European Integration after Maastricht: Insights, Novel Research Agendas, and the Challenge of Real-World Impact

This is part of our Campus Spotlight on Maastricht University.

 

Along the Maas River, in the far South of the Netherlands, one can find the city of Maastricht. One of the oldest cities in the country, it has been a Roman Empire military stronghold, a cultural and religious center, and the birthplace of the current European Union (EU). Situated strategically in the Maas-Rhine Euroregion, it is a place of linkage between the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and France and their language-areas, but also an example of trans-European day-to-day realities and a symbolic place of European interwovenness. The December 1991 European Summit, which took place in the city, was instrumental in the negotiations for much of the political, economic, and institutional architecture of today’s EU. This has led to unprecedented levels of development, paving the way to a reunited Europe and, arguably, an increase in citizens’ quality of life. Nevertheless, the Europe of integration today is very much different from that of nearly thirty years ago, when the continent was de facto still split. Moreover, the pre-Maastricht permissive consensus seems to be a long-gone historical era, replaced by a constraining dissensus (Hooghe and Marks 2009) and the increasing politicization of the European project. Moreover, the myriad of recent crises, affecting the European project, have exacerbated this split and have challenged, to its very core, the concept of integration.

Against this background, three core stakeholders (the Province of Limburg, The City of Maastricht, and Maastricht University) have developed the “Maastricht, Working on Europe” (MWoE) program to invest in the research on the Europe of integration[1] in general, and the meaning and workings of the “order of Maastricht,” which defined post-Cold War Europe, in particular. Studio Europa Maastricht[2] (SEM) was created to manage this program, with the ambition to position Maastricht as a place for dialogue and debate, a continuous workshop, especially for citizens and scholars, about all things European. Encompassing a threefold structure, SEM manages the research, citizens’ stories, and the heritage of the Europe of integration. Reclaiming and critically re-assessing the legacy of the Maastricht Treaty and its positive and negative impact (Christiansen et al. 2012) is part of this endeavor.

As a research center, SEM addresses several over-arching questions: What is Europe’s role on the global stage? How can democracy, accountability, and the legitimacy of the EU be improved and what can political, corporate, and societal actors do to achieve them? How can socio-economic justice, fairness, and solidarity be evaluated and strengthened in Europe? Will automatization and digitalization, and under what form, help build a greener society and improve the quality of life for EU-citizens? Such questions form an integral part of the MWoE Research Agenda organized around four interdisciplinary research themes[3] and  distinguishe SEM as a unique research hub and center on Europe.

One of the operational assumptions driving the research at SEM is that existing theories, “largely developed during the heydays of integration – either during the founding years of the integration process or during the 1990s—have proven ill equipped to fathom the evolutions, motivations and obstacles in the process of European integration, particularly since the Treaty of Maastricht was signed in 1992” (MWoE research agenda 2020, 6). In short, the EU and its member states are confronted with existential questions that need urgent and innovative answers. In order to address this gap and the issues above, the SEM research center adopts a critical, cross-disciplinary, and real world impact oriented approach. In this respect, we believe that research on contemporary Europe needs to modernize by adopting a multi-dimensional, mixed-methods, and interdisciplinary style. The complex and multi-faceted problems affecting Europe now should not only be addressed through fresh theoretical reflection and empirical evidence. Innovative research tools and novel impact oriented programs are equally constitutive of this ambition. Using such tools to translate research into practice could ultimately generate impact beyond academic communities and, ideally, in line with citizens’ expectations, demands, and preferences about Europe. In response, SEM has implemented its research agenda along specific sections presented here.

 

Examining Europe: New research agendas and ideas

 

The East-West divide in the European Union: Contemporary origins and solutions by Neculai-Cristian Surubaru

The EU has faced considerable hurdles and challenges in the past decade. The pre-Maastricht treaty consensus is now unimaginable in light of the Eurozone, the refugee/migration, BREXIT, and the COVID-19 crises. Equally, there is another peril at Brussels’ gates. Tensions between Eastern and Western EU member states have developed across several lines in the past few years, often overshadowed by the North-South divide. Issues of democratic backsliding, illiberal developments, and increasing tensions between countries have outlined fundamental divisions between several Eastern and Western member states. Views, for instance, on managing migration tended to differ sharply between governments in Budapest/Warsaw and those in Berlin/Stockholm. At the same time, many citizens from the East suffer from a second hand citizenship and inferiority complex due to, for example, the exploitation of seasonal workers in Western agriculture or the continued denial of access to the Schengen or Eurozone areas.

As part of the research agenda enshrined at Studio Europa, examining the tensions between core and peripheral member states is underlined, in this project, by several fundamental questions: Is there a cleavage between East and West within the European Union and how can this be explained? What is the impact of the new East-West divide on European integration? What could be done to reconcile East-West member states and achieve more intra-European solidarity and cohesion? 

Primarily, this research seeks to unravel and explain the contemporary sources and origins of tensions between East-West member states. To do so, it draws on an interdisciplinary collective academic effort combining different theories (from political science, public administration, legal, developmental, and communication) and allowing a healthy variety of research methods. Secondly, the project examines the potential political, institutional, and socio-economic effects that East-West tensions might have on the European integration project. A priori, it is assumed that tensions have a lasting impact on the socio-economic scope, political ambitions, institutional capacity, and overall performance of the European Union (Papadimitriou et al. 2018). Thirdly, although several scholars (Bârgăoanu et al. 2019; Laczó and Gabrijelčič 2019; Anghel 2020; Makszin et al. 2020) have addressed, in recent years, some of the specific issues underpinning East-West divisions, there is still a need for a coherent framework and plenty of room for more empirical analysis.

This project adopts an original and critical perspective on the topic, by equally taking into account an Eastern perspective on these issues. Scholars have written extensively about adherence to the Rule of Law (RoL) principle (Closa and Kochenov 2016) and there is no denial that governments in Hungary and Poland have lately gone above and beyond to dismantle domestic politico-institutional checks and balances. Nevertheless, this has to be understood in light of the wider context in which these cases are situated and the impact of the transition period from a communist to a democratic political system. In other words, the institutional and political infrastructure on the ground has limited the propensity of Western liberal ideas (Krastev and Holmes 2019).

Adopting a confrontational stance will provide more ammunition to populist political leaders in the East to challenge EU governance. Similarly, tackling problems via technocratic means tailored in Brussels will add to East-West tensions. Consequently, creative solutions are needed primarily at the political level. In response, this project reflects on and proposes new bridges of cooperation between stakeholders within the two areas. Reconciliation in Europe has historically been difficult to achieve and was one of the first aims of the European Economic Community. Not only would it be tragic, but it would also be ironic, if intra-European divisions between East and West damaged the EU integration process. Averting this scenario through theoretical, critical, and evidence-based analyses is a befitting practical goal for European Studies researchers.

 

The institution of the European political space and the relevance of migration by Caterina di Fazio

The European political space is currently faced with increasing migration flows. The issue of migration, therefore, calls into question our conception of what we define as the European political space. Often, this is understood as allowing unrestricted freedom of movement within its internal borders—the Schengen area—only by denying movement across its external borders. This is a concrete manifestation of the way Europe, by means of an externalization of its borders (Di Fazio 2020), has reshaped its imaginary geography.

In the aftermath of the 71st anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we continue to witness processes of violation of human rights and criminalization of sea rescue of migrants. Some of the policies and measures taken to contain migration often break the very same principles and laws upon which EU institutions are based (Urbinati and Di Fazio 2019). From a normative point of view, an ethics of borders and refugee status is needed to investigate the principles underlying the legitimacy of political institutions, as well as elucidate both the rights of non-citizens in our democracies and the normative foundations of the modern state’s right to regulate migration. In other words, this ethics has to do with the migrants’ right to access public and political space and, vice versa, the right of states, to choose whether or not to grant the right of asylum. It should deny the privilege attached to the contingency of having been born inside a specific territorial border and guarantee the right to flee and seek asylum (Balibar and Di Fazio 2019) and, more broadly, freedom of movement. Ultimately, what should currently be examined is the Hobbesian dialectic between fear and exclusion, unsettlement and displacement (Morris 2015). In this perspective, the migrants’ condition would signify not just a loss of identity, but also the symbolic and effective exclusion from both public and political space, precisely because of the lack of visibility that affects them (Tassin 2003; Gundogdu 2015). Inclusion can only come from a cosmopolitan participation in a public dialogue of all residents within a territory.

A deeper engagement with the “other side” of Europe and ways in which Europe is perceived from there is key to developing inclusive discourses and policies based on the fundamental principles and rights that constitute the European political space. This engagement requires a comprehensive comparative study and critical analysis of migration policies, narratives and counternarratives in local communities and cross-border territories within and beyond the Mediterranean and transatlantic spaces. Thus, the Phenomenology of Human Mobility project conducted at SEM seeks to elucidate the concept of human mobility in a comparative transnational perspective, by means of an innovative space-based interdisciplinary methodology involving applied phenomenology, fieldwork, and cross-border comparative case studies. Insofar as it addresses pressing issues in ethics from a cross-cultural and cross-regional perspective and focuses on the great transformations that affect our world today, it fosters interdisciplinary discussions among the ethics communities across campus and beyond.

The expected impact of this research project is to provide a common space for dialogue, debate, and knowledge exchange for academics, policymakers, and civil society. It aims at bridging the gap between research and policy communities and fostering citizens’ involvement, thereby enriching the quality of local democratic life. To this end, in 2019, we launched Agora Europe—Series on the European Political Space with Nadia Urbinati and Etienne Balibar. This joint initiative with Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University and Columbia University aims at creating opportunities for a transnational debate on the European political space vis-à-vis migration flows in the Mediterranean and transatlantic regions. It has included events co-sponsored by the Alliance Program, the Council for European Studies, Departments of Political Science and Philosophy, European Institute, Heyman Center, ICLS, Maison Française. The Agora Europe Series at Studio Europa also entails writing, publishing, and promoting “Charta 2020” (Tavares, Di Fazio et al. 2019), the first charter on European public goods, which brings together European and national, academic and  political institutions, as well as civil society. Agora Europe serves precisely the purpose of instituting a place of dialogue to inform decision-making and agency vis-à-vis migration within and beyond the borders of the European political space.

 

European policy on food and health: The role of science by Miriam Urlings

In a globalizing world, issues regarding food and health go across borders and require policy at the European level rather than member state level. Regulations are needed to keep the EU food market safe for consumers and assure free trade across member states. In need of regulation are the new food products brought on the EU market. For example, it must be ensured that chemicals from packaging materials do not leak into food products  and that health claims suggesting that the consumption of certain foods is indispensable for good health are scientifically substantiated,. In designing food regulations, several viewpoints need to be considered, including scientific evidence with regard to safety, but also economic interests and societal values (Van Asselt et al. 2014).

The 1997 Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) crisis has greatly influenced the way in which science is used in EU food legislation today. At the time, it became clear that health protection, rather than economic interests, was an absolute priority in regulating food products on the EU markets (Alemanno 2006). Thus, the focus shifted to scientific evidence. In 2002, the European Food Law (Regulation (EC) 178/2002) was enforced and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) was established. The latter is an independent agency comprised of scientists who perform scientific risk assessments, of which the outcome provides important input in risk management, which remains the responsibility of the European Commission.

Performing risk assessment is a complicated process. Not in the least because the topics at stake are complex and require scientific evidence from various disciplines. For example, microplastics represent not only a significant environmental issue, but they also need to be assessed for their potential effect on health by EFSA since they end up in the food supply and have been associated with different health outcomes. However, most of this evidence comes from animal studies where tests are performed at unrealistically high levels of exposure that cannot be directly translated to human exposure levels. Hence, scientific uncertainty remains, which complicates the policy making process. Moreover, scientific research in the biomedical domain is subject to all kinds of biases, which negatively impact the quality and validity of the evidence (Ioannidis 2005). For example, some studies are based on small sample sizes, others on unsuited research designs or selective reporting of favorable outcomes. These underlying issues need to be properly understood and taken into account in risk assessment.

How does the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) perform risk assessment? Is the selection and evaluation of scientific evidence performed in a transparent way, taking into account the quality of the underlying studies? How does EFSA and the European Commission interact and who is ultimately responsible for policy-making?

To answer these questions, collaboration is needed between biomedical researchers and legal scholars. From a biomedical point of view, evidence is generated by different disciplines, from laboratory studies to human intervention studies. Interpreting these findings and taking into account the strengths and vulnerabilities of these methodologies require specific expertise. The legal structure of the risk assessment procedure also needs to be understood, including the ways in which EFSA and the European Commission interact and divide responsibilities. By studying the way in which EFSA, and European Agencies more widely, performs scientific risk assessment and the translation of scientific evidence into policy, we can better understand the impact that science has in the enforcement of EU food law.

