Regions

The 2023 Yearbook of European Security provides an overview of events in 2022 that were significant for European security – in particular, inevitably, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The first section of the volume explores the EU’s response to the war in Ukraine and the far-reaching repercussions of this unprecedented event for Europe’s security and defence architecture.
The second section assesses the implementation of the Strategic Compass, the guiding framework for the Union’s security and defence up to 2030, and the EU’s evolution as a defence actor. The third section focuses on multilateralism, and contains geographical and regional thematic chapters on North Africa and the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Rapid urbanisation in several EU Member States and the ensuing population shift from rural areas towards urban centres are generally treated in economic literature as a necessity for generating growth and wellbeing. In the last two decades, however, the overly positive assessment of this trend has shifted.

Globalisation has put increasing pressure on agriculture, food processing industries and other local cottage and SME enterprises. This has led to accelerating changes in the balance between rural and urban areas and has deeply impacted the overall socio-economic fabric of regions.
At the same time, declining rural populations make many rural communities unsustainable. Once inhabitants decide to leave areas due to falling living standards, the remaining population suffers from the further deprivation of goods and services, driving even more people to leave. Several studies have been assessing the costs associated with these changes, in particular their impact on the viability of rural communities. However, they generally fall short of the holistic assessment required, as the decline and shift of populations also create further negative spillovers on the rest of the economy, for example on urban areas that are usually at the receiving end of the influx of rural populations.
This report aims to contribute to the debate on EU rural development policy by presenting a methodology to understand the net costs and benefits of investing in rural areas to society as a whole. By doing so, it asks whether rural depopulation is just a rural problem or whether the consequences have a bearing on the whole of society, and in particular urban areas.

Agenda 2063 is Africa’s development blueprint to achieve inclusive and sustainable socio-economic development over a 50-year period. The continent aims to achieve this objective through the realisation of five ten-year implementation plans. The First Ten-Year Implementation Plan of Agenda 2063, spanning 2014 to 2023, outlines a set of goals, priority areas and targets that the continent aims to achieve at national, regional and continental levels. Against this background, the African Union Commission (AUC) and the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) were tasked by policy organs of the African Union to coordinate and prepare continental-level biennial performance reports to track progress made towards the goals and targets of Agenda 2063.
This second continental-level report consolidates progress reports from 38 of the 55 AU Member States. The report analyses progress made on the implementation of Agenda 2063 against 2021 targets.

The current coronavirus crisis emphasises the need for the European Union to devote more effort to anticipatory governance, notably through analysis of medium- and long-term global trends, as well as structured contingency planning and the stress-testing of existing and future policies. In order to contribute to reflection on and discussion about the implications of the coronavirus pandemic for EU policy-making, this paper builds on an initial 'mapping' of some 66 potential structural risks which could confront Europe over the coming decade. Taking 33 risks which are assessed as being more significant or likely, it looks first at the capabilities which the EU and its Member States already have to address those risks, and then looks at the various gaps in policy and instruments at the Union's disposal, suggesting possible approaches to overcome them in the short and medium terms.

"Cities have played a more important role in shaping the world than empires" (quote from M. Bloomberg, former mayor of New York (in office 2020-2013).
For the past two decades, the world has seen its population increasingly concentrated in urban areas. This trend is not new but will speed up at a remar-kable rate in years to come. Rising global urbanization is one of the defining trends of the 21st century. Projections show that urbanization combined with the overall growth of the world population could add another 2.5 billion people to the urban population by 2050. The megacity is a new form of urbanization, which has been described as the urban phenomenon of the 21st century. In 1950, only New York and Tokyo had a population of over 10 million. By 2025-2030, it is estimated that around 630 million people will live in close to 40 megacities around the world. Megacities are an invention of the West and have become a reality in the East. Japan's capital Tokyo will still be the largest of them all, followed by Delhi and Shanghai. The list is dominated by cities in Asia, but several in Latin America and Africa will grow rapidly as well. In addition to these megacities, about 400 million people will live in cities of 5-10 million people, and just over 1 billion people are expected be living in cities of 1-5 million. However, most of the world's urban population will still live in cities of less than 1 million people. The consequences of modern urbanization must not be underestimated. In today globalized world, "local" and "global" are more and more interconnected and many developments at urban level are in fact part of global trends. Understanding the causes and consequences of urbanization is crucial to ensuring a proper response to the global issues of our time and in preparing for the period ahead.