What do we know about the relationship between Europe, the European Union and European identity? While national identity is a multifaceted phenomenon, European identity has been linked to the growth of the European Union. This article attempts to analyze some of the attributes of individuals with European identity in central and eastern Europe prior to EU accession by applying existing hypotheses on correlates of European identity. The phenomenon of identification with Europe prior to EU accession provides a window into understanding the identity mechanisms that inform the concept of European identity. The first Eurobarometer surveys measuring European identification in central and eastern accession states reported a puzzling finding: that more people, not less, identified with Europe than in existing EU states. An analysis of the Eurobarometer results provides counter‐intuitive comparisons and contrasts between eastern and western Europe and uncovers potential mechanisms illustrating the content of contemporary European identity.

What is the relationship between private actors and international institutions in global governance, as institutions such as the EU develop aspects of political authority once in the sole domain of nation states? Important areas of recent EU development have been immigration, security, and defense policies. Are these EU policies the result of strategic imperatives, or are they also driven by the political economy of markets? Kaija Schilde argues that answers require evaluating the EU in the comparative tradition of the political development of authority. Drawing on industry documents, interviews, interest group data, an original survey, and comparative political theory, The Political Economy of European Security demonstrates that interest groups can change the outcomes of developing political institutions because they provide sources of external capacity, which in turn can produce authority over time. In this way, the EU is like a developing state in its relationship with interest groups.

How should we understand the role of the EU in the world – and its relational power vis‐à‐vis other international actors? And to what degree is the Russia–Ukraine crisis a critical juncture in EU power dynamics over time? This contribution to this Special Issue evaluates EU power through the lens of material power and capabilities, and analyzes patterns and changes in material capabilities as indicators of threat and strategic assessments. The findings demonstrate the Russia–Ukraine crisis as one critical juncture in the weight and means of EU military power/capabilities, representing a partial but significant shift away from the overall national tendencies of reducing military spending across Europe, and the decade‐long trends of strategic goals towards mobilizing EU military power outside of Europe. It also marks a deepening of strategic divergences across the EU regarding national clusters of capability development.

Do considerations that cause military spending increases symmetrically cause spending cuts? Models of military spending that estimate a single effect for major independent variables implicitly assume that this is the case. In reality, the mechanisms that cause military spending increases do not always imply symmetrical cuts, and vice versa. This article examines two considerations widely held to influence military spending: economic growth and international threats. In both cases, there are reasons to suspect asymmetric effects on military spending. While recessions always create pressure for cuts in military spending, which frequently constitutes a substantial share of national budgets, economic growth does not necessarily imply a symmetric need for spending increases. Similarly, while national security policymakers, including the military, are likely to call for spending increases when international threats worsen, they have self-interested reasons to minimize the budgetary implications of declining threats. A cross-national analysis of military spending since World War II shows that economic decline has a larger impact on military spending than economic growth. In regards to international threat, the findings are more complex. There is no evidence that international threat is related to changes in military spending in the short run, and little evidence of a long-run relationship. The threat variables appear to account for cross-sectional variation in military spending but not variation within each state over time. These results suggest military budgets require more time to recover from economic decline than benefit from economic growth as recessions can thus produce long deviations from the equilibrium relationship between the size of the economy and the military budget. This finding in military spending suggests consequences for our understanding of balance of power and power transitions.

As the EU has expanded its authority into areas of high politics such as monetary, defense, and foreign policy, it has simultaneously developed procedures for handling more sensitive and classified information. These critical policy domains require standards regulating secure information and personnel, but the concept of official secrets is in tension with the treaty norms of the EU. Observers allege that the classified information policy of the EU was imposed through the coercion of external actors such as North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the USA in a significant historical departure from the information security policies of European member states. This article evaluates the content of EU-classified information policies and compares them to the content of European member states, NATO, and the USA, in an effort to clarify the mechanisms of policy diffusion in the area of information security. IntroductionAs the European Union has matured as a political institution, it has increasingly struggled with matters of information security and the handling of sensitive documents. Policy domains previously at the level of the nation state, including defense and homeland security, are critical areas that inevitably require the protection of information and the regulation of personnel for information access. EU policy activity in internal and external security has necessitated a system of classifying sensitive documents and personnel. EU counterterrorism policies such as the 2010 Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) and the 2006 Data Retention Directive have expanded the scope of EU security authority and intensified direct EU interaction with third parties such as the USA. Sensitive policy domains require trusted documents, vetted personnel, and carefully regulated channels of information sharing between individuals, states, and agencies.Although the EU has developed security and defense capabilities for over a decade, current EU-US developments such as the agreement on terrorist financing highlighted EU information policy. A debate in 2010 over TFTP attracted the attention of transparency groups over the implementation of the EU-US Agreement. TFTP is a US Treasury Department program designed to track suspected terrorist financial transactions, and the Agreement over TFTP bank data exchange with the EU was negotiated with the *