How authoritarian states suppress information

Mariëlle Wijermars has, together with an international consortium led by PI Lovise Aalen of the Chr. Michelsen Institute, received funding for the project ‘ARM: The long arm of authoritarian states’. FASoS researcher Thomas Frissen is also involved.

The project explores how authoritarian states suppress information and will deliver a practitioners’ toolkit for how to counter it. More specifically, the project will analyse how Russia, China, Ethiopia and Rwanda seek to suppress independent voices and information, with a special focus on how this information suppression affects EU states and diaspora communities that have settled in the EU.

Making Europe more resilient

Giselle Bosse has, together with an international consortium, received funding for the project ‘InvogratEU’.

The project focuses on invigorating change of the EU‘s political perspective for the Eastern Neighbourhood and the Western Balkans, and on examining options for a resilient Europe. Giselle Bosse, together with Richard Youngs (Carnegie Europe), will lead the work package on ‘Innovative perspectives on democratising countries in the eastern neighbourhood and western Balkans in contexts of contested territory’.

Strengthening Europe’s foreign and security toolboxes

Together with 12 partners from across Europe, Gergana Noutcheva, Assem Dandashly and Hylke Dijkstra received funding for the project 'REUNIR – Resilience, Enlargement, Union, Neighbourhood, International Relations: Future-proofing EU security, Enlargement and Eastern neighbourhood policies for a new age of international relations'.

The project examines how the EU can strengthen its foreign and security toolboxes to bolster the resilience and transformation of (potential) candidate countries in a new age of international relations. REUNIR empirically assesses foreign threats to the military, socio-economic and democratic resilience of 9 neighbouring countries, determines capability shortfalls, maps local perceptions of the EU’s support and political perspectives inside the EU on neighbourhood relations. Outlining scenarios up to 2035, REUNIR offers evidence-based policy recommendations to mitigate malign foreign interference and strengthen the EU’s external action.