Department of International Relations and European Integration

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Departamentul de Relații Internaționale și Integrare Europeană este domeniul fondator al SNSPA. Departamentul de Relații Internaționale și Integrare Europeană a fost gândit în aşa fel încât sa asigure o strânsă legătură între pregătirea teoretică și practica executată în sfera politicii externe, de securitate sau apărare, dezvoltând soluții capabile să realizeze conexiunea dintre zona academică și cea de expertiză. Departamentul de Relații Internaționale și Integrare Europeană organizează programe masterale în domeniul relațiilor internaționale, diplomației, studiilor de securitate și studiilor europene, care permit angajarea în domenii diverse, în spațiul public, dar și în cel privat. Corpul profesoral al Departamentului de Relații Internaționale și Integrare Europeană este format din cadre didactice cu o îndelungată expertiză în domeniul relațiilor externe, diplomație, instituții de securitate națională, organizații nonguvernamentale internaționale, reputați practicieni sau personalități ale vieții publice românești și europene.

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A central bank’s dilemmas in highly uncertain times - a Romanian view
(Institute for Economic Forecasting, 2015-03) Dăianu, Daniel
This paper looks at policy dilemmas the National Bank of Romania has faced over the years, with the analysis framed in a European and historical context. Some of these dilemmas are of an older vintage, such as how to deal with massive capital flows, how to combat high inflation when resource misallocation is a very burdensome legacy and expectations of high inflation are well entrenched. Other dilemmas are pretty new, or have got salience during the Great Recession. Romania has had to undertake a painful correction of its large macroeconomic imbalances. "Light" inflation targeting has provided leeway for mitigating the fallout from the financial crisis, although high euroization has dented its efficacy. The specter of stagnation in the Euro Area, financial deleveraging, unconventional policies which are pursued by key central banks, the ongoing reform of banking regulation and supervision, a growing shadow banking, how will the Banking Union evolve, etc, make up a very complicated European context and pose a range of big challenges for the central banks of New Member States (NMSs).
A new EU economic governance and fiscal framework : what role for the National Independent Fiscal Institutions (IFIs)?
(European Institute of Romania, 2023-06) Dăianu, Daniel
The European Commission's communication on orientations for a reform of the European Union's economic governance framework asks the European Fiscal Board (EFB) and national Independent Fiscal Institutions (IFIs) to play a more significant role in it. This vision has plenty of merit, but one needs to be careful in how to implement it. Structural reforms and public investment analysis demand an expertise hardly existing at the level of most national IFIs, and any involvement in policy design would make its assessment tricky when IFIs are part of the process: an inescapable conflict of interest would ensue. It could also be perceived as a technocratic encroachment on a democratic decision-making process. In order to play a more significant role in the EU economic governance framework, national IFIs need more resources according to the EU-wide acceptable standards of operation, and, first of all, they need to bolster their macroeconomic and debt sustainability analysis capabilities.
A Tale of Two Unions : The British Union and the European Union After Brexit
(Transcript Verlag, 2023) Corner, Mark
Brexit is a tale of two unions, not one: the British and the European unions. Their origins are different, but both struggle to maintain unity in diversity and both have to face the challenge of populism and claims of democratic deficit. Mark Corner suggests that the »four nations« that make up the UK can only survive as part of a single nation-state, if the country looks more sympathetically at the very European structures from which it has chosen to detach itself. This study addresses both academic and lay audiences interested in the current situation of the UK, particularly the strains raised by devolution and Brexit.
Analysing portfolio diversification opportunities in selected stock markets of North and South America and their impact on the textile sector: An empirical case study
(National Institute for Research and Development of Leather Textiles-Bucharest, 2021) Birău, Ramona; Spulbar, Cristi; Hamza, Ajmal; Abdullah, Ejaz; Minea, Elena; Zulfiqar, Ali Imran; Cercel, Mihai Ovidiu
This empirical study investigates the financial integration linkages among the sample stock markets of Canada, Mexico, United States (for both New York Stock Exchange, i.e. NYSE and NASDAQ), Panama, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Jamaica, Trinidad, and Tobago during the period from January 2001 to April 2019. This research study also examines the impact of selected stock market dynamics on the textile sector. International portfolio diversification has been an important subject of research in financial fraternity since the emergence of Modern Portfolio Theory in 1952. This study examines the portfolio diversification opportunities in the 11 stock markets of Americas.International diversification among stock market indices has proven to be fruitful in the past. Certain tests have been used to determine opportunities for diversification are correlation test, pairwise co-integration test, multiple co-integration test and granger causality test. The empirical results show that stock market indices share low correlation among other and they are not highly co-integrated whereas results of Granger causality test exhibit an unidirectional relationship among few stock markets in short run.
