Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues

This article analyses the challenges and perspectives of the European Union's security and defence policy in a new geopolitical era shaped by Russian aggression against Ukraine, growing US-China rivalry, and instability in the EU's neighbourhood. It identifies three key weaknesses that limit the Union's strategic autonomy: insufficient military capabilities, the fragmentation of the defence industry, and a reliance on external suppliers of weapons, equipment, and critical raw materials. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework that combines political economy, political science, European studies, and security studies, the article examines how existing tools and initiatives, the EDF, PESCO, ASAP, EDIRPA, and the ReArm Europe plan, are responding to these deficits. While these instruments and initiatives demonstrate the EU's ambition to strengthen its security role, their effectiveness remains limited by political divergences and restricted resources. The author concludes that overcoming fragmentation and building sustainable mechanisms for defence cooperation are essential if the EU is to establish itself as a credible security actor in a multipolar world.

This paper explores the potentialities and constraints of building the European Union's strategic autonomy in a new geopolitical era marked by the rivalry between the United States and China, the weakening of the multilateral order, and the consequences of the war in Ukraine. The authors primarily focus on the political, economic, and technological dimensions of autonomy, utilising relevant scientific methods within an interdisciplinary research framework, primarily the analytical-synthetic method, content and comparative analysis, as well as the scenario approach. The findings indicate that the EU is capable of progressively reducing its dependency through the diversification of resources, investments in development, research, and innovation, and the strengthening of digital and technological sovereignty. Simultaneously, however, the Union faces serious limitations, the fiscal constraints of the Member States, the fragmentation of its foreign and security policy, and a persistent reliance on the United States in the area of defence. The EU’s future position will therefore hinge on its ability to consolidate its economic and technological potential and transform it into a unified political will and a credible geopolitical power.

Globalization as a modern process is accelerating in the whole world, and this process contributes to both -progress and various negative phenomena in society. One of these negative phenomena is transnational criminality, which is increasingly impacting also Latvia. For that reason, this problem is investigated in this paper, in order to understand how the Latvian state may take advantage of the potential of globalization to reduce the consequences of this globalization, which become apparent in the form of transnational criminality. This paper analyses a number of concepts related to the research area, such as „globalization”, „transnational crime/ criminality” and others. The discussion about the impact of globalization on immigration and how it affects the transnational criminality is also one of the issues of his paper. The purpose of this paper is also to investigate the impact of globalization on drug-related crimes, as well as the issues of prevention of these crimes in relation to the Republic of Latvia under the influence of modern globalization. The paper explores the potential for international cooperation in the fight against transnational criminality, as well as deals with ways of further improvement of this transnational cooperation to make it more effective in reducing of transnational criminality. The above mentioned paper could serve as a theoretical insight into various problems, which the law enforcement bodies have in practice, when they have to deal with different aspects of transnational criminality. This paper also explores the problems that may arise when the officers of these institutions have to cooperate internationally in detecting transnational organized crimes and, thereby, to learn from this cooperation, so that this international cooperation between the law enforcement institutions of Latvia and other countries will ensure more better results in the future.

Relevance: With the increase of permeability of borders, in the conditions of active political interaction between regions, it became regular to witness appearance of many transnational companies (TNC) and metacorporations differing in forms of management and organizational connections. Where in the case of transnational companies we can most often observe trade expansion with the pushing out of the competitors working on the local market, the pattern more characteristic of metacorporations is merger and acquisition (MAA) where the management of the holding (as a rule) signs contracts with local manufacturers increasing their production capacity at the expense of local productions and businesses. The aim of this paper is to track the dynamics of international business development in the conditions of globalization and find out which regions and spheres of business are currently considered the most preferable for foreign investment. The results gained can be used in planning of perspective outlet markets and in search of new collaboration objects. The novelty of this paper lies in the observed character of interdependence of national economies and redistribution of investment flows between regions. The conclusions were made, that foreign investment flows (FIF) significantly influence the development of business inside the country: businesses with foreign capital receive a number of benefits compared to local companies.

Driving factors and implications of foreign direct investments were widely discussed during the latest decade. Anyway, impression remains that due to the specifics of that type of investment, misinterpreting of their economic composition is rather frequent than rare. Hence, the paper starts with detailed classification of investment types. The next part of the paper is devoted to a review of approaches to FDI driving factors and outcomes. Finally, current trends of foreign capital flows in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are being observed and evaluated. Novel insights about new consistent patterns of foreign capital directions are being provided. The paper is being finalized by indicating contemporary implications of FDI withdrawal for host country related to its further secure and sustainable development.