Currently, many processes, procedures, systems and equipment for information management and exchange in EU civilian external actions are in place, but these are often used in an incoherent way and lack interoperability, inhibiting CSDP entities and other stakeholders to build a common understanding of crisis management. CIVILEX aims to identify, characterise and model the communication and information systems in use within the EU Civilian missions, understand the stakeholders’ requirements and provide possible solutions to tackle by a future interoperable Situational Awareness, Information Exchange and Operational Control Platform. This would allow to constitute a more coherent and interoperable platform. As a result, common understanding and situational awareness about crisis management in EU civilian external actions will be enhanced since CIVILEX paves the way for such an infrastructure. The envisaged platform should facilitate the engagement of EU actors. This can include CSDP missions, EU Delegations, ECHO offices and Member State Embassies, but also UN offices and other non-EU actors. While the focus is on the civilian chain of command, it should also consider certain connections and overlaps with military actors. The need for coherence and interoperability is not new, nor is it a purely technical challenge. Clearly, there are certain legal, policy, institutional and human elements that function as facilitators and constrainers for better information exchange. CIVILEX, therefore, adds an innovative dimension by researching and helping to clarify the wider policy, institutional and operational issues of ICT systems in the context of CSDP and EU external action. The project would take a hybrid approach, aiming both for a technical solution for information exchange (a platform that stimulates low-level, secure ad-hoc communities of interest) and for institutional changes (leading to agreements on exchange formats for civilian parties).

The EU and its Member States pursue a wide range of policies that address migration, including development cooperation, border management, and legal labour market access. To be effective, policies must be based on an accurate understanding of how individuals decide whether to migrate. DYNAMIG will fill critical gaps in scientific and policymakers’ knowledge about how the decision-making behaviour of potential and actual migrants interacts with policies given micro, meso, and macro factors, e.g. different socioeconomic status. We focus on Africa as the most important future region of origin for migrants to Europe. We pursue a multi-disciplinary approach along four dimensions: First, we extend existing conceptualisations of the dynamics of migration decisions along extended trajectories and test these through innovative methods, including digital diaries collected from migrants en route from Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal, and Morocco to Europe. Second, we develop a mobile-device-based tool for online choice experiments to causally study aspiration formation across different contexts and stages of migration with several tens of thousands of individuals in origin and transit countries. Third, we study how policies affect migration decision-making with methods that allow causal interpretation: choice experiments with respondents in different contexts; a randomised controlled trial of an entrepreneurship training intervention in Senegal; and a quasi-experimental analysis of the EUTF for Africa. Fourth, through interviews with high-level policymakers and textual analysis of policy documents, we analyse how the design of EU, Member State, and relevant African policies that address migration takes into account migrant decision-making. To maximise our impact on policymaking, we embed our research in an intentional process of joint knowledge creation with stakeholders in Europe and Africa, including the policymaking community, migrant and diaspora organisations, and civil society.

Seismic changes in global geopolitics, the rapid rise of global production networks, increasing disputes surrounding trade integration initiatives and challenges to ensuring coherence across policy initiatives at EU and Member State level have made the pursuit of EU external policy objectives more complex. The overarching goal of RESPECT is to identify options and opportunities for better realizing the EU’s soft power in achieving its external policy objectives. It does so through rigorous empirical analysis of the effects of trade and trade policy on nontrade policy objectives (NTPOs) and the development of conceptual frameworks to inform the design of a more coherent external policy mix. Four broad objectives are pursued: (i) documenting the prevailing situation – the set of EU and Member State policies that together characterize the EU’s trade and investment-related policy regime; (ii) understanding the factors that influence the ability of different constellations of EU external policies to attain both trade goals and NTPOs; (iii) determining success factors for effective EU external policies; and (iv) developing practical, operationally feasible recommendations to redesign trade policy to promote better overall EU external policy objectives while recognizing the political economy incentives confronting key actors in and outside the EU. The project centres on in-depth, multi-disciplinary analyses based on methodological triangulation of the impacts of EU trade-related policies, broadly defined to include the investment policies and economic diplomacy activities of Member States. Pathways to impact centre on close involvement of policymakers responsible for – and affected by – EU trade in all stages of the project, a focus on the design of institutional arrangements to enhance the coherence of EU external policies, and structured deliberation with key EU institutions, including the European Parliament and stakeholder groups in and outside the EU.

Climate change amplifies existing risks and vulnerabilities in a globalised world. New risks are also emerging from complex cross-sectoral and multi-dimensional interactions that aggregate gradually, and sometimes emerge abruptly. Recent examples of links between crop damage in Russia, international food prices and political instability in North Africa, as well as impact chains from drought, migration, civil unrest and war in the Middle East, demonstrate how climate-induced risks outside Europe can cascade and threaten Europe. CASCADES strives to understand the conditions under which climate risks propagate beyond their geographical and temporal location in ways that may affect European stability and cohesion. It does so via a broad 360° risk assessment and deeper thematic analyses of trade, value chain, financial and political connections between Europe and the rest of the world. CASCADES’ ambition is to identify the policy leverage points that can help the EU to adapt and respond to such cascading climate risks. CASCADES integrates a wide range of established and innovative methodologies – many of which have not been seriously applied to adaptation questions before – ranging from biophysical climate impact modelling, economic modelling of trade and financial networks, and data integration methods, to qualitative approaches including hotspot case study analysis original social science research and serious games. CASCADES combines leading expertise in climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation, international trade and commodity flows, foreign policy and security, and finance and business, with deep knowledge and proven experience of co-creating with – and influencing – stakeholders from private sectors, public policy and civil society. CASCADES will provide knowledge and tools to support policy and decision-making processes, thus helping Europe to strategically navigate a sustainable and resilient path through a rapidly changing, interconnected world.