Anatolian security and Neo‐Ottomanism : Turkey’s intervention in Syria
(Middle East Policy Council, 2020-09-02) Murariu, Mihai; Anglițoiu, George
Applying securitisation theory to EU competition policy
(European Institute of Romania, 2021-12) Anglițoiu, George
Is the competition policy connected and relevant to security? Is a nonjuridical and non-economic theory capable to cover the dynamics of EU competition issues? The answers included in this article will focus on the unconventional dimensions of security as interconnections between social and economic layers of individual, business and public interests. The final outcome would be alternative scenarios and solutions for a better understanding of the overall human security in relationship with the deepening of EU Competition Policy.
Armed groups : theory and classification
(Nauka Publishing House, 2019-06) Miroiu, Andrei
This paper argues in favor of a theory and classification of armed groups that sets them at the center of political and social sciences. By starting with the problem of order, it posits that without armed groups one cannot understand how stable societies form, function and reproduce themselves. It challenges the preeminence of concepts such as class and gender, which are seen as depicting later-formed social structures. It proposes a classification of armed groups based on their permanent or impermanent character, and the reasons for using violence, which are considered to be mostly extractive and ideological. Extraction could be internal and external, permanent or nonpermanent. Ideological armed groups are taken here to include religiously-motivated groups as well. The article also discusses armed groups operating within the state. The central argument is that the armed group is a fundamental unit of politics, order and functioning of a society. This essentially establishes that other forms of power are either derived from, rest on or at least suppose the support of armed groups. They transcend "normal" politics understood as peaceful periods in life of constituted communities. They can be outsiders, existing before and between the states. Armed groups precede classes and governments and do not need them to exist in order to continue their functioning. In this, they are to be understood as an elementary social structure. If so, consequences for social theory are substantial, as armed groups should in this case achieve the prominence that concepts such as state, class, social division of work or even kinship had until now.
Artificial Intelligence and Inequality in European Union
(National University of Political Studies and Public Administration - Department of International Relations and European Integration, 2020-01-12) Caradaică, Mihail
The paper aims to explore the roots of inequality in the European Union by focusing on the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enlarge the actual digital divide. Each time a new technology is broadly implemented in society, it generates economic and social gaps. There are many similar examples in history when a new invention brought poverty for significant categories of people, who faced unemployment due to new industrial machines or found themselves unable to operate or afford new devices. Therefore, the research question that I will try to answer in this paper is: "does artificial intelligence have the potential to create more inequality in the European Union?". To answer this question, I will firstly address the issue of AI's state of the art and I will research how this new technology is industrially implemented, aiming to see to what extent it represents a threat to our jobs or our way of life. Secondly, I will search for social mechanisms that generate inequality by using the concept of digital divide. This theoretical approach focuses on the possibility of people impoverishing due to the lack of basic skills and the impossibility to afford new available technologies. Thirdly, I will develop a case study, a comparative approach on EU's member states strategies in the field of AI.
Assessing a decade of Romania-Turkey strategic partnership in an era of ambivalence and 'De-Europeanisation'
(Routledge, 2022-01) Lazăr, Aurel; Butnaru Troncotă, Miruna
The redefinition of Turkey's national identity under the rule of President Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) influenced its foreign policy. For many years, Turkey maintained an ambivalent position towards the EU, and as a NATO ally and only by the end of 2020 it disclosed an openly anti-Western position. In this context, there is a rich literature studying Turkey's actions to reassert its influence in the Western Balkans, but there is less scholarly attention on Turkey's relations with Romania - its Black Sea neighbour and NATO ally. Building on recent literature on Turkey's regional strategies and tendencies of 'De-Europeanisation', we scrutinized the country's bilateral relations with Romania between 2008 and 2020. The analysis relies on mainly qualitative data and offers a chronological account of the main diplomatic interactions between the two governments, placed in the context of significant regional events. The article concludes that, compared to the Balkans, there are the same ambivalent tendencies in Turkey-Romania relations. It shows that Turkey acted as a relevant economic partner and security ally for Romania at the Black Sea, while distancing more and more from the EU and asserting a more active role as a regional player in the Middle East and in the Balkans.
