The European Student Think Tank is proud to present the second installment of its academic journal, the European Policy Review, published in August of 2015. 

The EPR is available for free to download here.

In this edition, you will find the following:

  • Martijn Gerritsen writes about renewable energy policy in the EU and analyzes the extent to which the Renewable Energy Directive has been successfully implemented by the European member states. On the basis of this analysis, the paper provides novel insights into the likeliness of achieving the newly established targets of the 2030 Framework for Climate and Energy.
  • Theano Damiana Agaloglou analyses EU-US relations after the end of the Cold War and argues that the United States has continued to be more of a patron than a partner to the EU in the foreign policy field. The paper demonstrates that the EU, especially in international crises, still tends to be dependent on America’s political and military weight.
  • Wander Engbers takes a closer look at the role of the Dutch provinces in EU policy-making. By using the Multi-Level Governance framework, the paper investigates how the domestic position of the Dutch provinces influences their paradiplomatic strategy in the European policy arena.
  • Marten Kooistra shows how Cold War strategic thinking in France, Germany and the United Kingdom resulted in an Atlantic Europe – a Europe heavily reliant on the United States. The paper also considers the implications of contemporary power shifts for Europe’s strategic and geopolitical affairs.
  • Manuel Pietzko looks at the role perceptions of the European External Action Service (EEAS) and investigates how the initial expectations of the Commission, Council and Parliament are reflected in the final decision establishing the EEAS. By revealing the various role perceptions held by these actors, the paper helps to understand its current setup.
  • Finally, Dora Hegedus examines the extent to which the European Commission acts as a policy-entrepreneur rather than simply as an agent of member state governments. Instead of providing a general account of how the Commission works, this paper presents a deeper analysis of the driving factors that gravitate the role of the Commission towards either the intergovernmentalist or the supranationalist end of the ‘theoretical scale’.