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Pradeep Singh and Bowen Xu The European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) had its second virtual General Conference held between 30th August – 3rd September 2021. This year ECPR has attracted over 2,400 scholars worldwide participating in 66 sections covering a wide range of topics and presentations. For the ECPR Standing Group on Knowledge Politics and […]
This is a version of a piece originally posted on Euronews. This summer has provided ample demonstration of the difficulties of the relationship between the UK and the EU. The constant rumbling of discontent over the Northern Ireland Protocol has been accompanied by periodic British threats to walk away from it. Last week’s State of […]
Britain is now a country adrift, without a continent, lost, alone and out at sea. Our government, without a proper democratic mandate, shunned our continent of Europe and is now looking for another. We’d have a wonderful trade deal with our cousins in the USA, was the promise. That’ll easily replace our trading arrangements with […]
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The government has announced that it will bring in a new Brexit law to allow traders to scrap metric measurements and sell products and food in just pounds and ounces only. Do you know what 1kg of bananas is in imperial measurements? No, I didn’t think so. (It’s around 2 lb 3 ounces.) Since 1974, […]
The main objective of the Treaty of Nice, which entered into force in 2003, was to reform the institutional structure of the EU in order to facilitate the accession of ten new member states, an undertaking which was previously planned to have been accomplished by the Amsterdam Treaty. Nice, however, failed to make significant progress […]
On 9 September 2021, seven European citizens who marched in solidarity with migrants across the Franco-Italian Alpine border were acquitted of facilitating irregular migration. The decision is a victory for activists in France, reaffirming their right to act in solidarity with migrants based on the constitutional principle of fraternity. The trial took place on 27 […]
The past month or so has been relatively quiet in the world of the WA/TCA: the British proposals in its Command Paper had sat, largely uncommented, since late May as more prosaic matters have swirled. However, as Brussels and Westminster have restarted, so too has there been a degree of movement. Most importantly, there has been […]
‘I want no misunderstanding. We will not shirk our duty. We are not withdrawing. We are staying here.’ Unfortunately for many Afghans, this quote by an American secretary of state is 75 years old. It stems from a speech given in Stuttgart, on 6 September 1946, which is hardly remembered, but definitely worth remembering as […]
The entry into force of the Amsterdam Treaty in 1999 reshaped cooperation in justice and home affairs (JHA) thus marking a new phase in EU asylum and migration policymaking. A primary goal of the Treaty was to progressively establish an area of freedom, security and justice (AFSJ). Consequently, issues related to asylum, migration and external […]
Alexander Mitterle Working in academia comes with adapting to different timeframes: some universities use semesters, others quarters or terms. A course at a German university can be timed in semester weekly hours (SWS) or in credit points. In both cases they differ – with a usual time-span of 45 minutes – from the U.S. equivalent: […]
The eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis proved to be one of the most challenging tasks European policy makers had to face. Political-ideological, democratic, institutional and other constraints prevented the euro area governments from putting an abrupt end to it simply by increasing integration into the fiscal area. Instead, policy makers decided to “borrow” a crisis management […]
The negotiations and implementation of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the European Union (EU) and the 79 countries forming the Organisation of the African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) – a group of developing countries largely sharing a colonial past with EU members – were conflict-ridden from the beginning. Transforming a decades-long system of […]
Brexiters claim that the EU is run by unelected bureaucrats. It’s a laughable claim because it’s untrue. The EU is a democracy, run by elected politicians. By comparison, the UK seems more like a quasi-democracy, with unelected decision-makers and undemocratic practises that would be considered despotic compared to EU standards. Take our Parliament. It consists […]
