Suchergebnisse

Die EU-Mitgliedstaaten sind sich bewusst, dass sie ihr übergeordnetes strategisches Ziel, eine Weltordnung auf der Grundlage eines wirksamen Multilateralismus zu schaffen, nur näherkommen können, wenn sie ihre außen- und sicherheitspolitischen Bemühungen darauf ausrichten, die vielfältigen Formen prekärer Staatlichkeit zu überwinden. Aus diesem Blickwinkel wird auch deutlich, wieso die EU in ihrer Sicherheitsstrategie das Scheitern von Staaten gleichrangig neben dem Terrorismus, der Verbreitung von Massenvernichtungswaffen, Regionalkonflikten und der organisierten Kriminalität zu den Hauptbedrohungen zählt. Es kommt dabei darauf an, nicht nur die Menschenrechte zu achten und für die Grundbedürfnisse der Menschen zu sorgen, sondern sich für die Wahrung und Weiterentwicklung des Völkerrechts und der es tragenden Institutionen - allen voran der Vereinten Nationen - so einsetzen, dass eine multilaterale Weltordnung Wirklichkeit werden kann. Der vorliegende Beitrag zeigt, dass für die Staatenwelt überhaupt nur dann Erfolgsaussichten bestehen, wenn alle Staaten tatsächlich in der Lage sind, das staatliche Gewaltmonopol im Inneren "bis in den letzten Winkel" ihres Territoriums auszuüben und sich vor diesem Hintergrund verbindlich bereit erklären können, international zu kooperieren. (ICA2)

External interventions to mitigate crises or end conflicts have rarely succeeded. The EU and its member states, in particular, have repeatedly run up against their limits in the civil wars in Afghanistan, the Congo, Libya, Syria, the Sahel region and Yemen. However, the EU – if not the entire international community – have learned one lesson from their faltering peacebuilding efforts: If they are to have any chance of making a meaningful and lasting difference, they must develop and use comprehensive strategies that combine and coordinate the various tools available to diplomacy, development cooperation and security. The 29 reports presented in this book – one for each EU member state as well as one on the EU as a whole – examine how steep the learning curve has been and, accordingly, how successful these bodies have been at forming new linkages among the various actors involved in external crisis and conflict management as well as within and between their institutions and organisations. While the EU clearly still has a long way to go before it can live up to its rhetoric and become a distinct and effective actor on the foreign policy stage, small and incremental steps in reorganising institutional practise may help in narrowing the gap between words and deeds. This volume provides examples of how the EU and its member states have found new organisational structures and procedures – specifically at the headquarters level – to better organise the necessary combination and coordination of the many tools available for crisis and conflict management. These ways are then juxtaposed in a 'big picture' chapter, which also identifies best practices for successful WGA implementation.

Gefahren für die globale Sicherheit gehen heute vor allem von schwachen und zerfallenden Staaten aus. Überall dort, wo Regierungen die öffentliche Ordnung nicht mehr sicherstellen können, eskaliert nicht nur die Gewalt und leiden Menschen. Die staatsfreien Zonen werden von "warlords", international agierenden Terroristen und der organisierten Kriminalität besetzt und für ihre Ziele missbraucht. Spätestens seit den Terroranschlägen vom 11.9. stehen daher Fragen der Staats- und Nationsbildung im Zentrum der internationalen Aufmerksamkeit. Denn die Stabilität der internationalen Ordnung selbst hängt nicht zuletzt davon ab, dass ihre Bausteine, die Staaten, funktionstüchtig und belastbar sind. Das Buch untersucht exemplarisch die Ursachen für prekäre Staatlichkeit und diskutiert, wie die Europäische Union und im Weiteren die internationale Gemeinschaft den Aufbau lebensfähiger Staaten unterstützen können. Hierbei werden neben "klassischen" Ansätzen zur Staatsbildung auch andere Formen der Herrschaftsorganisation (Imperien, geteilte Souveränität, global governance) erörtert.

The European Commission's proposals for the post-2020 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are under discussion, and these cautious reform ideas have set the parameters for upcoming negotiations. CAP will continue to have a two-pillar structure of direct payments and rural development, with a seven-year budget of €365 billion. As before, almost three-quarters of the budget - €265 billion - is reserved for direct payments to farmers. However, 'European added value' must be urgently applied to CAP, say Friedrich Heinemann and Stefani Weiss, who have developed a series of recommendations to justify direct payments in their latest report for EconPol.

