Union in the Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies.  Entitled "Mr Smith Goes to Brussels: Third-Country Lobbying and the Making of EU Law and Policy," the article traces the role and significance of third-country involvement in the shaping of EU norms and decisions.  

The abstract is below; the full version can be found online here for the next month.  A recommendation form for institutional subscriptions to the CYELS can be found here.

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The EU’s openness towards stakeholders is central to the legitimacy of its law-making. With the rapid globalization of EU legislative activities, openness towards actors from third countries requires analysis. With reference to the notion of ‘lobbying’, this article outlines a framework for identifying the role of third country actors in EU policy processes. The two arguments brought forward suggest that third country lobbying is facilitated by the openness of Union law- and policy-making, and that third country actors contribute to EU decision-making at all stages. The article concludes with a set of questions that third country lobbying raises concerning the EU’s legitimate law-making authority in Europe and beyond.