European Union

On Tuesday Belgium launched a new website, QVAX, where people who are not yet vaccinated or have no appointment to be vaccinated, could register in case 'spare' appointments come up. Brussels will start it's own system mid-April.

The European Parliament has launched an internal probe into the conduct of Czech MEP Jan Zahradil over his dealings with China and a so-called 'friendship group'.

In Germany, there is commotion about a new book in which two journalists describe meetings held during the corona crisis between federal chancellor Angela Merkel, and the 16 prime ministers of its federal constituent states.

Italy's various mafias are allegedly exploiting the chaos caused by the Covid-19 emergency to infiltrate even deeper into sectors where they are already present, such as healthcare, mortuary services, and waste disposal (both medical and non-medical).

As a German national, I see German history as a constant warning to defend the rule of law - and to be vigilant to detect even the slightest beginnings of its erosion.

As an African farmer and exporter, I know all too well the potential of agricultural trade for the development of my country Kenya and my continent. As the European Union and the African Union prepare to agree on their new...

The prime ministers of Italy and Greece on Tuesday (6 April) joined a growing number of foreign leaders visiting Libya as it seeks to emerge from a decade of post-revolution chaos under a UN-sponsored peace process. Italy’s Mario Draghi, whose...

The European Union's top two officials on Tuesday (6 April) expressed deep worries about human rights in Turkey while voicing hope for stronger ties in their first meeting in a year with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Facebook has told the Irish Data Protection Commission that a breach involving the personal information of 533 million users worldwide took place prior to the entry into force of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation in 2018, and the company...

On 13 April, the Committee on Foreign Affairs will hold an online hearing "The Arctic: a new arena of geostrategic importance and great powers' rivalry". The growing geo-economic and geopolitical importance of the Arctic region for European economy and security calls for an updated, more integrated EU approach towards this region.
The hearing will focus on the main geopolitical challenges and opportunities that a rapidly changing Arctic is creating in the fields of security, trade and development, and the exploitation of natural resources as well as their possible repercussions on Arctic governance. It will also explore avenues towards developing a more coherent framework for EU action with a focus on the European Arctic, in order to have a unified response to the new challenges posed by the changing role of this region.
Draft programme
Poster
Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

On 13 April, the Committee on Foreign Affairs will hold an online hearing "The Arctic: a new arena of geostrategic importance and great powers' rivalry". The growing geo-economic and geopolitical importance of the Arctic region for European economy and security calls for an updated, more integrated EU approach towards this region.
The hearing will focus on the main geopolitical challenges and opportunities that a rapidly changing Arctic is creating in the fields of security, trade and development, and the exploitation of natural resources as well as their possible repercussions on Arctic governance. It will also explore avenues towards developing a more coherent framework for EU action with a focus on the European Arctic, in order to have a unified response to the new challenges posed by the changing role of this region.
Location : BRUSSELS
Draft programme
Poster
Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on NATO on Tuesday to lay out a path for Ukraine to join the Western military alliance, after days in which Russia has massed troops near the conflict-hit Donbas region.

Denmark on Tuesday (6 April) began requiring people to use a new Covid certificate to enter certain businesses or face fines, one of the first European countries to do so. The “corona pass” certifies that someone has either been fully...

Since its creation, the European Union has aimed to become a key international actor, promoting regional integration, democracy, the rule of law and human rights through its numerous international development programmes around the world. Yet, we should not forget a complementary dynamic that is as important as the EU attempts to diffuse its own institutional practices and values. This concerns how the EU learns from other actors, and adapts to practices proposed by other countries and international organizations. Therefore, we need to understand how and if the EU is an adaptive actor. Closely related to this, the European Union has been described as a complex system, due to its institutional structure, evolving nature and its inherent contradictions. The complexity of the EU system means that the European Union learns from its crises, successes and challenges, and adapts, evolves and improves its policy responses. Yet, this tends to happen in complex and unpredictable ways.

Thus, when analyzing the EU we deal with a complex adaptive actor which is also a learning entity. In my article, ‘The European Union: From a Complex Adaptive System to a Policy Interpreter’, I debate how the EU as an international actor opens to the outside environment and learns from it through feedback loops, while adapting as a result of changes that happen outside the EU system of actors. Taking international development as a case study, I show how the EU learns by sensing information and relevant changes in institutional practices and mechanisms of interaction between non-EU actors. Therefore, the EU actors interpret the nature of these changes and the urgency of institutional adaptation, and, subsequently, start to adapt their institutional practices. However, since the EU is a complex system, this adaptation process does not happen in a linear way, and involves reiteration, imperfect adaptation and imitation of institutional practices that contradict other existing EU policies.

