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Centre for European Research in Maastricht

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The Centre for European Research in Maastricht (CERiM) provides a platform of collaboration, intellectual exchange and facilitation between the participating researchers. At the same time it bundles individual efforts to increase international outreach and to give a substantial input to the Maastricht University’s strategic research theme Europe and a Globalising World.

In practical terms, the Centre will engage in various kinds of activities:

Developing own research projects and lending support to individual members and participating institutes in developing (externally funded) research projects. The newly to be hired postdoc researchers and the existing funding advisors will play a key role in this.

• The Centre will facilitate the organisation of international workshops and conferences with high-profile experts in the field (academics and practitioners). It may contribute to the organisation of workshops through its own funds.
• Organising academic valorisation and outreach activities. The Centre will provide a platform through which the communication with stakeholders (press releases, press enquiries, policy briefs, etc.) will be organized in a professional manner.
• A platform for intellectual exchange in Maastricht Univer-City: The Centre will contribute to the discussion on EU-related topics in the University and in the city and province, for instance through a lecture series and other public events.

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Research projects

PCE researchers are active academics. Below you can find an overview of several current research projects PCE researchers have received funding for. 

• ENSURED: Transforming and Defending Multilateralism

Prof. Dr. Hylke Dijkstra  (Project Coordinator) and Dr. Clara Weinhardt  (Deputy Coordinator) have received funding from the Horizon Europe funding scheme for the project ' ENSURED: Transforming and Defending Multilateralism: European Union Support for more Robust, Effective and Democratic Global Governance'. From UM, Mirko Heinzel, Dr. Soetkin Verhaegen  and Dr. Lilian Tsourdi are involved  in the project.

ENSURED, a project funded by Horizon Europe with 14 partners from the EU, US and the BRICS, studies how the EU and its members, in a contested world in transition, can transform and defend global governance to make it more robust, effective and democratic. Integrating different literatures on international institutions and EU foreign policy, ENSURED develops a conceptual framework on global governance transformation. Through case studies of five policy areas, a quantitative analysis and expert survey, ENSURED empirically assesses and compares the unexploited potential for global governance transformation. It thus highlights areas where global governance transformation is most likely. Based on this empirical analysis, ENSURED provides support for the EU and its members to lead the transformation and defence of multilateralism. ENSURED thus advances our knowledge about global governance transformation and provides the EU and its members with the tools to navigate a world in transition.

Project partners

• KU Leuven, Belgium
• Centre for European Policy Studies, Belgium
• Charles University, Czech Republic
• University of Tartu, Estonia
• University of Potsdam, Germany
• Global Public Policy Institute, Germany
• European University Institute, Italy
• Istituto Affari Internazionali, Italy,
• CIVICUS World Alliance for Citizen Participation, South Africa
• Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
• Tufts University, United States
• University of International Business and Economics, China
• PUC Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

• ARM: The long arm of authoritarian states

Dr. Mariëlle Wijermars has, together with an international consortium   lead by  PI Lovise Aalen of the Chr.  Michelsen Institute, received funding from the Horizon Europe funding scheme for the project ‘ARM: The long  arm  of authoritarian states’.

The project explores how authoritarian states suppress information and will deliver  a practitioners’ toolkit for how to counter it.   More specifically, the project will analyse how Russia, China, Ethiopia and Rwanda seek to suppress  independent voices and information, with a special focus on how this information suppression affects EU states and diaspora communities that have settled in the EU.

Project partners:

• Chr.  Michelsen Institute
• University of Helsinki
• Hertie School
• Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences
• University of Tartu
• Riga Stradins University
• University of Tromsø
• University of Bergen
• WZB Social Science Center
• Lund University

• REUNIR: Resilience, Enlargement, Union, Neighbourhood, International Relations

Together with 12 partners from across Europe, Dr. Gergana Noutcheva , Dr. Assem Dandashly and Prof. Dr. Hylke Dijkstra received  funding from the Horizon Europe funding scheme  for the project 'REUNIR – Resilience, Enlargement, Union, Neighbourhood, International Relations: Future-proofing EU security, Enlargement and Eastern neighbourhood policies for a new age of international relations'.

REUNIR examines how the EU can strengthen its foreign and security toolboxes to bolster the resilience and transformation of (potential) candidate countries in a new age of international relations. By granting candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova and a European perspective to Georgia, the EU has rejected a Russian sphere of influence and instead determined where its future borders should lie. But this decision has not yet led to policies tailored to effectively respond to a geopolitical context which also sees China and other state actors competing for influence. REUNIR empirically assesses foreign threats to the military, socio-economic and democratic resilience of 9 neighbouring countries, determines capability shortfalls, maps local perceptions of the EU’s support and political perspectives inside the EU on neighbourhood relations. Outlining scenarios up to 2035, REUNIR offers evidence-based policy recommendations to mitigate malign foreign interference and strengthen the EU’s external action.

• Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
• Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
• College of Europe, Natolin (COEN)
• Sorbonne Nouvelle (SN)
• Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi)
• Maastricht University (UM)
• International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS)
• University of Graz (UG)
• Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP)
• National University of ‘Kyiv-Mohyla’ academy (NaUKMA)
• Institute for European Policies and Reforms (IPRE)
• Georgian Institute of Politics (GIP)

Dr. Giselle Bosse has, together with an international consortium, funding from the European Horizon funding scheme for the project ‘InvogratEU’.

The project focuses on invigorating change of the EU‘s political perspective for the Eastern Neighbourhood and the Western Balkans, and on examining options for a resilient Europe. Giselle Bosse, together with Richard Youngs (Carnegie Europe), will lead the work package on ‘Innovative perspectives on democratising countries in the eastern neighbourhood and western Balkans in contexts of contested territory’.

• ACCESS4ALL: Equal access for all lobbyists

Dr. Iskander de Bruycker has received  funding from the NWO's Vidi scheme for the project 'ACCESS4ALL: Equal access for all lobbyists'. 

ACCESS4ALL examines whether policymakers are accessible to all lobbyists, regardless of their societal background. Ideally, policymakers exchange with lobbyists with different socio-demographic profiles. Yet, the ACCESS4ALL project expects that policymakers predominantly exchange with lobbyists who resemble them; lobbyists of the same age, gender and ethnic background. The ACCESS4ALL project group tests its expectations within the European policy context through desk research, focus groups, large-scale surveys and vignette experiments. Based on this research, it proposes strategies to make access to EU policymakers more open and inclusive.

• Banking on democracy. Evaluating the democratic justifiability of money creation by commercial banks

Dr. Janosch Prinz has received funding from the NWO Open Competition SSH XS for the project ‘Banking on democracy. Evaluating the democratic justifiability of money creation by commercial banks’.

The project reconstructs and evaluates the justifications for the money creation powers of commercial banks in the Eurozone, as offered by bankers, their public supervisors, and civil society organizations working on monetary reform. Commercial banks are responsible for ca. 95% of money creation today by providing credit. They decide about their extension of credit based on profit calculations. This means that commercial banks' profit calculations shape which kinds of projects go ahead. If the money creation powers of commercial banks stand in tension with the democratic collective in determining the direction of societal development, how could these powers be justified?

• NAVIGATOR: The EU Navigating Multilateral Cooperation

NAVIGATOR is a 4-year research project. From PCE,  Dr. Yf Reykers  is involved. NAVIGATOR  seeks to answer the following questions: how should the EU navigate the increasingly complex – and conflict-laden – institutional spaces of global governance to advance a rules-based international order? And what factors should be emphasized when considering which institutions to strengthen, which to reform, and which to by-pass when revitalising multilateralism?

NAVIGATOR’s main objective is to answer these questions and deliver a ready-to-use “search mechanism” and associated pathways of action that the EU and its member states can use as it seeks to strengthen a rules-based international order.

To achieve this, NAVIGATOR comprises a strong, global and inter-disciplinary team of researchers who explores institutional variation on six policy issues – climate change, digitalisation, finance/tax, health, migration and security – to identify what institutional mixes that enables the EU to have optimal impact in a given policy issue. This project receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the European Commission’s Horizon Europe Call. The project runs from January 2023 until December 2026.

Project leadership:

John Karlsrud, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs

• Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
• Copenhagen Business School
• Université Libre de Bruxelles
• Universiteit Maastricht
• University of Witwatersrand
• Universita Commerciale Luigi Bocconi
• Stichting VU, Operating Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
• European Council on Foreign Relations
• The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• Tallinna Tehnikaülikool
• University of Ottawa ( associated partner )
• Waseda University ( associated partner )

• EMBRACing changE - Overcoming Blockages and Advancing Democracy in the European Neighbourhood

The research project EMBRACing changE (Overcoming Blockages and Advancing Democracy in the European Neighbourhood) aims to respond to the counter-democracy trends after the coloured revolutions and the Arab Spring. It does so through an inter-disciplinary, multi-method and cross-regional assessment of both blockages to and drivers of democratisation in 12 case study countries across Eastern Europe, Southern Caucasus, Western Balkans, Northern Africa and the Middle East.

This project has received funding from Horizon Europe.

