Political and economical geography
Debate “European Security and Defense in a New Global Context” – 9th of April 2026
The saliency of Defense and Security debates has been increasing in Europe since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. However, the acceleration of US unilateralism this 2026 has pushed the topic to the day-to-day frontline discussions. For this reason, in partnership with the Jean Monnet Chair in European Constitutional Democracy – EUCODEM from the University of Barcelona and Club Tocqueville, EUGLOB has participated in a debate about the context and EU responses to it at the European Parliament’s Office in Barcelona.
Reading recommendation: What kind of Europe do Europeans want?
Hanspeter Kriesi and Zbigniev Truchlewski, in their article published in the review West European Politics on May 29 2026, propose that the idea of more or less integration does not adequately capture different polity preferences since more integration can mean different things to different people. In order to capture this polysemy, the article presents a richer conceptualisation of European integration along two dimensions: binding (EU centralisation of competences) and bounding (bordering at the EU level). Combining these two, five types of polity formation preferences are constructed: Fortress, Sovereign, Cosmopolitan, Minimalist, and No-vision EU. Exploiting a new original survey, the analysis confirms that public preferences are well represented by these two dimensions. A majority wants more bounding, but they are divided on binding.
Partners
This project builds upon the work developed by the Jean Monnet Chair in European Policies (EUPOL) between 2018 and 2025 at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and aims at its structural consolidation. It also builds upon the outstanding track and project leadership developed by the Institute of European Studies, the Government and Governance Consolidated Research Group, the Global Intel Research Group, and the Observatory of European Foreign Policy for the last 15 years. The project also aims to reinforce the extensive inter-universities collaboration and joint activities already developed by the EUPOL Jean Monnet Chair within the framework of the Jean Monnet Spanish Partnership (BACE’s Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, Universitat Pompeu Fabra; MACIES Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, Universidad Carlos III Madrid and the Jean Monnet OpenEUdebate Network, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and) launched in 2022, to strengthen the Jean Monnet epistemic community in Spain.