Unlike environmental non-governmental organisations and other knowledge producers, the European Environment Agency (EEA) seems to attract seemingly little academic interests among scholars of international relations. With this in mind, this thesis seeks to discuss how knowledge institutions such as the EEA may be seen as active participants in IR, while simultaneously seeking to extend academic discussion considering the EEA itself. More explicitly, and in order to narrow down its focus, this thesis is driven by a research question: what is the role of the EEA in policymaking and monitoring done by the European Commission? This thesis adopts social constructivism as its theoretical framework while building on data obtained through both a quantitative content analysis and semi-structured interviews. Both of these methods are used to identify as what kind of a knowledge producer the EEA is institutionalised as a part of the policymaking-complex of the Commission. This thesis finds that the EEA is best understood as an autonomous actor in IR which’s role is to legitimise and support environmental policymaking of the Commission rather than function as an active policymaker itself.

Trafficking for sexual exploitation is a phenomenon that greatly affects the individual as well as society. The effect is grim for the victims and their families, as sex trafficking violates their basic human rights, can shatter families, and cause severe psychological trauma. Sex trafficking has also negative effects on societies, it can adversely affect the economy, public health, national security, and gender equality. Policies have been implemented in response to sex trafficking, both in Sweden and in Europe. The thesis aims to show how sex trafficking is framed by the Swedish Government and the European Commission, based on the application of framing theory integrated with Bacchi's WPR-approach. The research method used is a qualitative, descriptive, comparative, small-N case study with a qualitative content analysis of textual data. Through this method, 11 different documents provided by the Swedish Government and the European Commission were analyzed. The result of the analysis shows that the documents from the Swedish Government use a more prominent frame of human rights, while for European Commission the most significant was organized crime. When it comes to Bacchi’s WPR-approach, the underlying assumptions behind these frames can be argued to be influenced by the national versus supra-national level and how many actors are involved, as well as ideological and legislative differences. Silences were complicated to find in the European Commission, while in the Swedish Government, sovereignty was not discussed. There could also be seen a difference in trend over time, where the European Commissionshifted more towards ‘human rights’ as recently as 2020-2021, while the Swedish Government was more constant in their frame of ‘human rights’.

This thesis scrutinises the European Commission’s discourse surrounding the externalisation of migration and asylum policies and discusses what potential implications this may have on the right to asylum. The aim of this work is to increase the understanding of how migration and security are discursively connected and identify what this discourse looks like. The study is placed in the context of a scientific debate on the Securitisation of migration and the externalisation of migration management. By means of a Critical Discourse Analysis, based on the work of Norman Fairclough, speeches and press releases produced by the European Commission are analysed. The analysis departs from the theoretical framework of the Copenhagen School of Security Studies and the concept of Securitisation, which suggests that political narratives have direct effects on policies. The theory also argues that when a phenomenon is securitised, policy measures that would otherwise not be acceptable, become legitimised in dealing with a constructed threat. The thesis presents three findings. The first main finding is that the Commission legitimises the externalisation of EU borders through a humanitarian discourse, arguing that the increased restrictions and shifting of responsibilities to third countries are necessary to protect migrants from human smugglers. Second, the current EU agenda risks limiting mobility in countries outside of the EU, thus creating large camps with substandard living conditions. And finally, from a human rights perspective, there is a great risk with the continued collective expulsions and pushbacks from EU territory, given that the mandate of Frontex is only seen to increase.

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Cybersecurity is an emerging subject in the public policy field in Sweden and the European Union. Part of public policy is the underlying ideas that create different approaches and instruments in the policy work. This study aim to answer which underlying ideas are present in writs from the Swedish executive government and the European Commission. The method in use is an comparative descriptive idea analysis. The analytical framework consists of three different dimensions that conceptualize threat, accountable actor and policy-instruments regarding cybersecurity. The studie shows that the commission and the Swedish executive government have similar ideas concerning the accountable actor which is public actors. However, concerning threat and policy-instruments the ideas differ. The idea of threats to cybersecurity is individual actors according to the European Commission while the Swedish executive government defines states as the threat. Concerning policy-instruments the European Commission appears to have a more regulative perspective.

One of the more significant regional groupings to have emerged since the collapse of the Soviet Union is the wider Black Sea. Located at the jagged confluence of the Western, Orthodox and Muslim worlds, the region was quite frequently a violent meeting place, and thus instead of a bridge between civilizations, it has been a barrier. Even more compelling is how the presence of oil and gas has thrust the Black Sea into the world's view and contributed to the rush of external interest, and how this has helped develop a unique regional entity. Today, in an interconnected global economy, the region's position as a producer and conduit for fossil fuels makes it impossible to consider in isolation. More importantly, to succinctly define this dissertation's research question, it can be asked how does energy act as a transformational agent in the emergence of a Black Sea region? / Ph. D.

