Staff & Research Areas
Working Groups
Foreign & Defence Policy
Chair: Professor Patrick Keatinge
Chair: The IIEA Working Group on ESDP is chaired by Professor Patrick Keatinge, Emeritus Associate Professor of Political Science at TCD and Ireland’s foremost authority on Foreign Policy and European Integration.
Project Leader for the group is Professor Ben Tonra, Jean Monnet Professor of European Foreign, Security and Defence Policy and Director of the Graduate School at the UCD College of Human Sciences.
About the ESDP Group:
This group analyses the implications for Ireland of developments in the EU’s Foreign, Security and Defence Policy. Regular meetings are organised with leading international and European figures providing stakeholders from Ireland with an opportunity to gain insight and to influence the direction of future policy in this area. The group comprises leading members of the Foreign Policy community in Ireland including senior figures from Government Departments, the Defence Forces, Garda Siochana, NGO’s, Academia and the Diplomatic Corps. The group produces regular independent authenticated information on this topic in the form of monthly newsletters and periodic publications. Working relationships with EU sister think tanks on International Affairs are developed and maintained and the IIEA’s participation in the Trans European Policy Studies Association(TEPSA) is important in this respect.
Ever since the Institute was established in 1992, the group has closely monitored the development of CFSP and ESDP and the implications for Ireland of consecutive EU Treaties from Maastricht to the recent Lisbon Treaty have been analysed in a series of publications. More recently, the group has followed the development of an institutional and operational capacity for ESDP and the implications of further EU enlargement to the East. Internal institutional issues at the EU level include analysis of the work of the High Representative Javier Solana and the Council of the European Union, the EU Special Representatives and the High Rep’s Policy Planning and Early Warning Unit. At the intergovernmental level, meetings of the General Affairs and External Relations Council and the Foreign Affairs Council are analysed and the group facilitates regular meetings with Ireland’s Ambassador to the Political and Security Committee (PSC). With regards the EU’s relations with the wider world, EU cooperation with multilateral organisations such as the UN, NATO and OSCE and the EU’s bilateral relations with the US, Russia and emerging powers such as China, India and Brazil are discussed.
Previous Speakers include:
Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary General
Javier Solana, EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy
Martti Ahtisaari, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2008 and former President of Finland
Hans Blix, Former Director of United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission to Iraq
Mohammed El Baradei, Director General International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA)
General Henri Bentegeat, Head of the EU Military Committee
Marc Otte, EU Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process
Erwan Fouere, EU Special Representative for the the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia