Lecture Abstract:

As the European Union (EU) slid into deep economic crisis after 2008, it began to attach far greater priority to deepening relations with Asia, in part seeing it as an avenue to towards economic recovery. Many new commitments were signed, promises issued, and resources made available. European ministers now travel to Asia with far greater frequency. The EU has also sought explicitly to broaden its Asia policy beyond trade and beyond China. But, now that the euro crisis has abated and attention is on the Russia-Ukraine and Iraq-Syria conflicts, is the EU following through on its new Asia policy? EU-Asian relations have certainly advanced in the last five years. However, a number of factors now risk curtailing the depth of cooperation. In this seminar, Dr Richard Youngs, senior associate in Carnegie Europe, and an expert on the foreign policy of the European Union will discuss what he sees as some of the stumbling blocks towards deeper cooperation between the EU and Asia.

About the Speaker:

Richard Youngs is a senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program, based at Carnegie Europe. He is an expert on the foreign policy of the European Union, in particular on questions of democracy support. He has published widely on the Middle East, the European neighborhood, the current EU crisis, and energy security.
Youngs is also a professor of international relations at Warwick University. Prior to joining Carnegie in July 2013, he was director of the Madrid- and Brussels-based think tank FRIDE. He also held positions in the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and as an EU Marie Curie fellow. He was senior fellow at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington, DC, from 2012 to 2013. He obtained his BA (Hons) at Cambridge University and his MA and Ph.D from Warwick University.
Youngs’s interests focus on the development of EU foreign policy, European responses to the Arab Spring, trends in international democracy, and current debates over democracy promotion strategies. He has written several books on different elements of European external policy and published over forty articles and working papers, while writing regularly in national and international media.
His latest work and seventh book, The Uncertain Legacy of Crisis: European Foreign Policy Faces the Future, was published in January 2014.

Co-organised by RSIS and the European Union Centre in Singapore.