Politics & Public Policy

By Marylou Hamm (Science Po, France / European University Institute, Italy) From the Greek debt crisis and the 2015 migration crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the European Union has faced overlapping emergencies over the past fifteen years. These crises have tested not only financial actors and member states, but also […]

Almost a decade of negotiations on the European Pact on Migration and Asylum came to an end in May 2024. Statements such as “it is perhaps one of the most important decisions in this legislative period, and it is certainly one of the most difficult for many” and “Today is a truly historic day, as […]

On 30 September 2025, Ursula von der Leyen announced that the European Union will present new climate targets for 2035 and 2040 at COP30 next year. As Europe prepares for COP30 in Belem, these goals are meant to reinforce Europe’s global leadership on climate action. This statement shows that the EU is preparing to move from […]

Citizens’ participation is often framed as a conditio sine qua non for healthy democracies. It serves as a primary system of checks and balances, represents one of the most central and meaningful ways for citizens to contribute to collective decision-making, and is argued to be the main mechanism through which citizens learn, discuss and form […]

Blog article adapted from ‘Shadows of a Nation: History, Identity, and the Transnistrian Question’ working paper presented at the UACES Graduate Forum Research Conference at the Panteion University, Athens on 30 May 2025. Will Kingston-Cox is a political researcher and postgraduate in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Oxford, specialising in Moldova, […]

The 2025 edition the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) General Conference at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, 26-29 August. These were four intense days of thousands of participants exploring most pressing political issues of our times over a range of featured roundtables and hundreds of panels. The conference section of the ECPR […]

By Andrea Pareschi (University of Bologna and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) Across EU member states, Eurosceptic parties – especially on the radical right – are thriving. Not long ago, they had only limited support and were stuck in opposition. But in recent years, many of them have ‘come in from the cold’ and gained […]

By Jérôme Deyris (Centre for European Studies at Sciences Po, France), Bart Stellinga (Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy) and Matthias Thiemann (Centre for European Studies at Sciences Po, France) In November 2017, Dutch central bank governor Klaas Knot expressed worries that ‘inflation expectations are bearing an awful lot of weight in monetary policy these […]

By Desmond Dinan (George Mason University) and Sophia Russack (Centre for European Policy Studies) The reappointment of Ursula von der Leyen in 2024 was more than just continuity at the top of the EU executive. It revealed how power is distributed in Brussels, between the European Council and European Parliament (EP), between national governments and […]

by Manuela Moschella (Professor of Political Science, University of Bologna) and Lucia Quaglia (Professor of Political Science, University of Bologna) The European Union (EU) stands at a critical juncture. Global competition, technological disruption, and geopolitical fragmentation challenge the economic framework that has defined the EU for over three decades. Two landmark reports — Much More […]