Chinese Journal of European Studies No.1 ,2009

ARTICLES

1 Impacts of the Global Financial Crisis upon the European Economy

SUN Jie

Both the fluctuation of the Libor of Euro and the consumption slump when compensation of employees increased slowly indicate the reason of the recession in Europe is mainly a psychological one. The cyclical downturn of domestic investment and the net export decrease due to the slowdown of the U. S. economy give more pressure to the European recession. The position of the assets and liabilities of the monetary financial institutions in the Euro area suggests the credit crunch there will not be so serious, while the process of de-leverage and the shifting to bank holding companies of the U. S. investment banks might show the advantage of the European universal banking system. The European economic situations made the European countries focus their policies more on economic stimulus rather than on bailout and determined that they put forward a long run initiative on reforming the international financial system.

24 The Financial Storm and the EU's Coordination of the Member States' Reactions

WU Xian

The financial storm started in the U. S. in September 2008 sent strong shock waves throughout Europe, with the banking system and real economy suffering heavy losses. After the initial attempts by the EU member states to deal with this crisis individually, promoted by both the internal and external factors, especially by the deep structural effects of the economic integration, they determined at last to take common efforts and coordinate their actions. A series of significant measures have been successively taken in the two areas of financial market and real economy. Mainly four steps have been taken concerning the financial market.Steps concerning the real economy include particularly the European EconomicRecovery Plan aimed at stimulating demands and at enhancing market confidence under the framework of the Stability and Growth Pact so as to promote economic recovery as soon as possible,alleviate the increasing employment pressure and avoid further decline. At the same time, the EU puts an emphasis on, based on the Lisbon Strategy, promoting the "structural reform" and "smart investment" ,accelerating the technical innovation and development of the knowledge economy, and thus guaranteeing the enhancement of the EU's longrun competitiveness. The spirit of coordination demonstrated by the EU countries and all the corresponding measures taken by the EU to cope with the financial crisis will exert deepgoing influences not only on its getting rid of the current dilemma but on the future integration process.

41 A Review of the European Countries' Reactions to the Financial Crisis

QIAN Xiaoping

Based on the reports of both the Chinese and foreign media, this article reorganises systematically the material about the practice by the EU and the European countries in dealing with the challenges of the financial crisis, aiming at providing a comprehensive background for further scholarly researches. Confronted by the challenges of the financial crisis, the European countries' economic growth has slowed down as a general trend and all have taken corresponding countermeasures.This article selects the examples of the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland and Iceland as a case study. At the same time,in order to demonstrate a complete picture of Europe in dealing with the challenges of the global financial crisis at both the levels of the nation-state and of the Union, this article also summarises the media reports on and the analysis of the development of the European integration and outlines the latest progress of the concerted action taken by the EuropeanUnion.

54 On the Reform of the EU's Official Development Assistance Policy

JIA Wenhua

As a new polity based on its economic power, the EU enforces its will mainly by politicalising its economic resources. Being one of the EU's most effective diplomacy instruments, its development assistance policy has experienced great changes.While its enlargement has contributed to the evolution of its assistance system into a global framework, the shift of international situation forced the EU to reform completely its approaches to and ideas of the assistance policy. After a general survey,this paper concludes that no matter what kind of reform it will conduct as to its assistance policy, the EU will continue to rely on its economic power to frame a new international order of freedom, openness, rule of law and mutual benefit.

72 An Analysis of the EU's Development Policy

LIU Liyun

Before the 1990s, the EU based its development policy principally on the Lome Agreement. But since the 1990s, especially after the 21st Century, the EU's development policy has surpassed the simple consideration of economic interests and moral factors and become a systematic and comprehensive one with both global and strategic visions. Issues such as international security, regional stability, immigration and environment have been brought into its framework. By preparing and implementing its development policy, the EU is actively promoting its values and prompting the recipient countries to stick to the principles of democracy and good governance. Taking advantage of its "soft power" , the EU attempts to exert considerable influences on the international development course with its own ideas and actions and the development policy has thus become an important area of its multilateral diplomacy.

90 Implications of the EU-ACP EPA to the Emerging Powers and the South-South Cooperation

YE Yu

The Economic Partnership Agreements signed between the EU and the ACP countries are set to have far-reaching implications to the international development system. In addition to applying the principles of equality and reciprocity to the internal relationships between the EU and the ACP countries, the EU also insists on introducing the most-favored-nation clause towards the emerging powers into the EPA, which has the potential of hindering effective South-South trade. As one of the biggest emerging powers, China will be definitely influenced and it thus should strengthen coordination with other developing countries and take corresponding political and legal measures, so as to defend the development aspect of the Doha Round.

102 The Impacts of the Cognitive Variables on European Security Norms

ZHANG Yinghong

The European strategic culture has changed from a model of territorial defence during the Cold War period to one of global intervention in the post Cold War time.During this process the cognitive variables, consisting of internal, external, transmit and interference ones, have played important roles. Because of changes of these four variables, the main European countries turned to regard the non-traditional threats instead of the Soviet Union as the major sources threatening their security,on the basis of which, the European Security thinking and strategic culture have changed a lot. This paper focuses on the relations between the cognitive variables and the change of European security norms, thus helping us understand the origins and trend of the new European Security Strategy and the ESDP.

114 On Relationships between Christianity and European Diplomacy

ZHANG Hongshi

Christianity has exerted significant influences on Europe. From the point of view of diplomacy, Christianity first of all presupposed its original setting, and then shaped its agents, that is, the nation-states. Apart from supplying the basic normative systems Christianity also brought a direct effect on the development of European diplomacy. To explore their relationships from a historical point of view will not only provide some typical cases of the complex relation between religion and diplomacy,but be of great benefit for us to understand the true picture of the European diplomacy, and even of the international relationships as a whole.

126 Reflections on the Transformation of the Relationships between the European Commission and the Civil Society

ZHENG Chunrong

With the revelation of the democratic legitimacy crisis of the EU Governance, the European Commission has been engaged actively in involving the civil society into the EU political process. Through a systematic analysis of the European Commission's documents concerning the civil society, this article points out that the relations between the European Commission and the civil society have changed in recent years in a twofold way. On the one hand, the European Commission turns from paying attention only to consulting the special interest groups to emphasising the involvement of the widely defined civil society and even of all the "interested parties" . On the other hand, instead of attaching importance only to the functions of the civil society to provide information and expert knowledge, in other words, to its contribution to the output legitimacy, the European Commission turns to emphasise its contribution to eliminating the EU' s democratic deficit and to promoting the input legitimacy of the EU Governance. This article finally gives a critical assessment of the existing problems in the European Commission's involving strategy, such as the authenticity of participatory democracy, the wide-ranged but empty concept of civil society as well as its representativity, and so on.

140 The Policy Networks Theory and the European Foreign Policymaking

WANG Hongyu

The EU foreign policymaking under its multilevel governance system has its own characteristics and limitations in that it needs the flexibility and resource application capacity of network organisations to overcome the complexity and hierarchy of the EU' s formal decision-making process and to improve the interest mediation and problem-solving ability of the EU's foreign policy. The policy networks theory possesses obvious theoretical advantages in analysing and understanding issues like the interest intermediation, network structure, cooperation promotion and public-private coordination. By linking the policy networks theory with the EU's foreign policymaking, this paper intends to examine how the informal actor clusters influence the process of European foreign policymaking.

ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES

151 "50 Years of the EU Law: Retrospect and Prospect"

HUANG Deming  LIU Xiaomeng  ZHANG Chi  LI Wenbo