 

Influence on social media: European regulation as the safeguard of fundamental rights by Thales Bertaglia and Catalina Goanta

The fast pace of Internet innovation during the past decades raises a wealth of questions about the most salient characteristics of human nature in the digital sphere (Balkin 2004). The Internet has been a blessing and a curse: more access to information was believed to enrich the human mind, yet the freedom it has created has generated concerns relating to the toxicity of online spaces or coordinated disinformation attacks (Kreps 2020). Internet platforms that struggled in their infancy to make money through their services beyond e-commerce, now thrive in an ecosystem where new monetization models are developed constantly, allowing new actors to come to the fore in the space of digital innovation. For example, social media influencers (Goanta and Ranchordás 2020) are the persons behind social media accounts who create monetized media content with the goal of exercising persuasion over a given follower base. Exercising persuasion over a group of people can occur in a variety of situations, ranging from employment relations to academic research or political activity – which may be a reason why CEOs, academics, and politicians have social media accounts and use them to express their opinions and engage in debates. However, when zooming into the inner workings of social media, it is becoming evident that while online presence is increasingly measured through reputation, part of the influence exercised in this space is generated by direct financial gain. This is the world of content creators, who make a living out of being present on social media.

Active in a wide range of industries, influencers establish themselves as human ads for a plethora of goods and services. They advertise hotels, trips, food, clothes, games, drama, their eating skills, their singing skills, etc., and in doing so gather hordes of fans who enjoy this new type of media content for entertainment on platforms like Youtube, TikTok or Twitch (Statista, 2020). These are the digital homes of young, hip, diverse, non-binary audiences who like, follow, subscribe, and purchase what their idols review positively. Influencers, their managers, the brands that hire them, and the platforms that amplify them form a supply chain of media actors that often do not put the best interests of their audiences first. For instance, children and other vulnerable groups can easily fall prey to commercial manipulation, or scams can go viral through influencers’ endorsement, or, perhaps most notably, influencers can use their platforms to promote political campaigns in exchange for money. All this can have a deep impact over the civic participation of entire generations.

The tensions between the promises and perils of the rise of social media influencers, and how the European Union can best harness this phenomenon to its advantage are themes that find themselves at the core of one of the pillars of interdisciplinary research at Studio Europa. Combining legal doctrinal insights into existing regulation with computational approaches, such as natural language processing (NLP), can shed new light into the theoretical and practical measurement of the fitness of current regulation. This project lays at the intersection of European consumer law and fundamental rights such as freedom of expression, and offers insights into the opinions held by various demographic groups, such as youth, with respect to EU core policies. Apart from critically reflecting on the sufficiency of protections offered to EU citizens, this research line also contributes to the nascent field of digital enforcement, by developing methodologies that aim to gather empirical evidence for policy-makers. The European Commission’s 2020 White Paper on Artificial Intelligence (European Commission 2020) highly stresses the desirability of empowering public agencies to better monitor activities that may be harmful to European consumers and citizens. As stewards of public trust, universities are best equipped to undertake the challenge of contributing to a new era of public interest technology (Schneier 2020).

 

Concluding remarks: How to improve Europe through European Studies?

This outline of SEM’s several novel research agendas in European Studies allows for a broadening of the discussion. The assumption from which we departed was that there is a need for a modernized approach towards this field, one that would take into account the complex and multi-faceted challenges affecting Europe in the twenty-first century―the Europe that follows the “order of Maastricht.” In addition to the four projects highlighted above, Studio Europa Maastricht currently hosts three related PhD researchers. Eline Schmeets uses cultural theory to focus on the importance of borders within Europe through an in-depth exploration of a two-kilometer long shared European street located on the national border between Germany and the Netherlands. Akudo McGee focuses on the implications of Eastern enlargement on the EU’s integration capacity, equally from an East-West perspective, looking at the unique trajectory of Poland. Last, but not least, Thales Bertaglia uses artificial intelligence techniques for social media analysis to explore the opinions of young people about the EU.

