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In December 2025, the European Council approved a €90 bn loan to cover Ukraine’s financing needs for 2026–2027, backed by the EU budget headroom. This marked a pragmatic turn after the initial proposal to leverage €210 bn in immobilised assets from the Central Bank of Russia for a Reparations Loan encountered insurmountable resistance. Belgium, as host to most of the assets, demanded unlimited gua
The topic of Nord Stream 2 was a centrepiece of many discussions about reliance on Russia despite its dubious actions against Ukraine since 2014. The decision to construct the pipeline in 2015 and continue it despite many objections from both inside and outside of the European Union in the following years only fed the discourse. This thesis asks the following Research Question: To what extent can
This thesis examines how the Nordic Council constructs and employs narrative within its implementation of Agenda 2030 as a means of strengthening its ontological security and collective sense of self. This approach implies that security is not only a product of material protection rather also a product of interpretive coherence. The Agenda 2030 is treated as a tool that frames complex policy quest
This thesis analyses and evaluates youth participation within the EU and to what extent, and under what conditions the EU´s youth participation mechanisms provide young citizens with efficient tools for political influence. To research the link between the mechanisms aimed at their effectiveness, this thesis uses a deliberative democracy framework as well as three dimensions based on Archon Fung´s
This thesis is about how the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has propelled competence creep forward in the European Union by consistently applying a broad interpretation of EU law to social policy court rulings. To derive these results, 180 social policy cases were analyzed and coded using systematic content analysis, transforming qualitative data into quantifiable data. The analysis
Sweden joined the EU defence framework Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) upon its inception at the end of 2017. With its tradition of scepticism towards EU defence integration and history of non-alignment this was a significant step for Sweden. This thesis will follow earlier analyses of the EUs defence cooperation and tests Sweden’s membership against the theory of Liberal Intergovernmenta
Switzerland operates one of the strictest regimes regulating posted work in Europe, going beyond what EU law requires in several aspects. Based on Switzerland's interpretation of the Posted Work Directive, it introduced the so-called Flanking Measures, which regulates posted work in Switzerland, and despite posing burdensome administrative costs, limited market access, and potentially high fin
The notion that a unified EU is a more effective Union is a prominent, but contested assumption within the field of EU external action. But how relevant is the EU’s unity for the attainment of its foreign policy objectives? For issues of political salience, such as migration, EU unity carries particular relevance. This thesis asks: to what extent does the European Union’s level of cohesiveness aff
Since the introduction of temporary internal border controls in the Öresund region the threats to public policy and internal security have had many faces. Threats moved from being placed under the climate security sector, to the social sector and most notably, the military sector. The Swedish and Danish governments have continuously securitized threats ranging from the Covid-19 pandemic, to terror
Over the last few decades, changes have been observed in the Swedish defence and security identity. While countless studies have examined the reason behind this transformation, identifying factors such as external shocks, ontological security and role theory, the normative dimension of this development has received less attention. This thesis therefore examines whether the Swedish defence and secu
The EU's Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), a crisis response of 673 billion euro to the Covid-19 pandemic, made it possible to reward reforms in Member States for the first time. This thesis investigates whether the RRF can promote structural reforms, in line with the Eu-ropean Semester's Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs), using a principal-agent framework to theorise the RRF’s
European agriculture is shaped by technical debates whose implications are deeply political. When the European Commission decides on the safety of an agricultural technique, it is settling a scientific question whilst also making a political choice: which knowledge matters, which risks deserve attention, and which futures are worth investing in. This thesis analyses the evolution of the European C
This thesis investigates the role of EU accession in shaping the mobilisation strategies of anti-gender civil society actors in Croatia. Drawing on social movement theory, Europeanisation, and multi-level governance, it develops a causal mechanism whereby EU accession reconfigured anti-gender actors’ political opportunity structures in ways that contributed to a combination of EU-critical framing
This thesis explores how Brussels-based EU-affairs media discursively construct and contest sustainability conditionality and enforcement in reporting on the EU–Mercosur Association Agreement (EUMAA). It situates these mechanisms within the EU’s broader use of trade agreements to pursue non-trade policy objectives related to EU values and standards. Drawing on postcolonial and decolonial theory, i
This thesis analyzes speeches given by US state legislators when debating paid parental leave legislation. In the 2019 legislative session Colorado and Nebraska both proposed paid parental leave legislation, although only Colorado was able to pass the legislation. Using Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis and three-dimensional analysis alongside framing theory, this research identifies the fr
This thesis examines the Netherlands as a deviant case in the cooperation networks of the Council of the European Union. Drawing on seven waves of the Negotiations in the Council of the European Union dataset (2003-2021), it documents a trajectory more complex than the existing literature recognizes: a positive size-adjusted residual (overperformance) in every wave combined with a sustained declin
On the EU’s path towards climate neutrality in 2050, green hydrogen has emerged as a crucial energy carrier to support decarbonization. Despite growing academic attention, there is a lack of literature critically engaging with green hydrogen projects from a postcolonial perspective. Focusing on renewable energy as an external dimension of the Green Deal, this thesis asks: How does the EU-Morocco ‘
Although Cyprus and Spain initially emerged as the strongest opponents of engaging with Kosovo, driven by fears over the implications for their independence movements, their practices have since unexpectedly diverged. Therefore, the following research question is posed: What factors explain the differences in Cyprus's and Spain's engagement with Kosovo since its declaration of independence
This thesis provides an in-depth exploration of how the EU’s resilience-building initiatives for the Eastern Neighbourhood have evolved against Russian hybrid threats since 2022. Russian invasion of Ukraine significantly altered the security order on the continent, reshaping the EU’s perception of its own security. In response to increased hybrid threats, the EU has employed extraordinary regulato
This thesis investigates the extent to which the European Commission has emerged as a meaningful actor in the European security landscape by examining its response to Russian hybrid threats in the Baltic Sea Region in an increasingly uncertain geopolitical landscape marked by the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Has the role of the Commission fundamentally changed? Does the Commission continue to operate
