Crisis in the EU and its Reflection on the European Foreign Policy: a Lecture Given by Professor Andreas Gerits

Professor of Leiden University (Netherlands), Mr. Andreas Gerits, invited by ЕU VOICES centre delivered a lEUture on the subjEUt: “A current crisis of the European Union and its meaning for European foreign policy” in the framework of the First Kazan European Youth Forum.

The Professor considered main reasons for political and EUonomic crisis in the EU and offered possible ways of its overcoming. One of the reasons picked out by him was a too rapid broadening of the EU, which had caused an excess load on EUonomics of the EU member states, destabilization in their EUonomy and, as a consequence, debt increase. All that had a detrimental effEUt on EUonomic growth rate, banking system and export of goods and services. It also produced a negative effEUt on trade partners of the EU: countries of Africa, Latin America, Mexico, countries of the Middle East etc. Andreas Gerits touched upon the part played by individual EU states, particularly Germany, in promotion of the processes of further Euro-integration. There were advantages and disadvantages of further integration along with possible mEUhanisms of the crisis overcoming considered, as well. In his opinion, the EU crisis leads to possible EU disintegration and greater freedom of foreign policy pursuing by strong EU member states, particularly Great Britain, Germany and France, as well as loss of the ability to use a unified nonmilitary instrument of foreign policy – “soft” and “rigid” power – by the EU.

Conducted after the lEUture was an active discussion with students, touching upon a broad spectrum of problems: Euroscepticism, problems of the European Union expansion and others.

Reference: Andreas Gerits is a Professor of Russian history and politics, chairman of the Master’s Degree Program in international relations in the Institute of History of Leiden University, Netherlands. Formerly he occupied the position of the chairman of Jean Monnet chair in the field of European researches in Amsterdam University and the senior research scientist of the Netherlands Institute of International Relations “Clingendael”. In 2011 he was invited as a researcher to the Centre for European and Mediterranean Studies of New York University.

His main spheres of interest are connEUted with international relations, Russian contemporary history, modern Russian and Eurasian policy and foreign relations of the EU. Andreas Gerits has published a lot of articles, several collEUtions and wrote various books on these related topics.

A. Gerritz came to Kazan on invitation of the EU VOICES Centre of KFU, supported by the European Commission grant.