In the global West, electronic devices such as smartphones and tablets have become ubiquitous tools for daily life. They facilitate communication, navigation, and commerce, among other online activities that generate unprecedented amounts of user data. This licentiate thesis examines the perspectives of scholars employing feminist approaches towards understanding and conceptualizing emergent technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, machine learning, and algorithms, which utilize data as a representation of realities and lived experiences. Grounding their perspectives in the feminist tradition of critiquing power structures and hegemonies, scholars offer valuable insights into envisioning technologically supported futurities that transcend mere inclusion and instead prioritize diversity. This text examines how scholars with feminist approaches understand the datafied present and envision futurities. This thesis also explores how potential risks and benefits of datafication, the translation of action into data, are expressed in data feminist texts.  In the first article, Feminist Data Studies and the Emergence of a New Data Feminist Knowledge Domain, a series of searches were conducted in databases and search engines, followed by citation chaining to collect relevant scholarly texts. Data collection was followed by visualization and close reading, while employing sociotechnical imaginaries as a conceptual lens. This approach facilitated an exploration of how scholars with feminist perspectives envision, interpret, and reimagine data-driven technologies. The second article, Utopian and Dystopian Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Big Data in a portion of the corpus, compared framings and perceptions of big data to those identified in the policies of the European Commission.  The summary essay underscores several key findings. Firstly, the nuanced implications of visibility and representation in the context of datafication. Particularly, the tension and the contrasting imperatives, to amplify the visibility of marginalized groups and to safeguard their privacy and mitigate potential harm. Secondly, the centrality of power dynamics and minority group vulnerability in discussions surrounding control over data flows. Finally, corrective approaches and feminist refusal were found to be the ways in which scholars are attempting to contribute to shaping more equitable and inclusive technological futures. These findings contribute to making visible the hegemonies and power imbalances in datafied systems from the perspectives of scholars with feminist approaches as well as to understanding how they are pushing back against them.

Yes / The Microsoft Case is a battle between Microsoft, the global software giant, and the European Commission. The Commission found Microsoft to be in breach of Arti-cle 82 of the EC Treaty because of their refusal to sup-ply interoperability information in the Work Group Server (WGS) market and tying in Windows Media Player (WMP) with Windows. Microsoft appealed to the Euro-pean Court of First Instance (CFI) where they lost their nine year battle on 17 September 2007. Microsoft will not be appealing the decision1. The case is a modern day David and Goliath with the Commission coming out the champion. This edition of Law in Brief will look at the main outcomes of the decision and its likely impact in particularly on future clashes of competition law and intellectual property law within the European Union (EU).

The thesis traces the construction of the Western Balkans since the end of the armed conflict in 1995. The term Western Balkans has become a commonplace in international politics that refers to a recognisable region on the European map – ignoring that it does not constitute a historical formation of European and Balkan politics. Most contemporary analysis focuses on functional aspects of economic cohesiveness and security interdependence. However, this thesis argues that the concept of Western Balkans is better understood as a social construction, externally-driven. The argument is that the Western Balkans is what the European Union makes of it. By taking a macro-historical perspective, we look at the long and special ties that the EU has had from the time of Yugoslavia to the Western Balkans until the mid-2000s. What we uncover is a special and consistent involvement of the European Commission into the regional affairs. The Western Balkans starts as a small organisational department within the institutional structure of the external relations' portfolio to become a regional identity question for the local populations. Also, the thesis points to the Commission’s actions as not just the outcome of micro-calculations but part of a social context of competing world-views; and, finally, this is the reason that the end-product of the Western Balkans resembles more a messy amalgam rather than a rational design.

The international air transportation industry has historically been a paradox. While the industry enables globalization, historically, the international air transportation regulatory regime has been largely mired in protectionism. This restrictive regime was developed by national actors, who either owned or heavily subsidized their domestic carriers, and guarded their interests very closely, thus insulating the industry from large levels of foreign competition. This paradox of international air transportation continued until the development of convergence in regulatory policy through the 2007 ‘open skies-plus’ air transportation agreement between the United States (US) and the European Union (EU). This thesis examines the developmental process of this agreement as an examination of policy convergence theory, in order identify the explanatory powers leading to the formation of the ‘open skies-plus’ agreement. To identify the explanatory powers, a comparative analysis is established, using two historical reference points, t(0) and t(1), as case studies. This thesis uses two mechanisms for the development of policy convergence, international harmonization and regulatory competition, to identify why the convergence took place at this specific time and why it was set at this specific level of regulation. Using these mechanisms, the 2002 European Court of Justice (ECJ) ‘open skies’ ruling is identified as the explanatory power for the convergence of policy in this field, and the precedent set by the previous bilateral agreement between the US and the Netherlands is identified as establishing the standards of regulation in the 2007 ‘open skies-plus’ agreement. The thesis concludes with an examination of the prospects for further liberalization of transatlantic air transportation, as well as recommendations for the continued development of the field.