Contemporary European Politics最新文献

For many years, the European Commission (EC) has been envisioning integration of drones into civilian airspace. This vision entails scalable drone operations in the European civil airspace for commercial and private purposes such as inspection, urban mobility, logistics and so forth. In such regard, one finds various European declarations, strategies and regulations around civilian drones. Most recently, in late 2022, the EC adopted the ‘Drone Strategy 2.0 for a Smart and Sustainable Unmanned Aircraft Eco-System in Europe’ (Drone Strategy) with an aim to create a drone ecosystem for sustainable future mobility. Around half a year later, the European Union (EU) Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) passed the ‘EASA AI Roadmap 2.0 Human-Centric Approach to AI in Aviation’ (AI Roadmap) outlining future challenges and opportunities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the European aviation sector, including civilian drones. Common in both instruments is a time-bound vision: whereas the Drone Strategy envisions various facets of drone normalization to manifest in 2030, the AI Roadmap produces a timeline (2019–2050+) reflecting the planned standardization of AI systems and their approvals. Another common feature is AI because the prevailing state of drone technology shows a growing reliance on AI systems. It thus becomes imperative to read them in conjunction, as drone normalization is dependent on the regulatory approvals of such systems. Such political and legal analysis, as conducted in this article, shows a glaring inconsistency between the two visions.

The inconsistency in different policies on the same point puts into question the institutional coherence within the EU, an idea that refers to a situation where ‘a single policy area is served by two set of actors and their different procedures’ (Marangoni & Raube, 2014, p. 475). As discussed in the succeeding section, drones form part of various European policy agendas, such as sustainability, green transition, security and defence, and urban mobility. Therefore, the alignment of visions around its integration ought to be well-tuned. A lack of consistency in such regard raises questions around political harmony amongst different institutions and their priorities, which may hinder different political agendas.

This article begins by briefly introducing the two instruments through separate sections. In the subsequent section, I highlight the inconsistency between them by also touching upon the current state of drone technology. The concluding section then summarizes the findings and points to future implications of such inconsistency.

The Drone Strategy 2.0 was released in November 2022 by the Directorate-General Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE), the DG in the EC with the political portfolio of mobility and transport, with the collaboration of different stakeholders. The instrument is also backed by a working staff document containing studies and surveys regarding drones.

Welcome to Contemporary European Politics, a new open-access journal in the field of European politics jointly sponsored by Wiley and the University Association of Contemporary European Studies. The journal is devoted to promoting original research and insightful debate in contemporary European politics by publishing academic articles, research comments and policy analysis covering European politics both within and beyond the European Union.

In a crowded publishing landscape, our ambition as editors is to provide a space which both encourages and celebrates the diversity of scholarship on European politics. There are three interrelated dimensions to this diversity. The first is around disciplinarity. Drawing on our roots as European studies scholars, we recognise the need to look beyond the disciplinary boundaries of political science if we are to understand European politics more broadly. Over recent years, there has been a growing body of literature which has critically reflected on the state of the discipline of European politics, and has called for a more active incorporation of other disciplines and voices which provide important context or offer new insights into how political processes operate (e.g., David et al., 2017; Manners & Rosamond, 2018; Rosamond, 2007, 2016). Contemporary European Politics is very much rooted in this multi-disciplinary tradition. We therefore not only welcome submissions from the field of politics, but also disciplines such as law, international relations, public administration, policy, economics, history, cultural studies and a range of others where these can further understanding of European political processes.

The second dimension of diversity which we seek to promote is with our authors. On the one hand we recognise a significant gender gap persists in journal publishing in European politics, both in terms of authors submitting papers and within the review process (see Haastrup et al., 2022; Stockemer et al., 2020). We also recognise many early career scholars often face barriers in publishing their research. Contemporary European Politics is therefore committed to providing a forum for emerging scholars of European politics by allowing them to present their ideas alongside those of more established scholars. Contributions from PhD students in the advanced phase of their doctoral research, postdoctoral fellows, and academics in the early stages of their careers are particularly encouraged. The journal provides a valuable addition to current provision in this area, both in its mission to actively promote diversity in academic debate and in its accessibility to early career researchers. We strive to provide a platform for new voices to change the terms of how we discuss European politics and act as a stepping-stone for those voices to develop their full potential.

The third dimension of di

This article argues that the COVID-19 pandemic has incited the collision of norms in sectoral European Union (EU) governance and provided an open juncture for the European Commission to engage in norm reconfiguration. Herewith, the paper expands the conceptual scope of EU-related norm research, which by focussing on the diffusion of norms within and beyond the EU has largely omitted dynamic perspectives on norms so far. We combine International Relations norm research with EU governance literature to scrutinise the normative underpinnings of the immediate crisis response within Commission sectoral strategies and working programs. Empirically, the paper focuses on the higher education and transport sectors, which have been particularly impacted by the COVID-19 crisis and targeted by the EU crisis response. The interpretative-qualitative analysis uncovers COVID-19-related collisions within the ideational constellation of EU governance and shows that the European Commission has engaged in different reconfiguration practices, potentially altering the norm constellation in the investigated sectoral governance areas.

The Ukraine crisis brings European Union (EU) refugee policy into the spotlight. Temporary protection for Ukrainian refugees was granted under Directive 2001/55/EC—a directive that had never been applied until 2022. This article seeks to explain why a directive that had not been used for 20 years was now applied. Our argument rests on liberal intergovernmentalism: Conflicts between countries with high and low migration pressure dominated negotiations in the Council of Ministers. These intergovernmental conflicts were not solved but built into the wording of the Directive. Each attempt to apply the Directive triggered a new round of intergovernmental conflict. However, in the Ukraine crisis, the cost–benefit calculation of the countries that had hitherto opposed application of the Directive changed, because they received most of the refugees. Hence, a policy window opened, and the Commission could use old ‘dormant’ legislation to further integration.