European Institute

The flow towards Europe Interactive chart showing refugee flow into Europe, country by country, based on UN data. PUBLISHED 26.10.2015 | BY VILLE SAARINEN AND JUHO OJALA

Recommended by European affairs.

The collapse of the US-EU Safe Harbor: Solving the new privacy Rubik’s Cube, by Brad Smith – President and Chief Legal Officer Microsoft Corporation. A thoughtful post (Oct. 20) by the President of a company seriously impacted by the recent European Court of Justice take down of the “safe harbor” provisions of the EU for data transfer out of Europe. Smith lays out principles for moving to a new and better win-win formulation without plunging the world into “digital dark ages.” Recommended by European Affairs.

Why Technology, Not Geography, Is Key to Cybersecurity, by Carl Bildt, former Swedish Foreign Minister and Prime Minister, article in Huffington Post. Bildt sounds an eloquent caution against government overreaction to very real cyber security threats. Among the misguided actions Bildt discusses is the recent European Court of Justice’s invalidation of the EU’s safe harbor regime for permitting international data flows, based, it appears, on the erroneous notion that data can be secured by localizing its storage as opposed to deploying available technology. Recommended by European Affairs.

"Russia--A Different Kind of Threat" by Eugene Rumer examines Russia as a superpower in decline, and how the challenge it poses to the United States is very different from that posed by the Soviet Union.

"EU-US Relations in a Changing World," a speech given in London by His Excellency David O’Sullivan, the European Union's Ambassador to the United States, as a part of Trinity College Dublin's Henry Grattan Lecture series.

The Ukrainian Crisis and European Security, Implications for the United States and U.S. Army, published in March by The Rand Corporation. An excellent and up to date summary of the Ukraine crisis and its implications for the U.S. and Europe.

“Banking Union in Nine Questions,” Written statement prepared by Nicolas Véron, Senior Fellow at the Belgian think tank, Bruegel.  Veron provides a clear and authoritative picture of the soon-to-be-implemented EU banking union,  with analysis of its origins and its prospect for success as well as work still to be done.

NPR Interview, March 5, with Lithuanian Ambassador Zygimantas Pavilionis on the implications of events in the Ukraine to Baltic states and other former Soviet satellites.  Amb. Pavilionis speaks from  experience in the 1991 Lithuanian independence. Recommended by European Affairs.