The concept of geopolitics is understood as visualizations of political relationships between countries in the world. The term geopolitics encompasses describing, analyzing, forecasting, and application of political power over a specific territory. The geopolitical variables include the location of the country, demography, and climate of the region, natural resources, topography, and technological advancements. In 2003, the European Union entered into a bilateral partnership with countries that have committed themselves to more democracy and better governance such as Ukraine, the UK, the U.S, Tunisia, and Turkey. The major aim of bilateral relations is to promote democracy and better governance just like its neighboring countries (Szulecki & Westphal, 2018). This paper will explain the geopolitical overview of Europe and it will explain how geopolitics has influenced the policies of the EU.
Geopolitical Overview of Europe
In the past 10 years, the EU has entered into many bilateral relationships with other countries such as Ukraine, Algeria, Egypt Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan. For example, in 2005 the EU signed an energy agreement with Ukraine and in 2006 it signed the same agreement with Egypt Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan. The major aim of the agreements was to incorporate the Balkan States into Europe in order to ensure the availability of petroleum products in the economy. Energy has become an issue in all the external political dialogue of the EU and it did not appear on the agenda. This is because energy has not coherently and fully integrated into the foreign policies of the EU. In addition, the EU has not adopted a new approach that will promote energy security. The bilateral partnerships have posed some challenges to the EU and therefore it has to change its policies in order to make the partnerships successful and productive (Szulecki & Westphal, 2018).
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Influence of geopolitics on the policies of the EU
The EU has to change its policies associated with migration, digitalization, economy, the risk of Brexit, and geopolitical threats in order to improve its political relationship with other countries. The change in policies will be determined by the following:
Migration and Refugees
After the EU-Turkey migration agreement in 2015, the Balkan route was closed due to the EU’s Frontex border control agency. This reduced the number of refugees by two-thirds to 364,000 when compared to 2015. As a result, the number of immigrants to Italy rose by 20% which led to dissatisfaction and concerns among the citizens of Italy. Germany, on the other hand, continued receiving immigrants including those from the EU. This has led to doubts concerning the solidarity of the EU among the German population. The perception of Germans concerning the EU changed because the percentage of Germans who had a positive view of the EU reduced to 29% from 45% within a year. Three-quarters of the Germans claim that their European partner has let them down (Allen & Walker, 2018).
The refugee and migration situation has now become fragile and unstable. This will, therefore, affect the relationship between the EU and Turkey as their future agreement is not assured. According to Turkey, the EU has failed to acknowledge the threats posed by terrorists to Turkey in July 2016. Turkey is claiming that the EU is not putting enough effort into dealing with the PKK terrorist group. In addition, the EU is reluctant to provide the Turkey people with visa freedom. The concern of EU is only concerned about the tougher restrictions on civil liberties and media freedom in Turkey and it has criticized the post-coup crackdown. The member states have called to abandon the process of Turkey’s EU accession.
In order to improve its relationship with Turkey and other countries, the EU has decided to come up with measures that will strengthen the control of the external border and develop asylum and common migration policy. The EU plans to achieve this through having a dialogue with African countries to discuss migration pressure that may arise from the countries in the future. The EU has also shifted its focus to security and radicalization of the Islamist group within the EU countries. Although the number of people who have died as a result of terrorist attracts within the EU is still low, the EU has shifted its focus to development and policies that will provide solutions for how the European countries will deal with the terrorists (Allen & Walker, 2018).
Since last year, the U.K has claimed to leave the EU and this is as a result of increased concerns related to migration and refugees. The results of the referendum that was conducted last year showed that the majority of Britons wanted the country to leave the EU. Therefore the government of Theresa May has shifted its focus on making Brexit a reality. The problem is that the May government does not have a unified and clear strategy for conducting the negotiation process and also what it wants to achieve in the future as a result of its relationship with the EU (Bachmann & Sidaway, 2016). The exit negotiation will take place once the government of the UK defines the kind of relationship it wants to have with the EU in the future. The exit will take time because the EU countries will have to formulate their positions concerning the UK's exit request. Then a compromised deal will have to be reached followed by the signing of a treaty that will be signed by the countries defining their new relationships with the UK (Oliver & Williams, 2016).
The May government is intending to take the country out of a single market which is considered as a "hard Brexit". The government can achieve success for business through a "slow but hard Brexit" because it will allow for adjustment. According to Economists, the hard Brexit will negatively affect the economies of both the UK and the EU. The hard Brexit leads to high costs for the UK and at the same time the economies of EU will be affected because its severity will vary from one sector to another. For example, the integrated production chains in the automotive and aerospace will be affected by the hard Brexit. As a result of the exit, there will be restrictions concerning the flow of capital between the financial centers of Europe and continent, which will have a negative effect financial institutions in London and across Europe. The EU should, therefore, develop policies and procedures for the exit in order to reduce negative effects on EU and the countries existing (Oliver & Williams, 2016) .