I apply this approach in order to discuss the EU efforts for achieving international aid effectiveness. This has involved the EU participation in international forums such as the Paris Declaration (2005), the Accra Agenda (2008) and the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (2011). In this context, the EU has aimed to adapt its policy practices and carry out development at the most appropriate level, being inclusive in terms of actors and encouraging ownership by the beneficiary country. While the EU was trying to figure out the best policy approaches in order to make the most effective use of its aid budget, non-EU actors started implementing programmes going beyond top‐down approaches and using new policy practices such as horizontal cooperation between peers. This change was due to important changes in international development, former recipients of aid programmes becoming donors on their own (for example, many Latin American and Asian countries). This was mainly through South-South cooperation, allowing middle‐income and developing countries to share ‘knowledge, skills, expertise and resources to meet their development goals through concerted efforts’ (UNOSSC).

The EU aid effectiveness journey included new policy instruments such as the use budget support, a policy instrument aimed to help beneficiary countries to directly finance their national development agendas. Thus, the EU aimed to start building international partnerships with these developing countries. Yet, going beyond these initial approaches, the EU manifested more recently its interest in incorporating horizontal cooperation in its own policies and programmes. This has happened in two main ways. First, this ambition was stated in key EU documents. For example, in its last European Consensus on Development (2017), the EU highlights the desire to build ‘innovative engagement with more advanced developing countries’ and ‘partnerships [which] will promote the exchange of best practices, technical assistance and knowledge sharing [… by working] with these countries to promote South-South and triangular cooperation consistent with development effectiveness principles’. Triangular cooperation, as defined by UNOSSC, ‘involves two or more developing countries in collaboration with a third party, typically a developed-country government or multilateral organization, contributing to the exchanges with its own knowledge and resources’. It offers the opportunity for actors such as the EU to get involved in horizontal cooperation, by partially financing programmes in which countries in the Global South exchange experiences on development lessons, challenges and successes. The second and more recent way in which the EU has showed its interest in incorporating horizontal cooperation between its institutional practices is by starting to finance concrete triangular cooperation programmes such as a regional facility for development in transition for Latin America and the Caribbean, building on best practices taken mainly from Chile, Uruguay, Colombia, Costa Rica and Argentina.

These EU attempts to adapt and start using institutional practices which have proved successful in programmes developed by new donors is a complex process in itself. It is complex because it still involves contradictions, and the EU is working in triangular settings based on the idea of horizontality between international actors, but at the same time many of the EU partners still complain about EU conditionality in their bilateral relation. Complexity and adaptability in the EU system are interconnected, and, while we can indeed talk about the EU as an adaptive actor, the complexity of its adaptation processes is a key feature of the EU learning journey. This enables and constrains changes within the EU institutional practices. However, the complexity of the EU as an adaptive actor should not prevent analysts and scholars from approaching this instance of EU actorness that is as relevant as the EU attempts to diffuse its own values and practices.

 

This blog post draws on the JCMS article “The European Union: From a Complex Adaptive System to a Policy Interpreter”

 

 

Ileana Daniela Serban was a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Political Science at Waseda University, Tokyo, where she held a research grant from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science. She is currently a Lecturer in Public Policy at King’s College, London. Her research interests include global governance, processes of policymaking, EU actorness and new forms of international development cooperation.

https://waseda.academia.edu/IleanaDanielaSerban

@danielaserban9

The post Is the European Union a complex adaptive actor? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The European Commission believes Europe is on track to achieve "community immunity" to COVID-19 by late summer thanks to speeded-up vaccination dose deliveries, a spokesman said Tuesday.

University of Luxembourg, Photo taken by Alina Felder during her fieldwork in 2019

Alina Felder

European higher education institutions are receiving substantial attention in various areas of EU policy making. They are expected to foster excellence in research, mobility in education and cohesion through cross-border exchange. Yet, the interrelationship of these different governance sites for a Europe of Knowledge (Gornitzka 2010) appears under investigated. While higher education policy research scrutinizes the multi-level, multi-actor and multi-issue dimensions of governing the European Higher Education Area (Chou et al. 2017), research on European border regions is concerned with day-to-day cooperation practices in the so-called ‘laboratories’ of European integration (e.g. Lechevalier and Wielgohs 2013; Stokłosa 2015). Existing studies on such laboratories among higher education institutions remain at the respective cross-border cooperation level (e.g. Giband and Mary 2018).