Assessing the Involvement/ Development of Civil Society as Part of the European Integration Process of the Eastern Partnership States
(Civil Szemle Foundation, 2023-12) Costea, Ana Maria; Melenciuc Ioan, Ioana Roxana
2023 marks 14 years since the European Union (EU) launched the Eastern Partnership (EaP) Program, an instrument that was designed to respond to the vulnerabilities and threats specific to the six Eastern European countries that were not part of the EU (the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and Armenia). After several series of critics, the EaP was revised in 2017 in order to break the one size fits all policy and, thus, to be more adaptable to each specific case. Although the Program was not designed and still is not a platform for future accession, two out of six states are currently candidate countries to the EU (Moldova and Ukraine), fact that emphasizes even more the importance of the EaP as a platform used to start the integration process. On the other side, one critic that still stands is represented by the fact that it does not offer any security guaranties against external threats, fact that was seen in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and in 2022 when the war in Ukraine started. In terms of tangible evaluation of its results, the EaP indexes were launched in 2011 and the European Commission's reports regarding the 2020 deliverables represent ones of the most important tools for measuring the integration level of each country. Since the war threatens the stability and the security of the entire region, if not of the entire continent, one aspect that tends to be overlooked is represented by the importance of civil society and active citizenship. The present research aims to assess the level of development and involvement of the civil society between 2011-2022 throughout all six EaP countries. It is also emphasized the role of the civil society and its development during the periods of crisis, as well as the link between external funding and the sustainability of the activities performed by the civil society.
Banking distress-a comparative approach of two business cases in the Banking sector in USA in 2023
(National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Department of International Relations and European Integration, 2023-06) Munteanu, Bogdan
The aims of the paper are to explore the recent liquidity stress situations encountered by the regional banks in the United States of America (with a particular focus on Silvergate Bank and Silicon Valley Bank, both headquartered in California) and to provide a descriptive viewpoint on the regulatory framework, prudentiality and financial management issues, including accounting aspects and corporate governance. The research methodology pertains to the cause-effect analysis and the dynamics of changes over time and to the synthesis of documented authentic public resources of information, giving substance to the main findings. The paper explores the causes and the consequences of the failing banks from the perspective of implications to the current regulatory environment and prudential requirements, with a view to the financial markets functioning. It analyses the business models and the root -causes that led to the recent distress in the first quarter of the year 2023 in the US banking system. The conclusions draw evidence on how clustered liquidity stress and fast-unfolding bank runs became risk factors, in a context where regulatory environment allowed for a more relaxed supervisory stance on banks and the rising interest rates in an inflationary economy affected the market value of financial instruments as means of liquidity in banks' portfolios. Still, despite some particular situations pertaining to some US banks, the US banking sector remains resilient, with significant risk-absorbing capacities.
Beyond Social Democracy: The Transformation of the Left in Emerging Knowledge Societies
(Cambridge University Press, 2024) Häusermann, Silja; Kitschelt, Herbert
Beyond Social Democracy examines the electoral decline of social democratic parties and how distinctive strategic moves might enable them to salvage different segments of their former electoral coalitions. Social democratic decline, however, does not imply the demise of basic tenets of the parties' programmatic appeals. Under the impact of novel twenty-first-century political-economic challenges, these concerns are also invoked and repackaged with new ideas by novel left parties. Empirically, voter movements show that social democratic parties incur net losses mostly to these other leftist parties, while sustaining a balanced, but voluminous exchange with center-right parties. Contrary to commonly held preconceptions, there is little net loss to the new extreme Right. These findings will be pertinent to anyone interested in understanding or devising party strategies in twenty-first-century democracies. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Book review : Dorin Dolghi and Octavian Țâcu (editors). 2014. The Security Dimension of European Frontier vs the Legitimacy of Political Priorities of EU and EU Member States. Eurolimes. Journal of the Institute for Euroregional Studies ”Jean Monnet” European Centre for Excellence, University of Oradea, University of Debrecen, volume 18, autumn, Oradea University Press, 235p, ISSN 2247/8450.