There are several specific features and inter-linkages between all SEM projects. First, in one way or another, all projects deal with the idea of democracy and citizens’ involvement. This dimension relates to the quality of democracy and rule of law as contentious points in East-West relations or, as underlined by Bertaglia and Goanta, manifests itself in the impact that social media influencers could have on civic participation and political competition in Europe. In addition, what does it mean to be a European citizen nowadays, in an arguably European political space wishing to be cosmopolitan and borderless, but which fails in aiding migrants and refugees, as stressed by Di Fazio. Second and closely related, there are still major variations across the Union in terms of the quality of institutions and infrastructures (physical, economic, digital). As underlined by Surubaru, this unevenness shapes the way in which the EU’s role is perceived in different Eastern and Western contexts, fueling existing tensions between the two areas. Third, the EU’s decision-making and response to global challenges is still underdeveloped in various areas such as climate change or automatization. As explicitly pointed out by Urlings, in taking decisions, EU policy-makers are faced with scientific uncertainty, including with regard to the quality and validity of existing evidence. Moreover, given the different levels of evidence and bias, translating that evidence into concrete responses to global challenges is not an easy task. Finally, yet importantly, the question remains whether we can speak of a unique model of European governance. On the one hand, there are signs that this might be the case given the increasing levels of regulation of digital developments or food safety. On the other hand, EU governance is still arguably an annex to member states’, and subject to increasing political domestic and civic contestation. The multiple crises affecting Europe, including the COVID-19 outbreak, have revealed the existing limitations of the European integration project, and implicitly the weak scalability of its governance model. This does not mean, however, that things cannot change and that, in the next few decades, European member states and institutions cannot further improve and project Europe’s relatively unique development model unto the world.

Apart from these critical and substantial questions, the research projects at Studio Europa Maastricht equally seek to contribute to the broad field of European Studies in a comprehensive manner, different from the standard research in European Studies. All projects include interdisciplinary aspects combining theories from political science, philosophy, law, epidemiology, or science and technology, which goes to show that other theories are possible in European Studies (Manners and Whitman 2016). Furthermore, some of the projects are at the cutting edge of methodology, be it using natural language processing (NLP) or a phenomenology of the mobility of migrants and refugees across the continent. Finally, all projects have a practical and impact-oriented dimension in mind, be it averting further East-West divisions in the EU or improving the quality of evidence and advice that EU agencies provide to supranational and national stakeholders. This aspect could also be addressed by nourishing the heritage, memory, and self-knowledge of the Europe of the “order of Maastricht” (MacDonald 2013). SEM strives to increase talks about European heritage by increasing accessibility via archival development or oral history projects.[4]

In light of the above, we argue that Studio Europa Maastricht does contribute to researching Europe through fresh theoretical reflection and novel empirical evidence, innovative tools, and impact oriented research. Based on our experience, we can humbly make several recommendations to the broad community of European Studies researchers. Researchers should not shy away from going beyond orthodox and established theories of European integration as to explain European developments. Combining theories from different disciplines, in a coherent manner, is possible and can yield empirically valid results. Moreover, combining or experimenting with different research methods should be further encouraged. Finally, yet importantly, both established academics and early career researchers need to keep in mind the practical dimension of their research and seek to transform it, as best as possible, into practical and action oriented output. This can be achieved without sacrificing academic independence. Often, scholars mistakenly reason that engaging with practitioners will threaten the latter. In this respect, as stressed by Segers et al. (2020) in this issue, academics have a role to play in translating for citizens in an understandable manner what they are doing. This will enhance the motivation and societal relevance of their work outside of the University.

SEM will continue to strive in its quest to confront existential questions and to provide innovative solutions as to support societal and European developments (MWoE research agenda 2020). Maastricht can, and arguably has, become again a workshop for reflecting, researching, and formulating answers for a better Europe.

 

 

Neculai-Cristian Surubaru is a postdoctoral researcher at Maastricht University and within Studio Europa Maastricht. He obtained a PhD in Political Science and European Studies from Loughborough University, UK and acted as a consultant and researcher for several European Union institutions. His current research focuses on East-West relations in the European Union. His papers were published by journals such as the Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS), Regional Studies, European Politics and Society, and East European Politics.

Caterina Di Fazio is a PhD in philosophy at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University (2018) and co-founder of Agora Europe with Nadia Urbinati and Etienne Balibar. She is the recipient of the NYU Remarque Fellowship (2020), the Columbia Alliance Doctoral Mobility Grant, and the Columbia Global Centers Scholarship for Exchange Students from the Sorbonne University (2016) and was previously a visiting scholar at Columbia University and at the University of Oxford. She is currently a postdoc at Studio Europa at the University of Maastricht, where she is working on a phenomenology of human mobility.