 

Entering the laboratories of Europeanization in the area of higher education

In my work I depart from previous research by analyzing the relationship among higher education (policy) actors both at the level of cross-border cooperation and between the (sub)national and EU levels. Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with cross-border cooperating higher education institution representatives at rector and administrative level, (sub)national political actors and higher education institution associations. The higher education (HE) institutions concerned by my research are those, which receive(d) funding through European Territorial Cooperation, better known as Interreg. Next to reasons of accessibility, the cases for comparative analysis were selected with different starting points in the support provided through EU funds. While the University of the Greater Region – involving six HE institutions from Belgium, Germany, France, and Luxemburg – was established due to Interreg funding in 2008, the International University of Lake Constance – a cooperation among 30 HE institutions from Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein and Switzerland – was already established in 1999, prior to receiving EU funding in 2009.

While in the first case, Interreg has favoured a cooperation, which would not have emerged otherwise, my analysis reveals that Europeanization also matters for the already existing cooperation structures and issues. If conceived of as an opportunity and resource, Interreg is thus used to establish new or facilitate existing cross-border cooperation. Analysing how Interreg affects the cross-border cooperation among higher education institutions, delivers insights into concrete Europeanization processes, i.e. ‘processes of a) construction, b) diffusion and c) institutionalisation of […] rules, procedures, policy paradigms, […] and shared beliefs and norms, which are […] consolidated in the EU policy process and then incorporated in the logic of domestic […] discourse, political structures and public policie’ (Radaelli 2004, p. 3).

Concerning the Europeanization of cross-border cooperating higher education institutions, such diffusion and institutionalisation manifests itself in the objectives guiding cross-border cooperation practices. Under Interreg IV (2007-2013), the University of the Greater Region was established as a project to ‘strengthen cooperation in the area of higher education’, whereas the International University of Lake Constance received Interreg funding to ‘foster knowledge transfer’ for regional competitiveness. Beyond these generic objectives, the gathered data suggests academic, economic, political, financial, and socio-cultural objectives for the cross-border cooperation among higher education institutions. Interreg serves to achieve these objectives and was thus used to establish and/ or facilitate cross-border cooperation. The required structural changes to implement the Interreg funding accordingly were moderate in both cases and the objectives stemming from the EU level could easily be accommodated.

 

Accounting for (Europeanized) objectives of cross-border cooperation

While higher education institution members more clearly distinguished between academic and economic objectives of cross-border cooperation, political actors referred to these as strongly intertwined by mentioning objectives such as the development of skilled labour force to prevent brain drain. At the same time, certain higher education institution representatives explained how the cross-border cooperation of their institutions is not only supposed to contribute to a specific economic area but also to a space to live, to study and to conduct research. Concerning the academic objectives of cross-border cooperation, proximity was mentioned as an asset for joint research projects, even though research is highly internationalised. Joint course offers were an initial goal in the beginning of both cases. Yet, organisational, legal and practical obstacles concerning different schedules, degree requirements and language barriers were unfavourable to increasing the regional mobility of students and staff. The comparatively smaller size of the University of the Greater Region and, thus, stronger administrative support has allowed maintaining the existing and establishing new joint study programs.

Regarding political objectives, higher education institution representatives point to the contribution of cross-border cooperation towards the internationalisation strategies of their institutions. This is especially valid for smaller higher education institutions. In this vein, political actors refer to how the cooperation across borders helps to increase the attention towards areas that are peripheral in the respective national contexts. Academic staff and political actors alike have outlined the cooperation framework as a role model, for example, for the effective implementation of innovation policies or for the successful cross-border cooperation (among higher education institutions).

In terms of financial drivers, higher education institution representatives relate to how cross-border cooperation is a means to increase access to national and/or EU funding, where pre-existing cooperation relationships are an asset to acquire funding. However, the administrative effort and high co-funding rates of EU funding weakens its role as a driver for cross-border cooperation. Finally, cultural and organisational differences appear as two sides of a coin in both cases, so that higher education institution representatives highlighted the benefits of learning from differences in the approaches to teaching, researching and providing students with advice on international and professional experiences.