(National University of Political Studies and Public Administration - Department of International Relations and European Integration, 2015-06) Butnaru Troncotă, Miruna
Book review : Theorizing medieval geopolitics: war and world order in the age of the Crusades
(Routledge, 2012) Miroiu, Andrei
International Relations (IR) scholars' interest in medieval politics varies between enthusiasm and neglect. After a serious debate between neorealists, Marxists and constructivists in the 1990s, a relative silence fell on the subject. The victory of constructivists, who argued that the medieval state—if such entity even existed—was an altogether different polity from its modern incarnation and therefore not really interesting for understanding contemporary processes, seemed definitive. In this climate, Andrew Latham's thesis in Theorizing medieval geopolitics comes as a necessary and interesting reinterpretation aimed at restarting the debate and at introducing new questions and avenues for research.
Book review: Andrew Roberts, 2014, Napolon: A Life, Viking, USA, 926 pages, ISBN13: 9780670025329
(National University of Political Studies and Public Administration - Department of International Relations and European Integration, 2018) Cucută, Radu Alexandru
Book review: Flogging the geopolitical horse. Alexander Dugin. 2015. Last War of the World-Island: The Geopolitics of Contemporary Russia, Arktos Media Ltd., 166p, ISBN: 978-1-910524-40-4.
(National University of Political Studies and Public Administration - Department of International Relations and European Integration, 2015) Cucută, Radu Alexandru
BOOK REVIEW: Miruna Troncotă. 2014. Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Critical Case Study of Europeanization, Bucharest, Tritonic Publishing House, 327 pages, ISBN: 978-606-8571-36-2
(National University of Political Studies and Public Administration - Department of International Relations and European Integration, 2015-09) Ungureanu, Radu-Sebastian
book review: Regional and International Relations of Central Europe
(Cambridge University Press, 2013-09) Miroiu, Andrei
As many scholars interested in European affairs have noticed, academic as well as general interest in Central (and, one may add, Eastern) Europe has dropped markedly after the turn of the century. There is little doubt that this is due to the perceived stability of the area in the aftermath of the accession of its states to the European Union and NATO and the cooling down of violent conflicts in the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. A new major project on the topic was justifiable merely for this reason, but the current massive crisis in Europe, with its questioning of the basic assumptions of further economic and political integration inside the EU, provides a pressing necessity for such a book.
Business Freedoms and Fundamental Rights in European Union Law
(Oxford University Press, 2024) O'Connor, Niall
The recognition of the freedom to conduct a business as a fundamental right within European Union law has reignited debate as to the proper place of competing economic freedoms and fundamental social rights within the European Union legal order. In particular, the Court of Justice of the European Union has relied on freedom of contract as a component of the freedom to conduct a business in order to undermine the protection of competing employment rights. Using the employment law context as a case study, this book argues that the potential regulatory consequences of the freedom to conduct a business as a fundamental right can only properly be understood within its wider constitutional and social dimensions. A holistic assessment of the value placed on business freedoms within the legal reasoning of the Court of Justice of the European Union demonstrates that there is nothing inherently deregulatory in granting fundamental rights status to such freedoms, with the freedom to conduct a business as a fundamental right also being contoured by competing ‘social’ rights, interests, and values. The freedom to conduct a business is thereby also shown to be a malleable fundamental rights concept in that its precise reach remains dependent on the underlying constitutional context whether that be within national constitutional law, the general principles of EU law, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, or in those arrangements governing the United Kingdom’s departure from—and new relationship with—the European Union.
Can a Cyberattack Become an Act of War? European and Trans-Atlantic Perspectives
(European Institute Romania, 2024-06) Ducaru, Sorin; Caradaică, Mihail; Costea, Ana Maria
In the last two decades, along with the process of digitalisation of businesses and state apparatuses, the world has faced a new major issue that can produce physical / non-physical damage, and equally threaten individual security and the state’s sovereignty: cyberattacks. Confronted with the strategic competition – within a multipolar world – coupled with this new challenge that can redefine the nature of war, NATO member states have tried to find a common answer by linking cyberattacks to Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, NATO’s collective defence principle. Understandably, Article 5 was drafted while having in mind the aspects of deterrence and defence related to conventional wars. However, it has been invoked by the Allies only once, i.e., after the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the USA, which represented quite an unconventional scenario, certainly unanticipated by the Alliance’s Founding Fathers. Given the current trend, and reflecting on the increase in the complexity, intensity and persistence of the known cyberattacks, it is important to study the potential game-changing circumstances of such unconventional attacks, which might trigger Article 5 and its collective defence principle. The present paper seeks to depict the complexities and consequences of cyberattacks within the framework of the collective defence principle.

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