Former PILC student elected Prime Minister

Zoran Milanovic, who become Croatia's Prime Minister at the end of December 2011, is a former PILC student (now referred to as the LLM International & European Law) at the VUB. He graduated from the programme in 1999, having worked in Brussels for a few years as an advisor to NATO and the Croatian mission to the EU.

▶▶▶ Read more

The European Union in International Affairs III

The Institute for European Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (IES-VUB), the Institut d’Études Européennes at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (IEE-ULB), the United Nations University Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS) and Egmont – the Royal Institute for International Relations biannually organise the ‘European Union in International Affairs’ (EUIA) Conference. The organisers are currently reviewing the submissions for the third edition of EUIA, which will take place in Brussels from 3 to 5 May 2012.

▶▶▶ Read more

A Threat Against Europe

Access to Medicines and Vaccines in the SouthPeter Burgess & Serge Gutwirth

The concept of security has traditionally referred to the status of sovereign states in a closed international system. In this system the state is assumed to be both the object of security and the primary provider of security. Threats to the state’s security are understood as threats to its political autonomy in the system. The major international institutions that emerged after the Second World War were built around this idea. When the founders of the United Nations spoke of collective security, they were referring primarily to state security and to the coordinated system that would be necessary in order to avoid the 'scourge of war'.

▶▶▶ Read more

Access to Medicines and Vaccines in the South

Access to Medicines and Vaccines in the SouthDr. Stephen Kingah

How can developing countries maximize some of the beneficial rules and policies provided to them by the EU and international organizations to reduce public health plight in terms of inadequate access to medicines and vaccines? By navigating some of the complex European and international rules and policies that have hitherto been put in place to ease access to affordable healthcare, the author identifies ways in which policy makers and legislators can optimally use extant rules to enhance healthcare provision.

▶▶▶ Read more

Preventing Conflict, Managing Crisis - European and American Perspectives

Edited by: Dr. Eva Gross, Daniel Hamilton, Claudia Major, Henning Riecke

Over the past two decades the U.S. and Europe have engaged actively in efforts to prevent conflict and to manage crises around the world. Efforts to stabilize the Balkans and interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq challenged the transatlantic community, and many questioned the need for Americans or Europeans to engage at all. Yet the Rwandan genocide, the Srebrencia massacre and other atrocities brought home the horrifying costs of non-intervention. Together these experiences have sparked intensive debate about the relationship between state failure and insecurity, the appropriate mix of civilian and military means in conflict prevention and crisis management, the nature of U.S. and European interests and the limits of Western effectiveness. The U.S. and the EU have also drawn operational lessons from these experiences; each has developed new capabilities for conflict prevention and crisis management.

▶▶▶ Read more