The EU

I have been crossing the river Rhine north of Strasbourg between Iffezheim (Germany) and Roppenheim (France) for as long as my driving licence can remember. In the late 70s and early 80s, passport control and the usual question whether there was anything to declare were part of the ritual (although in a much more relaxed […]

Meng-Hsuan Chou In July 2015, UACES’s (The Academic association for contemporary European studies) European Research Area collaborative research network (CRN) held its second workshop at the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) in Cambridge. Knowledge policies continue to be at the forefront of contemporary global politics. There is an accepted belief among policymakers that […]

In these dog days of summer, there’s not much happening in the world of EU politics. Except the on-going debates on the third Greek bailout, arguments about managing asylum applicants and immigrants and the simmering British renegotiation. And the third of these is very much the least, certainly in Continental terms. To date, the renegotiation has been […]

Lut Mergaert and Emanuela Lombardo[i] The European Union (EU) officially committed to gender mainstreaming in the 1990s, fixing the principle in treaty articles, action programmes, and communications, and setting up institutional bodies and mechanisms to promote the incorporation of a gender perspective into policymaking. However, the implementation has not reflected these official commitments. This is, […]

Inga Ulnicane The 22nd International Conference of Europeanists ‘Contradictions: Envisioning European Futures’ was held by the Council for European Studies (CES) at the Sciences Po, Paris, July 8-10 2015. During the three days, more than 1000 scholars from around the world discussed their research on Europe in more than 300 sessions, roundtables and plenaries.   […]

A former UKIP MEP, Ashley Mote, has been jailed for five years for defrauding the European Parliament of almost half-a-million pounds. On sentencing Mr Mote today at Southwark Crown Court, Mr Justice Stuart-Smith told him: “Your greed and dishonesty were matched only by your hypocrisy, because while this was going on you carried out a […]

Early this morning, the President of the EU Council has announced that a deal had been reached. After one referendum and a collection of ultimatums, Grexit is out of the question, for now. The details of the agreement remain unspecified as I write these lines. The Guardian reports that, this last intense weekend, the German […]

Of the four main European Institutions,[1] the European Parliament (EP) has most struggled to be heard on the recent crises affecting Europe (monetary, economic, social, environmental…).[2] At a time when the European project is at great risk, and when European leaders struggle to define a common European interest, it is perhaps time to turn to […]

Dovilė Rimkutė As Majone (1999) has observed, the approval of EU authority – as a predominantly regulatory political system – is based on the perception that supranational regulation corrects market failures by relying on a technical exercise and scientific knowledge managed by independent regulators, e.g. the European Commission and European independent agencies. Experts and scientific […]

There is much to give concern in the world of European politics these days. From Greece to the UK, the Mediterranean to Finland (even Austria), you don’t have to look far to find examples of ‘how it’s all going belly up’ (to quote one of my colleagues). It would be simple to take the counsel of […]