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It was particular joy to meet again in person at the General Conference of the European Consortium of Politics Research (ECPR) last week 22-26 August. After two years of virtual conferences due to Covid, this time the ECPR General Conference took place in the beautiful city of Innsbruck in the Austrian Alps. It brought together […]

The conference was organised as a hybrid event, giving the opportunity for some researchers to network in person for the first time since the pandemic began, though a good number of participants joined online.

The Treaty of Rome in 1957 did not mention industrial policy as a designated Community competence but its preambles declared a high degree of competitiveness an overarching goal, which indirectly laid the basis for a supranational intervention. Industrial policy has been a key pillar in the gradual reconfiguration of several national markets into one giant single market at the outset but it vanished in name during the decades of neoliberal restructuring.

On 23 June 2022, the European Union granted Ukraine and Moldova the coveted status of EU Candidate countries. For both countries, the acquisition of an EU Candidate status amid Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine is of high geopolitical but also symbolic importance. Nevertheless, Ukraine’s and Moldova’s path to EU membership is likely to be thorny, as they have much “homework” to do.

Although an increasing number of political decisions are taken at the European Union (EU) level, national politics remains the prime arena for democratic debate. This deprives the EU of a key source of democratic legitimacy, while showing how national politics are increasingly 'ruling the void'. In my article for JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, I argue that national political parties can provide a solution to both challenges by organisationally linking the national and European levels.

Since the release of the Lisbon Strategy in 2000, fostering science, technology, innovation, and human capital have been considered key ingredients of all subsequent EU strategies aimed at achieving a cohesive and competitive European Union.

As the attention of the European public opinion has turned to Ukraine, it is our duty and responsibility not to leave the accession plans for the Balkans fall into oblivion, writes Marilena Koppa. Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash. Nineteen years after the Thessaloniki Summit that offered an accession perspective to the Western Balkans, the […]