 

A highly political endeavour to fulfil the increasing responsibilities of higher education

Common beliefs and interests have been essential not only in establishing, but also in maintaining cross-border cooperation. The identified objectives for cooperation suggest that these common interests are mainly of academic and political nature. Additionally, the idea to fulfil the perceived increasing responsibilities of HE institutions also played a significant role. This reflects the EU’s social investment narrative establishing a ‘linear relationship between knowledge […] and economic performance’ (Telling and Serapioni 2019, p. 401). Just as any cross-border cooperation endeavour (Scott 2014) the cross-border cooperation among higher education institutions is highly political, so that its stakeholders attempt to influence (supra)national policies for more favourable conditions and sustainable funding sources for cross-border cooperation.

 

This blog post is based on my paper published as part of the Eastern Journal of European Studies Special Issue ‘Cross border cooperation and peripheral areas in Europe’ edited by Tomás Lopes Cavalheiro Ponce Dentinho. Here you can access the article in full.

 

Alina Felder is a doctoral fellow at the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences (BAGSS). In her PhD project she explores the under investigated cross-roads of EU regional policy with the area of higher education policy. The central question of her dissertation is how EU regional policy instruments influence the cross-border cooperation among higher education institutions and their attempts to shape EU knowledge policies. Her research interests thus include Europeanization processes that are induced through network modes of governance the EU is establishing and encouraging public and private actors to participate in. Next to her research, Alina regularly works in political education contexts.

 

References

Meng-Hsuan Chou, Jens Jungblut, Pauline Ravinet & Martina Vukasovic (2017) Higher education governance and policy: an introduction to multi-issue, multi-level and multi-actor dynamicy. In Policy and Society, 36:1, pp. 1-15, DOI: 10.1080/14494035.2017.1287999

Giband, David; Mary, Kevin (2018): Territorial cross-border cooperation in higher education. A case study of the eastern Pyrenean border. In Documents d’Anàlisi Geográfica 64 (3), pp. 587-601. DOI: 10.5565/rev/dag.516.

Gornitzka, Åse (2010): Bologna in Context. A horizontal perspective on the dynamics of governance sites for a Europe of Knowledge. In European Journal of Education 45 (4), pp. 535–548. DOI: 10.1111/j.1465-3435.2010.01452.x

Lechevalier, Arnaud; Wielgohs, Jan (Eds.) (2014): Borders and Border Regions in Europe. Bielefeld: Transcript.

Radaelli, Claudio M. (2004): Europeanisation: Solution or problem? In European Integration online Papers 8 (16), pp. 1-24.

Scott, James W. (2014): From Euphoria to Crisis. Cross-Border Cooperation, Euroregions and Cohesion. In: Luis Dominguez Castro und Iva Miranda Pires (Eds.): Cross-Border Cooperation Structures in Europe. Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future. Brussels: Peter Lang, pp. 81-94.

Stokłosa, Katarzyna (2015): Border Regions as Laboratories of European Integration. In: Elzbieta Opilowska and Jochen Roose (Ed.): Microcosm of European integration. The German-Polish border regions in transformation. Baden-Baden: Nomos, pp. 16-31.

Telling, Kathryn; Serapioni, Martino (2019): The rise and change of the competence strategy: Reflections on twenty-five years of skills policies in the EU. In European Educational Research Journal 18 (4), pp. 387-406. DOI: 10.1177/1474904119840558.

 

The post Comparing cross-border cooperation practices of European(ized) higher education institutions appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

SEDE organises a public hearing on 'The security situation in the Sahel: the African view and experience' on Wednesday, 14 April 2021 from 10.00 to 12.00hrs in room SPINELLI 3E2 and remotely, with external experts.
Draft programme
Poster
Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

SEDE organises a public hearing on 'The security situation in the Sahel: the African view and experience' on Wednesday, 14 April 2021 from 10.00 to 12.00hrs in room SPINELLI 3E2 and remotely, with external experts.
Draft programme
Poster
Source : © European Union, 2021 - EP

Russia has concentrated troops near the Ukrainian border and positioned heavy artillery in annexed Crimea - prompting worried statements from Nato and words of support from Joe Biden to Kyiv. Commentators discuss whether the war in eastern Ukraine is about to flare up once more.