Miriam Urlings is a postdoctoral researcher within Studio Europa Maastricht. She obtained her PhD in the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Science of Maastricht University in July 2019, where she studied the occurrence of selective citation within biomedical publications. Within Studio Europa, Miriam studies the translation of scientific evidence into policy by European Agencies, on topics related to food and health. She works with researchers from the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences and the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University.

Catalina Goanta is an Assistant Professor in Private Law at the Faculty of Law, a postdoctoral researcher at Studio Europa, and manages the Maastricht Law and Tech Lab with Gijs van Dijck and Marcel Schaper, at Maastricht University. Her current research addresses decentralization and platform governance, with projects such as the regulation of social media influencers, where she looks at the moderation and contractual control of monetized content on social media. Catalina is an advocate of twenty-first century skills in legal education. She was awarded the Maastricht University Wijnand Wijnen education prize in 2014.

Thales Costa Bertaglia is a PhD Candidate at Maastricht University, working jointly with the Institute of Data Science and Studio Europa. His research focuses on using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques for social media analysis, mostly aimed at understanding the opinion of youth towards European issues. Thales obtained his M.Sc. in Computer Science and Computational Mathematics at the University of São Paulo. Thales has experience working in different NLP tasks, including Machine Translation, Natural Language Understanding, and Sentiment Analysis.

Mathieu Segers is the Professor of Contemporary European History and European Integration and EuropaChair at Maastricht University, as well as chair of the Academic Board for the Maastricht, Working on Europe (MWoE) program. A trusted thought partner for publications such as The Financial Times, De Groene Amsterdammer, and Het Financieele Dagblad, his research foci include the history and pre-history of European integration and trans-Atlantic relations and current European and EU affairs. He is a former Fulbright-Schuman fellow at Harvard University and was a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford.

 

References:

Alemanno, Alberto. 2006.”Food safety and the single European market”. In What’s the Beef: the contested governance of European food safety, edited by Christopher Ansell and Vogel, David, 237-259. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.

Anghel, Veronica. 2020. “Together or Apart? The European Union’s East–West Divide.” Survival 62(3): 179-202. https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2020.1763621.

Balibar, Etienne and Di Fazio, Caterina. 2019. “Borderland Europe: Etienne Balibar and Caterina Di Fazio in conversation”. OpenDemocracy. April 12. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/borderland-europe-%C3%A9tienne-balibar-and-caterina-di-fazio-in-conversation/

Balkin, Jack. 2004. “Digital Speech and Democratic Culture: A Theory of Freedom of Expression for the Information Society”. New York University Law Review 79: 1-58.

Bârgăoanu, Alina, Raluca Buturoiu, and Flavia Durach. 2019. “The East-West Divide in the European Union: A Development Divide Reframed as a Political One.” In Development in Turbulent Times edited by Paul Dobrescu, 105-118. Springer Open. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/22892.

Christiansen, Thomas, Simon Duke, and Emil Kirchner. 2012. “Understanding and assessing the Maastricht Treaty.” Journal of European Integration 34(7) : 685-698. https://doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2012.726009.

Closa, Carlos, and Dimitry Kochenov, eds. 2016. Reinforcing rule of law oversight in the European Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Di Fazio, Caterina. “The Institution of the European Political Space: EU Borders, Freedom of Movement and the Refugee Status”. In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Europe. Meacham, Darian and De Warren, Nicolas. London: Routledge, 2020 (forthcoming).

European Commission. 2020. On Artificial Intelligence – A European approach to excellence and trust. European Commission Services. 19 February. https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/commission-white-paper-artificial-intelligence-feb2020_en.pdf.

European Community Regulation (EC). 2002. No 178/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 January 2002 laying down the general principles and requirements of food law, establishing the European Food Safety Authority and laying down procedures in matters of food safety. Official Journal of the European Union 31, 1 February, 1–24. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=celex%3A32002R0178.

