The European Council on Foreign Relations

ECFR This Week: 17th February 2012

Date: 17th February 2012  |  Author: Andreas Mullerleile, Nicholas Walton,

Categories: ECFR this week ,
Tags: , kosovo, merkozy, syria, ecfr scorecard, europe

Following the publication of ECFR’s Foreign Policy Scorecard 2012 we are running a series of blog posts covering many of the events we’re holding across Europe (and beyond) to discuss its findings. Hans Kundnani asked how smaller countries can punch above their weight while in Sofia – something also asked by Mark Leonard in Stockholm (Sweden was one of the Scorecard’s star performers). Hans also wrote a piece from Berlin. More events and more blog posts are on their way!

Over the last week we also published two more podcast interviews with the authors of different sections – Justin Vaisse talking about the EU’s relations with the US, and Richard Gowan on why Europe’s top score (again) was in the Multilateral Relations section.

Elsewhere:

• Mark Leonard is wondering whether Europeans will ever get their act together on security - an argument that has also been made by Nick Witney who called on Europe to reform its military capabilities. 
• Our Reinvention of Europe debate continues with two short essays from Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos and Paweł Świeboda.
• Richard Gowan writes about the EU’s strategy at the UN and a surprising moral victory for the EU over Syria.
• Dimitar Bechev blogs about a controversial referendum in Northern Kosovo.
• Nika Prislan and José Ignacio Torreblanca explain why EU member states increasingly use geoeconomics in their foreign policies.
• Ulrike Guérot blogs about Merkozy’s potential for transnational democracy and why we should watch our language when talking about Europe’s crisis.
• Our Madrid office put up a Spanish podcast on the future of Europe with Cristina Garmendia, Manuel Marín, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo and José Ignacio Torreblanca.
• China, meanwhile, is in the midst of a serious corruption scandal with major implications for both its future economic path and this year’s crucial leadership battle. It involves Bo Xilai, the princeling and face of the ‘Chongqing model’ – to understand why this matters so much in China and the rest of the world, take another look at this China Analysis that we published in the autumn.

That’s it for this week. You can follow us on twitter @ecfrheadlines or ‘like’ us on Facebook. Some of our national offices are also on twitter now, so make sure you follow @ECFRParis, @ECFRRoma, @ECFRMadrid and @ECFR_Warsaw. We also compiled a handy list of individual ECFR experts on twitter which can be found here. Our podcasts can be found on iTunes, and you can subscribe to our free email round up of the best articles on the Middle East and North Africa.

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