This paper analyses the US’s strategic interests and policy approaches towards the South Caucasus vis-a-vis competing geopolitical paradigms. It concerns the security challenges for the region, which arise from contradictions between integration, disintegration, and sovereignty in the shared neighbourhood of the European Union (EU) and Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). The geopolitical, geo-economic and security interests of the United States, Russia, the European Union, Turkey, and Iran are all engaged in the South Caucasus, here is where their security interests intersect. The paper utilizes the Regional Security Complex Theory. From this perspective, the strategic fulcrum of regional security lies in the regions and powers. Therefore, the South Caucasus has an ever-increasing importance for the US interests both as a gateway to Eurasia and as the eastern edge of Europe. Thus, within the context of the largest competing alternatives of the geopolitics and geo-economics of the EU, the Russia-led EAEU, China’s Belt and Road and India’s North-South Corridor – the South Caucasus, an integral of European super-complex, appears as an insulator and corridor between the West and the East, the North and the South. Hence, the US policies have been aimed at making the South Caucasus an eastern extension of the enlarged European regional security complex.

In this article, certain aspects of the European Union’s (EU) approach to funding regional development projects are discussed. The purpose of each EU fund and the projects EU is financing as well as the criteria for countries to apply for a fund are also mentioned? It focuses on the EU regional policy, plan of EU for and equality among EU member states and the willingness for the strategic and effective development of less developed EU member states. More specifically the Cohesion Policy (CP) is discussed, together with its role in the EU, including its objectives, philosophy, criteria, and projects. CP is funding projects to promote environmentally sustainable and infrastructure projects. According to CP the development infrastructure boosts socioeconomic cohesion, which is key in the establishment of a control mechanisms and tackling operational weaknesses. Finally, the case study of “Ionia Odos” (or Greece A5 motorway) is analysed, as a typical example of infrastructure investment under the CP.

In December 2018, the Italian Parliament definitely confirmed the so-called “Immigration and Security” Decree, which deeply reformed the regulation of Migration and Integration. The present work aims at summarizing the innovations introduced by the new Decree and confront them with the critical remarks and concerns of legal scholars and asylum experts, stressing its conceivable risks of unconstitutionality. Final goal of the article is to challenge what the real aim of the new Decree is: if it ends up increasing precarious and instable living conditions for migrants on Italian soil and therefore threatening social security, rather than improving public safety and protection for citizens and legal residents.

Recent concerns about the state of health of the rule of law in the EU required the intervention of the European institutions that monitor the correct application of EU law. It was therefore necessary to activate the specific procedure that the Treaties allocate to safeguard the founding values of the Union, listed in Article 2 TEU and which include the rule of law (i.e., the Article 7 TEU). However, at the time of its first and real application, this mechanism proved to be ineffective. To deal with the critical issues inherent in the system established by Article 7 TEU, various instruments have been proposed and/or prepared. This work the analysis of analysing the latter and checking whether there exist new, more effective solutions to protect the rule of law.