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Chapter 10 addresses the problem of transnational solidarity, and argues that a European form is possible. Contrary to positions which assume that pre-political cultural identity precedes civic identity, Eberl argues that the process which generates solidarity moves in the opposite direction: civic identity is the result of democratic institutions. He shows that the exclusive transnational realisation of solidarity by European member states causes paradoxes. Transnational solidarity is ‘parasitic’ to national solidarity. Without loosening this dependence, European solidarity will always be trapped in the paradox of subsisting transnational mobility by national solidarity which constrains the emergence of European solidarity. What is needed is a supranational layer of social rights in the form of direct payments to individuals which will overcome the contradictory structure of EU citizens’ transnational mobility and state citizens’ national solidarity.

Risks associated with manipulation and dissemination of private data are an increasingly recognized security concern. In response to this development, this chapter sheds light on privacy in the context of digital networks. More precisely, legal means for personal data protection in an Internet environment is the focal point. In addition to legal means, information security is conceived of as a critical success factor and will therefore also be taken into consideration. Of particular interest in this context is the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that will be applicable as law in all Member States by 25 May 2018. The analysis presented in the chapter emphasizes the importance of the EU’s responsibility to protect its citizens from privacy infringements due to insufficient security measures. Only time will tell how efficient the somewhat new legal requirements for information security such as pseudonymization as laid down in the GDPR will turn out in practice.

New knowledge and technology created through R & D is the most important production factor for economic growth. The European Union (EU) has fallen behind some competitors both with respect to the input side (R & D investments and R & D personnel) and the output side (patent applications) of innovation. If the EU cannot match the pace of innovation in competing regions, then growth will not be the only thing at risk; firms in the EU could lose competitiveness and both employment and productivity could fall. Even if the European Commission has the ambition to coordinate the efforts of Member States in innovation and growth through EU Horizon 2020, the substantial fragmentation in policy efforts among the countries is a major problem when trying to avoid threats to economic growth. If the EU aims to maintain its competitiveness and growth, then extraordinary measures are required regarding innovation and technology development. This chapter identifies four important areas in which measures are necessary: public financing of R & D in the business sector, public financing of business innovation, intellectual property rights and university R & D.

Chapter 7 analyses the role of shifting borders on communities and identities in Europe and the quest for republican EU citizenship and polity. In order to encapsulate the various roles as well as possible struggles and challenges that stem from the existence of competing identities during the new nation-state formations and/or changes to existing polity boundaries, the analysis reaches out for a more comprehensive study of citizenship regimes. This approach makes it possible to focus on various non-formal and formal areas of social life within which the issues of identity and inclusion/exclusion from a polity are prominent. Considering the building of European identity, Hlou_ek and Koska argue that it is most important to develop EU standards of legal protection concerning human rights’ issues which are not perceived as concurring with domestic standards and will not create conflict between popular perceptions regarding national state and EU roles.

This chapter argues that the asylum and migration control policies of the European Union (EU) are usefully analysed as an expression of liberal thought. The chapter shows how the roots of these policies go all the way back to the creation of the Union in the 1950s and illustrates how this heritage affects prevailing rules in the areas of migration and asylum. This order was paradoxically strengthened during the crisis of 2015 and 2016. Against this backdrop, the chapter explains why the concept of solidarity in EU law is poorly constructed and maps possible solutions. If the EU is serious about its liberal identity it cannot completely deny the rationality and free will of the asylum seeker. The question is if there is a reformist alternative: a complement to the present protectionist system that acknowledges the rationality and free will of the asylum seeker without demanding utopian or revolutionary wonders of the Union in its present form. The chapter then tests whether humanitarian visas could constitute such a complement, where the asylum seeker and the EU Member State meet in a rational discourse before the asylum seeker has decided to travel to Europe. As the Court of Justice of the EU has practically written off this option, this might tell us something of how the particular form of liberalism that the EU represents can be articulated.

This chapter critically analyses the EU’s use of targeted sanctions, addressing the question of how the EU’s sanctions policy discourse should be understood and what implications the EU sanctions may have on the international arena. It analyses both the opportunities in using sanctions for security policy purposes and the tensions that the use of this instrument can entail. The chapter seeks not only to place the EU in a global security context, but also to present the policy aims of EU sanctions, including theoretical and practical challenges. For this, the EU’s ongoing sanctions regimes are presented in detail, and the EU’s sanctions on Russia are discussed in depth. The chapter ends with a discussion of how sanctions can be understood in a geo-economic perspective, and how they can contribute to the EU’s security.

Chapter 6 analyses the ambiguous relation between rights and citizenship in the EU on the potential of EU citizenship to transform consumer rights into consumer citizenship. He holds the relationship between citizenship and rights in general as ambiguous: any concept of citizenship rests on rights, whereas rights do not necessarily constitute citizenship. The European Community has shaped rights for quite a long time. The treaties constitute rights of free movement and citizenship; the European Court of Justice (ECJ) extracted fundamental rights from member states’ shared traditions; and, through directives, a range of statutory rights have been crafted, for instance consumer rights and worker rights as well as other economic and social rights. As the European market developed, the traditional way of informal policy-making and insider networks in the EU no longer worked. Thus, more formal and legalistic rules proved to be an equivalent that helped maintain the growing market sphere.