La conférence annuelle de l'IESUE, organisée les 22 et 23 novembre 2007 à Paris, a eu pour thème «Construire un Multilatéralisme Efficace – Avec les Nouveaux Acteurs Globaux». Comme chaque année, elle s'est articulée autour du discours du Haut Représentant pour la PESC, Javier Solana, qui a parlé de l'évolution de la Politique européenne de Sécurité et de Défense.

Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, Poland’s former foreign minister, offered a damning verdict on his country’s diplomacy under the Kaczynskis. “If the bride is poor and ugly,” he said, “the least she can do is to be gracious.” During their two-year rule the twins chastised the Germans, refused to talk to the Russians and at times ignored most European partners. The only nation with which they seemed to care about having good relations was the US, though there is scant evidence that this sentiment was reciprocated. In the paranoid world of the Kaczynskis there was little space for serious thought about the outside world. ...

"Je-li nevěsta chudá a ošklivá, tím nejmenším, co může udělat, je chovat se laskavě," prohlásil bývalý polský ministr zahraničí Władysław Bartoszewski, když komentoval nezdary polské diplomacie pod vedením dvojčat Kaczyńských. Zahraniční politika odstupujícího týmu byla hašteřivá, amatérská a rozhodně ne laskavá. Během své dvouleté vlády vyplísnili bratři Kaczyńští Němce, odmítli mluvit s Rusy a v té či oné době ignorovali většinu svých evropských partnerů.

On 29-30 October 2007 the EUISS hosted an expert seminar in Washington DC on the prospects for the Middle Eastern peace process. Taking into account the international conference held in Annapolis just a few weeks later, the purpose of this event was to have a transatlantic dialogue between experts and policy practitioners on the key questions for a negotiated solution; Palestinian politics including the role of Hamas; the regional context - especially the role of Iran - and the respective roles of the EU and the US in promoting the peace process. The participants included American and European officials, directors of institutes and experts on the Middle East.

On 23 October 2007, the EUISS co-hosted a high-level seminar in Lisbon with the Portuguese Ministry of Defence on 'ESDP, crisis prevention and conflict resolution in Africa'. The event brought together representatives from EU governments, the EU institutions, the UN, the African Union, ECOWAS, and selected European and African academics to debate the role of the EU in African security. The topics discussed included the convergence of European and African security interests; rule of law and political control of the African security sector; and the concepts of ownership and responsibility in EU-African co-operation.

On 15 October 2007, the EUISS held a seminar in Paris on 'The EU and conflict resolution in Georgia'. It was the first in a series of EUISS seminars on the 'frozen conflicts' in the EU's Eastern neighbourhood and will be followed up by a second conference in Georgia in spring 2008. The October seminar brought together civil society actors from South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Georgia, as well as experts from Georgia, Russia and the EU. After taking stock of the current situation in both conflict regions, it then focused on confidence-building measures and the prospects for deeper engagement by the EU.

Over the last ten years, the EU Special Representatives (EUSRs) have pioneered EU foreign policy in countries and regions of direct interest to the Union. EUSRs are a face of the Union, enhancing its visibility, and they give it a voice, seeking to deliver a single message to local and international partners. In addition, they provide information and analysis from the field to EU decision-making bodies and they help coordinate the panoply of instruments that the EU deploys on the ground. In a permanent interaction with EU institutions and Member States, the EUSRs play therefore an important role in EU foreign policy. ...

On 24-25 September 2007, the Institute and the Asia Centre co-hosted the second Sino-European dialogue on security on 24-25 September in Paris. The event was also supported by the China Institutes for Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The purpose of this conference was to discuss issues of shared security concerns. The discussion focused on crisis prevention and crisis management, non-proliferation in the Korean Peninsula, promotion of stability in Africa, and the transparency of EU and Chinese defence policies. The conference was attended by European experts on China, Chinese academics and directors of institutes, EU officials and officials from member states.

For six decades the United States has supported European integration, yet many Americans have an ambivalent attitude towards the European Union. American views of the EU influence transatlantic relations and shape options available to policymakers. Some Americans see the EU as the culmination of historic efforts to ensure peace, stability and democracy on the continent, while others consider the Union an elaborate scheme to create a rival to US hegemony. Still others dismiss the EU as irrelevant. ...

By introducing the Wider Europe concept and the European Neighborhood Policy, the European Union has actually entered a region which Russia has long considered the sphere of its national interests. Despite the fact that both Moscow and Brussels have repeatedly stated that their respective regional projects in the Post-Soviet Space are not competitors, the steady Euro-Atlantic integration of Ukraine since the Orange Revolution of 2004 has been accompanied by increasing tension in Russian-Ukrainian relations. The present Occasional Paper, which analyses the geoeconomic, geopolitical and socio-cultural dimensions of relations in the Russia-EU-Ukraine triangle, suggests that these relations represent a kind of ‘zero-sum game’.