By Onur Sinan Güzaltan French President Emmanuel Macron has advocated in various statements at different times for the creation of an independent European pole that is distant from the US, opposed to Russia and cooperating with China. To understand and evaluate Macron’s statements, it is useful to put the pieces back together, which were displaced with the Ukraine War. First, ...

Turning the EU’s “geopolitical awakening into a more permanent strategic posture” – this is how the EU’s High Representative Josep Borrell announces the “Strategic Compass”. The European Union has adopted its “Strategic Compass for Security and Defence” (SC). The document is result of a long process of consultation ad decision-making. The Council of the European Union has established an according ...

By Ali Rıza Taşdelen French President Emmanuel Macron took over the European Union’s (EU) rotating presidency on Saturday for the next six months. France also took the lead of NATO’s Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) for a period of one year. In 2021, Turkey commanded this unit. Although he has not yet announced his candidacy, Macron, who made ...

By Ali Rıza Taşdelen Following US pressure, the European Union (EU) has been imposing economic sanctions on Russia since 2014, on the ground that the latter was destabilizing Ukraine and had “annexed” Crimea. Germany and France have taken a different path from the United States in their relations with Ukraine and therefore with Russia and demanded on the recent EU ...

By Ali Rıza Taşdelen EU leaders have held an extraordinary 2-day summit in February 25-26. Held via videoconference, the summit’s agenda on the first day was COVID-19. On the second day, relations with the NATO, the US President Biden and the EU’s defense and security policies were discussed. Of course, what draw attention to this summit was the participation of ...