The European economy
Despite the treats of UK existing, the Eurozone of EU has continued to improve over the past year. The real economic activity is rapidly growing as a result of strong consumption. In addition, the monitory policy of EU is still accommodating, which has led to weaker Euro and low oil prices. These forces will help EU to experience a growth of 1.5-2% this year, which will be considered as the strongest growth ever. There are also some risks affecting Europe’s economic outlook. The new crisis that is currently affecting EU is the trade policy and this will affect the operations of EU if there are no policies set for solving the issue. The most recent difficulty faced by EU related to trade agreement is that of EU-Canada trade agreement whereby EU has failed to ratify the agreement. The European Court of Justice has provided that new trade agreements which go beyond tariff cuts, should be ratified by all nations including European Parliament (Bialasiewicz, 2016) .
The next agreement that needs to be ratified is that of EU and Singapore. The trade agreement between the EU and the US was the best hope for Europe as it would help the country become competitive and stay ahead in the race of setting standards associated with the digital economy. Even if it is a transatlantic agreement, it needs to be ratified because it has an impact on public service including food and environmental standards. Despite the trade risks the European economies continue to be the best in the world. From the recent survey concerning global competitiveness, six of the member European countries were in the top 10 out of 25 countries. Therefore, the EU should develop policies that will ensure that the trade agreements between any countries with Europe are ratified (Bialasiewicz, 2016) .
Digital Europe
The advancement in technology has affected the policies of EU in that there are complexities and sensitive issues that need the change of policies in order to be addressed. The EU has always been experiencing some incremental progress but the process is often slow which demands the change of policies in order to accommodate new technologies which will speed up the process. The incremental process has helped the EU in adopting the General Data Protection Regulation and it has also signed a Safe Harbour agreement with the US concerning data transfers. The major problem associated with the data transfers is the privacy concerns which the European Court of Justice has taken a strict line. There is a significant risk that the administration of Trump will change the assurances concerning surveillance issues provided to the citizens of U.S. This will negatively affect the rapid developing data economy of the trans-Atlantic including its digital value chains. The EU has managed to create a fifth freedom in relation to data movement across borders, but there are still some restrictions on how the data is stored which increases costs for business within EU (Dhéret & Hedberg, 2014) .
Foreign and security policy
In 2016, the EU came up with a global strategy for setting out a framework concerning its relations with other countries in the world. This has led to new levels of cooperation between EU and NATO and it has also managed to meet different threats. There are also plans associated will corporation between countries within EU to ensure security and defense. German and France took the center stage in dealing with the aggression that existed between Russia and Ukraine but they have not succeeded because 800 soldiers and civilians from Ukraine have died as a result of the aggression. The EU has focused on resolving issues existing between countries which have caused divisions among them. This has affected the policies of EU as it has to change its policies and framework to accommodate peace treaties between countries that have conflicting issues between each other (Germond, 2015) .
The political scene
Europe's politics including for countries in the Western world is now entering a new era of volatility. The EU has reduced its support within the remaining countries after the effects of Brexit. The UK’s idea of leaving the EU has made EU reduce its support in the remaining countries because the fear of uncertainty has risen (Biscop, 2015) . According to the Eurobarometer polls conducted in 2017, there is reduced confidence among the remaining countries in the EU. The resultant curve shows that there is a correlation between the performance of EU and support for it. In 2011 to 2012 there was the Euro crisis, thus leading to declining in confidence, but as the crisis ended, the confidence began to increase once more. In addition, in 2015, there was another decline in confidence due to refugee crisis but when this was dealt with, the confidence was reversed. In 2017, the major issues that affected the confidence were immigration and terrorism issues. The confidence will be reversed if this issues will be dealt with by the EU (Chaudet & Parmentier, 2016) .
The EU will experience some challenges associated cohesion from the member states in the coming years. The dominant political parties have withdrawn their support for the populist forces as a result of anti-trade, anti-Europe, and anti-immigration issues. Various mainstream parties have tried to gain support from the voters through copying some policies of specific challenges and becoming “tough” on the EU. The political parties may not succeed because the current revolutions in politics are going much deeper forgetting setting aside voter dissatisfaction including individual policies (Chaudet & Parmentier, 2016) .
Energy security
In 2007, EU set to establish partnerships with oil producing countries such as Russia, Algeria, and Qatar. Policies of the EU concerning energy security are promising when it comes to the rise of large energy consumers in the Eurozone such as China and India. The major aim of EU is to entice the upcoming energy consumers to form partnerships with it. The partnership with the new energy consumers is important for EU because it will focus on the role of government and rule of law in the provision of robust framework concerning foreign investment within the energy sector. The EU Commission believes that the use of the European norms and standards is important in ensuring improved conditions and consistency with the aims of human rights for EU investment in countries producing oil products (Aalto, 2016) .
Conclusion
The European Union has entered into a bilateral partnership with countries that have committed themselves to more democracy and better governance such as Ukraine, UK, U.S, Tunisia and Turkey. The bilateral relationships have changed the way EU is working and therefore affecting its policies. As a result of the EU and Turkey migration agreement, the number of people entering Europe and Turkey reduced while it increased for Germany and Italy. This affected the relationship between EU and Germany and therefore policies were supposed to be changed in order to maintain the good relationships with other countries. In addition, the EU was reluctant in dealing with the issues of terrorisms and this affected the perceptions of other countries concerning EU. This calls for EU to come up with measures for dealing with terrorist groups within the member countries. Advancement in technology has improved data sharing among various member countries, but this is affected by privacy concerns. This therefore affects the policies of EU as it limited by the courts.
References
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