The European Council on Foreign Relations

ECFR This Week: 3rd February 2012

Date: 3rd February 2012  |  Author: Andreas Mullerleile, Nicholas Walton,

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Just how effective was European foreign policy over the last year? That was the big question asked by the second annual ECFR European Foreign Policy Scorecard, which was published this week. The Scorecard looked at 80 individual components within six broad issues – China, Middle East/North Africa, the US, Russia, Wider Europe and Multilateral issues. Its experts then analysed European performance and handed out scores.

The bad news is that Europe’s performance was once again underwhelming. There were some brighter areas (for instance on Climate Change and Trade Liberalisation with Russia), but many dark spots (relations with China on human rights and with Turkey again received the worst marks).

Click here to visit the interactive web version of the Scorecard– this year with added maps!

As well as sections covering each issue and each of the 80 components, we also have individual pages for each of the 27 member states. We have also introduced categories of ‘leader’ and ‘slacker’, so it’s clear who is pushing a policy and who is holding it up. This year it was clear that Sweden and Poland were emerging as the new middleweight champions, much to the delight of Radek Sikorski and Carl Bildt!

Click here to visit the multimedia section, with audio interviews with authors of all sections, plus interviews with the leading authors, Hans Kundnani and Justin Vaisse, in French, German and English.

We also have quite a few Scorecard events planned, in Europe and beyond (many of them are public). Visit our Events page for more details.

Elsewhere:

• We have two more posts in our ‘Reinventing Europe’ series. The first was from Charles S Maier ('The British can imagine that their banks will suffice, the Germans their autos, but such comparative advantage can dissipate quickly. I’d as soon wager on Greek beaches.').
• The second was from Georg Sørensen(‘the present euro crisis has less to do with European cooperation and more to do with member states that are fragile, ineffective, have serious corruption problems…’) You can follow the ‘Reinventing  Europe’ series on our website or on storify. Feel free to join the debate by leaving a comment or writing a blog post.
• What are the diplomatic options to address the situation in Syria? Julien Barnes-Dacey argues that the international community should embrace a recent Russian proposal to host a peace conference.
• Is 2012 the year of the ‘European Republic’? Ulrike Guérot is optimistic and argues that only ‘more Europe’ can solve the current eurocrisis.
• Dimitar Bechev assesses the outcome of this week’s European Council and wonders whether ‘New Europe’ is disappearing.
• ECFR also published several podcasts over the last week. Our Mardrid office put out two podcasts in Spanish: an interview with MEP Raül Romeva and another one with Gabriel de Cáceres on the first anniversary of the EEAS. On our English podcast Nicholas Walton talks with Simon Winder about his latest book ‘Germania’.

As well as two more Reinvention blog posts, next week we will also be publishing the first in our series of essays on the national debates on the crisis and the Reinvention of Europe, beginning with Poland. In the meantime, you can follow us on twitter @ecfrheadlines. We also compiled a handy list of individual ECFR experts which can be found here.We are also on Facebook and iTunes, and you can also subscribe to our free email round up of the best articles on the Middle East and North Africa.

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