Goanta Catalina and Sofia, Ranchordás eds. 2020. The Regulation of Social Media Influencers. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Gundogdu, Ayten. 2015. Rightlessness in an Age of Rights: Hannah Arendt and the Contemporary Struggles of Migrants. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hooghe, Liesbet, and Gary Marks. 2009. “A postfunctionalist theory of European integration: From permissive consensus to constraining.” British Journal of Political Science 39(1): 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123408000409.

Ioannidis, John PA. 2005. “Why most published research findings are false.” PLoS medicine 2(8): e124. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124.

Krastev, Ivan, and Stephen Holmes. 2019. The light that failed: A reckoning. Allen Lane:Penguin UK.

Kreps, Sarah. 2020. Social Media and International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Laczó Ferenc and Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič, eds. 2019. The legacy of division. East and West after 1989. Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2019.

Maastricht Working on Europe (MWoE). 2020. Research Agenda, Maastricht: Studio Europa. https://maastrichteurope.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Research-Agenda-June-2020.pdf.

Macdonald, Sharon. Memorylands: Heritage and identity in Europe today. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2013.

Makszin, Kristin, Gergo Medve-Balint, Dorothee Bohle. 2020. “North and South, East and West: Is it Possible to Bridge the Gap?” in Governance and Politics in the Post-Crisis European Union, edited by Ramona Coman, Amandine Crespy and Vivien A. Schmidt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Manners, Ian, and Richard Whitman. 2016. “Another theory is possible: dissident voices in theorising Europe.” JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 54(1): 3-18. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12332.

Morris, Rosalind C. 2015. “Dislocation and Unsettlement: Migrancy in the new Millennium Provisional Proposal for a Research Agenda”. Columbia Committee on Global Thought. December 13. https://cgt.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Rosalind-Morris-Dislocation-and-Unsettlement-proposal.pdf

Papadimitriou, Dimitris, Dorina Baltag, and Neculai-Cristian Surubaru, eds. 2018. The European Union and Central and Eastern Europe: Assessing Performance. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

Schneier Bruce. 2020.‘Public-Interest Technology Resources’, Schneier on Security Blog, July 4. https://public-interest-tech.com.

Segers, Mathieu, Schmeets Eline, and McGee Akudo. 2020. “State of the Union and Speaking: An interview with Mathieu Segers,” EuropeNow Interview, Campus Spotlight – Maastricht University. https://www.europenowjournal.org/2020/11/09/state-of-the-union-and-speaking-europe-an-interview-with-mathieu-segers/

Statista ‘Social media – Statistics & Facts’. 2020. Statista, May 18. https://www.statista.com/topics/1164/social-networks.

Tassin, Étienne. 2003. Un monde commun. Pour une cosmo-politique des conflits. Paris: Seuil.

Tavares, Rui, Di Fazio, Caterina et al. 2020. “Charta 2020: A Charter of European Public Goods”. Global Policy Journal. Durham University School of Government and International Affairs. Wiley-Blackwell. May 9. https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/09/05/2019/charta-2020-charter-european-public-goods

Urbinati, Nadia and Di Fazio, Caterina. 2019. “For a Political Europe”. OpenDemocracy. May 7. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/political-europe/.

Van Asselt, Marjolein, Everson, Michelle, and Ellen Vos. 2014. Trade versus health and the environment?’ In Trade, Health and the Environment. The European Union put to the test, edited by Van Asselt, Marjolein, Everson, Michelle, and Ellen Vos, 3-9. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

[1] Studio Europa Maastricht, “Joint the Research of Europe,” research webpage and priorities. (https://maastrichteurope.nl/research/).

[2] Studio Europa Maastricht,  22a Onze Lieve Vrouweplein, 6211 HE, Maastricht, The Netherlands, contact: info@maastrichteurope.nl, (www.maastrichteurope.nl).

[3] The four Studio Europa research themes are:  1. Democracy, Politics, Security and Rule of Law; 2. Identity, heritage and citizens perspective; 3. Prosperity, welfare and inequality; 4. Knowledge, technology and digitalization.

[4] Studio Europa Maastricht, “Explore the Heritage of Europe – The Maastricht Treaty and European Heritage Label” (https://maastrichteurope.nl/heritage/).

 

Photo: MAASTRICHT, THE NETHERLANDS – MAY 13: Maastricht: Meet Europe star sign. Maastricht is the oldest city in the Netherlands and the capital city of the province of Limburg. Photo taken on May 13, 2016 | Shutterstock
Published on November 10, 2020.