Claudia Wiesner argues that as the EU and its Member States grapple with repositioning themselves within a changing global order, economic, (geo)political and ecological conflict lines become intertwined with broader ideological conflicts. The EU’s values are contested in the changing world order. (Geo)political, economic, and ecological challenges and conflicts are decisively linked to ideational conflicts relating to values, ideas and concepts.
The existence of gender quotas does not determine their effectiveness in increasing women’s participation in political decision-making. Nonetheless, as Kamila Mateeva argues, the experience of Belgium demonstrates that candidate quotas are more effective when combined with placement requirements and enforceable sanctions, while the Kyrgyz legal framework provides relatively strong guarantees of women’s descriptive representation through candidate, district and mandate rules.
Early analysis of the recent €12 billion Global Gateway Initiative points to three distinct ways of understanding the partnership: as a geopolitical strategy to secure critical raw materials like lithium along historic Silk Road routes, as moral signaling that ties trade to democratic values, and as a project of domestic identity reinforcement.
Berit Ebert and Bernardo Carvalho Gomes examine the EU’s expanded access to and participation in the Internal Market by progressively integrating gender equality into Union law. They argue that a competence-based and differentiated model informs the EU’s engagement with Central Asia by building on shared values through those fields in which cooperation is both legally possible and mutually accepted, while simultaneously leaving room for distinct national institutions and paths of development.
Bermet Tursunkulova outlines how EU-Central Asia relations operate through a combination of regional and bilateral frameworks. If the regional dimension provides mechanisms for addressing common and crossborder priorities, bilateral agreements and institutional mechanisms allow the EU to adapt its cooperation to the specific priorities and situation of individual Central Asian countries.
