Sweden

This SIPRI Insights seeks to contribute to the operationalization of nuclear disarmament verification. It explores existing solutions to define a baseline for new arms control and disarmament verification regimes, and considers the requirements for verification under the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Existing solutions might be sufficient to enable several near-term disarmament steps and to lay the foundations for a comprehensive nuclear disarmament verification regime supporting the TPNW. However, more technical work is needed to achieve all the preconditions for a nuclear weapon-free world, particularly on verifying the dismantlement of nuclear weapons. At the same time, a more favourable political context could reduce the extent to which technical challenges are perceived as obstacles to nuclear disarmament. Even in the absence of new disarmament treaties, the operationalization of disarmament verification can begin at a conceptual and discursive level, by adopting a more policy-oriented approach to disarmament verification.

Total global military spending rose for the second consecutive year in 2018, to the highest level since 1988—the first year for which consistent global data is available. World spending is now 76 per cent higher than the post-cold war low in 1998.* World military spending in 2018 represented 2.1 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP) or $239 per person. ‘In 2018 the USA and China accounted for half of the world’s military spending,’ says Dr Nan Tian, a researcher with the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure (AMEX) programme. ‘The higher level of world military expenditure in 2018 is mainly the result of significant increases in spending by these two countries.’

EU agencies are clearly ‘on the move’: they both are increasingly proliferating and obtaining more and more discretionary powers. Yet, both the mushrooming of EU agencies and the increasingly broad powers that are conferred upon them raise questions regarding their constitutionality, their legal basis, the powers that can be delegated to them as well as the very reason for the existence of EU agencies, their independence and accountability. This paper will critically analyse these issues.
It will first discuss the evolution of agencies in the EU’s institutional setting (section 2). Subsequently, it will examine the legal concerns that arise with increased reliance on EU agencies: their position in the
constitutional framework, their legal basis and delegation of powers to them (section 3). It will then examine their independence and accountability (section 4). In conclusion, it will highlight remaining challenges that arise from resorting to EU agencies (section 5).

While there is general agreement within the euro zone that further reform is needed, there is however disagreement as to which measures should be implemented. In a nutshell, member states disagree over the balance between risk sharing and risk reduction. Risk reduction proponents place the emphasis on crisis prevention, while those who emphasise risk sharing focus on crisis mitigation. This book represents a concerted effort by four prominent scholars from France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands to summarise the discussion in those countries and analyse in which areas the member states may find common ground to press ahead with reforms. The authors have been asked to provide a background to how the euro has been perceived in their respective countries and identify which EMU reforms would be acceptable in the short- to medium-term perspective.