OAGR 2180 - The EU and Neighbourhood Wars

***UPDATED for 2026/27***

This is a course about European diplomacy from the standpoint of senior officials dealing with foreign policy matters. Throughout the course, students will explore recent events in European diplomacy through the eyes of foreign policy personalities, or by role-playing European foreign ministers and their teams. In this way they will explore the conception and design of the European integration process, EU and NATO enlargements, EU approaches to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and the war in Gaza. The students will prepare and deliver speeches, briefings, lines to take, position papers, and press releases for imagined EU Foreign Affairs Councils, EU General Affairs Council and the UN General Assembly Week. Finally the students will watch some series about ministers and politics and compare them with the real world.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Learn about EU foreign policy
• Acquire/fortify some skills useful in diplomacy: write and deliver speeches, briefing principals, writing concise lines to take, deal with the media etc.
• Learn about the practice of diplomacy as experienced by practitioners.

The teachers will provide short feedback in class after the presentation on the substance but also the form of student presentations, and they will be available for in person consultations with students if so required by the students.

The students will be assessed based on the following criteria:

• oral group presentation in class
• A paper of up to 2000 words
• Class participation

The assessment will be based on class participation (10%); individual/group (depending on number of students enrolled) oral presentations (45%) and individual paper by the end of the course (45%).

• In Class Presence: 4-hours classes / 24 hours a semester
• Online learning activities: 2 hours a week / 24 hours a semester
• Reading and Preparation for Class: 3 hours a week / 36 hours a semester
• Research and Preparation for Group Work: 2 hours a week / 24 hours a semester
• Research and Writing for Individual Assessments: 3.5 hours a week / 42 hours a semester