National Centre for Research on Europe

Three of our MEURO students (Monica Yu, Eva Gundesen, and Emma Husband) joined our Director, Martin Holland, at the Hong Kong Baptist University's Model EU event over the past weekend.

Participation in this event was supported by the NCRE's Jean Monnet Chair grant.

Our Senior Research Fellow, Nick, offers some thoughts about what Trump might mean for the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific

Opinion | US treatment of Indo-Pacific allies could de-escalate ties with China Donald Trump is likely to keep projecting power in Asia but his focus on other priorities will reshape regional dynamics.

Calling all postgraduate students who have taken an EU related course, come to our info session next week to hear about the experiences of Kat who was last year's EUD intern.

Please join us tomorrow (Logie 613 @ 2pm) for the visit of the Polish Ambassador to New Zealand, His Excellency Patryk Blaszczak, who will present a seminar on “2000-2025 reflections on significant changes for Poland over the last 25 years”.

All are welcome.

If you are unable to attend in person you can attend via Zoom ID: 915 1050 3864, passcode 908687

The 2025 EUSAAP Conference is still taking paper submissions.

Our Senior Research Fellow, Nick, has published an oped in Global Policy (with Tracey Fallon from the University of Nottingham) that observes the diplomacy of Trump/Vance has some parallels with the wolf warrior diplomacy that emerged in China in recent years.

Check it out.

Trump and Vance: American Wolf Warriors Nicholas Ross Smith and Tracey Fallon argue that Donald Trump and JD Vance represent American wolf warriors and, like in China where the wolf warrior diplomacy phenomenon originated, it is a sign that a tricky two-level game has emerged in the United States.

We were delighted to host the Deputy British High Commissioner, John Pearson, last week.

It was a fantastic event and his thoughts prompted a lot of interesting discussion.

This Friday we welcome Professor Paul Bacon who has joined us from Waseda University for a short stay for an event. More details to follow.

Last month, our Senior Lecturer Milenko Petrovic brought the AACAPS/ANZSA conference to the University of Canterbury (partly facilitated by his Jean Monnet Chair).

This conference brought leading scholars of Communism and post-Communism studies to Christchurch to discuss their ongoing research.

This is an area of research the NCRE has a long tradition of producing leading outputs in and it was fantastic to solidify this further.

Our Senior Research Fellow, Nick, wrote a short piece about China's engagement in the Pacific and how the Anglosphere countries need to broader their frameworks of understanding.

Nick is the academic lead of the 'EU in the Indo-Pacific' Jean Monnet Network.

Opinion | New Zealand need not fear China’s growing ties with Pacific nations Rather than falling victim to zero-sum illusions, the West must embrace the multiplex nature of Pacific diplomacy.

Our Senior Research Fellow, Nicholas Smith, has published an article in the leading IR journal, Review of International Studies.

Check it out:

State capacity, military modernisation, and balancing: A conditional model of state capacity neoclassical realism | Review of International Studies | Cambridge Core State capacity, military modernisation, and balancing: A conditional model of state capacity neoclassical realism

Our Senior Research Fellow Nick spoke to RNZ last week about Five Eyes, Trump, and the Indo-Pacific.

Check it out:

Is it 'time-up' for world's most powerful spying group under Trump? Questions are being raised about the lifespan of the Five Eyes, now Donald Trump is at the presidential helm of the United States?

2025 is a big year for the NCRE as it marks our 25th anniversary.

Watch this space for announcements about events we will be running to celebrate.

But, in the meantime, we already have some exciting news to kick off 2025 and that is that our Senior Lecturer, Serena Kelly (in conjunction with former NCRE MA student, Brittany Baugh and upcoming visitor, Professor Paul Bacon) has published an article in the Journal of Contemporary European Studies titled 'Examining EU action and actorness through external perceptions: a comparative study of Asian media coverage'.

Check it out here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14782804.2024.2441151

Next monday, the EUIP Jean Monnet Network will hold its first sandpit workshop in Wellington.

The sandpits are designed to connect EUIP researchers with EU officials in order to discuss the findings of the EUIP's research.

After the Wellington event, events will be held in Melbourne, Yogyakarta, Bangkok, Beijing, Delhi, Taipei, Seoul, and Tokyo.

Our Senior Research fellow, Nick, has published a piece in the Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs on the challenges of New Zealand's foreign policymaking moving forward.

This article is part of a special issue led by our friends at the Institute for Indo-Pacific Affairs

The End of New Zealand’s “Asymmetrical Hedge”?: Assessing New Zealand’s Indo-Pacific Outlo Since the late 2000s, New Zealand has largely followed an asymmetrical hedging strategy in its foreign policy: growing its trade relationship with China while concurrently remaining firmly within the

Our Senior Research Fellow, Nick, has teamed up with Henrietta McNeill from ANU to write a (open access) chapter on European efforts to engage in the Pacific from the lens of statecraftiness.

Check it out:

European statecraft in the Pacific Islands | 11 | Power and Influence This chapter analyses the European Union, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom statecraft in the Pacific Islands region. Like other partners, Europe has

Our Director Martin Holland & our Senior Research Fellow Nicholas Smith have team up and written a chapter on EU-NZ relations in the context of the Indo-Pacific for the book 'The European Union as a Security Actor in the Indo-Pacific'.

The European Union and New Zealand Amidst the Changing Geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific Aotearoa New Zealand and the European Union (EU) have a strong and friendly relationship, recently bolstered by the signing of a Free Trade Agreement in 2022. However, when it comes to the Indo-Pacific, the EU has largely been absent in New Zealand’s...

Our Senior Research Fellow Nick has teamed up with friend of the NCRE, Paul Bacon (Waseda University), to offer their conceptual thoughts about the Indo-Pacific.

The Indo-Pacific is an idea more than a region – and it’s pushing politics in a ‘pessimistic and paranoid’ direction The term ‘Indo-Pacific’ has become central to foreign policy debates. But it oversimplifies geopolitical reality and fuels ideas of a ‘New Cold War’.