Latest Blog Posts

The corona recovery fund, now formally known as Next Generation EU, has been the European Union’s (EU) most important response to the economic and social damages caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Unprecedently, the 27 member states entrusted the European Commission to borrow €750 billion and to allocate the money – in large parts in the […]

Who sets the European Union’s policy agenda? The complex nature of the EU’s legislative process, combined with the lack of a clear hierarchy among the core EU institutions, means that it is hard to disentangle the policy contributions of different institutions and determine which one is ultimately responsible for the legislative priorities of the Union. […]

UACES Scholarship Report by Antonio Salvador M. ALCAZARIII Doctoral Candidate in Political Science, Central European University, Austria Visiting Research Fellow, Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals, Spain   Often feted as ‘the crown jewel’ of its common commercial policy, the European Union’s Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP) has, since the 1970s, unilaterally opened the EU marketspace to […]

Theresa May and the shaping of the Brexit process With the provisional entry into force of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), the dust is far from settled on the Brexit process. And yet the culmination of the formal stages of talks on the terms of withdrawal and the future relationship – however ‘thin’ […]

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Prof Paul James Cardwell, from City, University of London, in England.         euradio · The UK’s Turing Scheme: replacing Erasmus+ ? – Ideas on Europe     We have heard a lot this year about […]

After several systemic crises in a decade, emergency politics has taken hold in Europe. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and later the Covid-19 pandemic, governments have responded with exceptional measures. Along the way, they have accumulated extraordinary powers. We might be tempted to think that this form of politics is the natural […]

What is resilience and how do different disciplines and fields approach it? What does resilience mean in different sectors? And what does resilience involve in times of global pandemic? These are some of the questions addressed in a new open access book Towards resilient organizations and societies. A cross-sectoral and multidisciplinary perspective, edited by Rómulo Pinheiro, […]

For our weekly “Ideas on Europe” editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Dr Roula Nezi, from the University of Surrey, in the UK. Bonjour, Roula!       euradio · Cultural divides – the role of affective polarisation – Ideas on Europe   Roula, you have worked on “cultural battles”, […]

Introduction Supposing that most member states of the current European Union have found a way forward to a political union on the right ideological basis as described previously (see Enlightened Europism), the last act of reformation remaining is to redefine Europe’s role in the world. The Republic of the United Europe (or RUE) must realise […]

As we’ve noted previously in this blog, Brexit is a process, not an event. With the drawing in of the year, we might usefully revisit this notion, since there’s more of the process heading our way. You’ll recall that one side-effect of the very speedy conclusion of the Trade & Cooperation Agreement (TCA) was that […]