[...] Die vorliegende explorative Studie wurde von der Bertelsmann Stiftung initiiert. Unsere Absicht war es, Argumente für eine Berücksichtigung des europäischen Mehrwerts als Entscheidungskriterium zu sammeln, indem wir die Einsparungen und Verluste genau beziffern, die Ausgaben auf EU-Ebene mit sich bringen. Bisher wurde der europäische Mehrwert in Studien hauptsächlich durch qualitative Kriterien definiert. Dadurch verschwamm das Konzept, da es möglich war, einer bestimmten Politik einen europäischen Mehrwert zuzuschreiben oder auch nicht. Unser Ziel war es daher, das Konzept so zu operationalisieren, dass sich der europäische Mehrwert von Ausgaben in den bisher noch nicht untersuchten Feldern Agrarpolitik, Außenpolitik und Verteidigung quantitativ genau erfassen lässt. [...] (Quelle: Bertelsmann-Stiftung)

Extreme poverty in certain global regions remains one of our greatest international challenges. Between 2014 and 2016, 800 million people suffered from hunger. Nevertheless, most EU member states spend less than the required 0.7 percent of Gross National Income (GNI) for development aid. In addition, resource use is often inefficient since multiple donors often engage in the same countries, which incurs high administrative and transaction costs for both donors and partners. Using the concepts of fiscal federalism, we argue that shifting more financing and management of development cooperation from member states to the EU would contribute to overcoming these problems. A larger role of the EU budget for financing development aid would better align national costs and benefits and thus reduce free riding. Moreover, transaction costs could fall by reducing aid fractionalization. Based on the general insight that stronger EU competence would be favourable, we have developed a model of how this could work. In this model, the centralised development aid from the EU budget would meet the 0.7 percent spending commitment. Since member states contribute to the budget according to their GNI, this target could be met by the EU as a whole as well as the member states. If large income differentials between member states render this GNI-proportionate financing formula unacceptable, a progressive formula could be applied for the development-related contributions to the EU budget. However, member states with equal income levels would be treated equally, thus precluding free riding. The model accounts for the main challenge that a further centralisation of European development aid would face: the need to account for specific national interests in development aid that result from historical links, national interests, and citizens' preferences. As well as the EU budget component, individual member states could conduct additional development financing via trust funds, which would also enable them to pursue individual preferences. On the operational side, we propose a system in which member states remain involved by being responsible as 'lead states' (or part of a small group of lead states) for the implementation of development cooperation with one or several partner countries. The lead states would act on behalf of the EU and administer aid in a specific partner country. This kind of specialization could overcome the current inefficient aid fragmentation without losing the expertise and information advantages from long-standing ties between donors and recipients.

The debate over the next EU budget is already heating up. In early May the European Commission will publish its proposal for the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) for the years 2021-2027. Judging by previous MFF negotiations, agricultural subsidies and regional transfers will continue to swallow a large share of the EU budget. In view of the acute legitimacy crisis currently faced by the EU, this spending structure calls for reform. The Commission has recommended using "European added value" (EAV) as a benchmark for EU budget reform, an approach that deserves support. But although EAV may be appealing, it urgently needs a sound definition and an empirical basis. A joint study by the Bertelsmann Stiftung and the EconPol network partner ZEW recently tried to pin down EAV and apply it to a broad range of policy fields.[1] The study investigates whether allocating competences more effectively between the European Union and its member states could boost the EU's performance.

This study aims to give guidance for a better-performing EU through an improved allocation of competences between the European Union and its member states. The study analyses eight specific policies from a wide range of fields with respect to their preferable assignment. The analysis applies a unified quantified approach and is precise in its definition of "counterfactuals". These counterfactuals are understood as conceptual alternatives to the allocation of competences under the status quo. As such, they either relate to a new European competence (if the policy is currently a national responsibility) or a new national competence (if the policy is currently assigned to the EU). The comprehensive, quantification-based assessments indicate that it would be preferable to have responsibility for higher education and providing farmers with income support at the national level. Conversely, a shift of competences to the EU level would be advantageous when it comes to asylum policies, defence, corporate taxation, development aid and a (complementary) unemployment insurance scheme in the euro area. For one policy - railway freight transport - the findings are indeterminate. Overall, the study recommends a differentiated integration strategy comprising both new European policies and a roll-back of EU competences in other fields.