PCE project team:

• Giselle Bosse
• Wicke van den Broek
• Berghof Foundation Operations gGmbH, Berlin, Germany  (Coordinator)
• Konstanz University (Germany) (Co-Coordinator)
• University of Lleida (Spain)
• Stockholm University (Sweden)
• University of Gent (Belgium)
• Elliniko Idryma Evropaikis kai Exoterikis Politikis (ELIAMEP) (Greece)
• Arab Reform Initiative (ARI) (France, Tunisia, Lebanon)
• Ukrainian Association of European Studies (Ukraine)
• Ilia State University (Georgia)
• University of Belgrade (Serbia)
• PalThink for Strategic Studies (Palestine)
• Concentris research management GmbH (Germany)
• University of Manchester (United Kingdom) – associated partner bringing their own funding

• REMIT: Reigniting Multilateralism Through Technology

REMIT is a 4-year research project. From PCE, Prof. Sophie Vanhoonacker and Dr. Marielle Wijermars are involved. REMIT explores how, in a world where multilateralism and transnational democracy are increasingly under threat, multilateral governance can be reconceptualised through pivotal areas of technology such as digital technology, health biotechnology, security and defence technology, financial technology. 

REMIT’s main objective is to contribute to defining the EU’s role in leading the defence and renewal and of multilateralism starting with the global governance of technology and to design policy recommendations that will reignite multilateralism via technology.

To achieve this, REMIT comprises an inter-disciplinary team of researchers of international universities and thinktanks with expertise in the EU, the US an China as well as in the earlier mentioned pivotal areas of technology.

This project receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the European Commission’s Horizon Europe Call. The project runs from March 2023 until February 2027.

• Maastricht University, The Netherlands
• European Cyber Conflict Research Initiative, UK
• Universitatea Babes Bolyai, Romania
• Universitaet Bremen, Germany
• Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
• LUISS Libera Universita Internazionale degli Studi, Italy
• Erasmus Universiteit, The Netherlands
• Tartu Ulikool, Estonia
• Finnish Institute of International Affairs, Finland

• A coalition of hawks and doves? Explaining military receptiveness to civil society calls for transparency around the use of force

The Hawks and Doves project examines military receptiveness to NGO calls for transparency in Western European countries. It aims to understand the conditions under which military officials are willing to cooperate with civil society to improve transparency around the use of military force and its consequences.

The project is funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation’s special programme on Security, Society and the State.

Project team:

• Francesca Colli
• Daphné Charotte

• Faces of Trade Diplomacy: Human perceptions, memories and hopes around trade multilateralism

Faces of Trade Diplomacy:  Human perceptions, memories and hopes around trade multilateralism is an online gallery that builds on research findings from Dr. Clara Weinhardt's DFG research project on global power shifts and WTO politics.

“Faces of Trade Diplomacy” centres on making global trade diplomacy more relatable. While trade is perceived as highly technical, the exhibition wishes to reveal the more human elements of trade negotiations. By bringing personal stories, memories and hopes of trade diplomats to an audience, it seeks to build a connection between those that negotiate global trading rules and the more general public. Building on the DFG research project, the exhibition seeks to contextualise and go beyond the narrative of the crisis of trade multilateralism in a multipolar era.

Pictures by: Chantelle Gomez

• JOINT: Understanding and Strengthening EU Foreign and Security Policy in a Complex and Contested World

JOINT is an interdisciplinary research project which combines research with public opinion analysis, innovative policymaker engagement and proactive public outreach. It addresses the question: How to make EU foreign and security policy governance structures more joined-up and sustainable in a rapidly changing and contested international environment? 

JOINT has received funding from the European Commission's Horizon2020 programme. 

• Dr. Assem Dandashly
• Dr. Hylke Dijkstra
• Dr. Gergana Noutcheva
• Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI)
• Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) 
• Free University of Berlin (FUB)
• Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (FRS)
• Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB) 
• Transatlantic Foundation (TF)
• Norwegian Institute for International Affairs (NUPI)
• University of Siena (UNISI)
• National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy (NaUKMA)
• Institute for Peace and Security Studies (IPSS)
• Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) 
• Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies (EDAM)

• LIMES: The Hardening and Softening of Borders

LIMES , the Latin word for border, is a doctoral programme for 13 talented PhD candidates in the domain of the humanities and social sciences, centred on the theme of ‘The Hardening and Softening of Borders: Europe in a Globalising World’. It has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie (grant agreement No 847596).

LIMES is led by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS), thereby working closely with University College Maastricht (UCM), the School of Business and Economics (SBE), and the Faculty of Law (FL). 6 out of 13 PhD candidates are employed by FASoS and 1 PhD candidate is part of PCE.

• NestIOr: The Decline and Death of International Organizations

NestIOr is a five-year research project entitled "Who gets to live forever? Toward an Institutional Theory on the Decline and Death of International Organisations" (2019-2023) led by Dr. Hylke Dijkstra . Dr. Marie Debre is the postdoctoral researcher in this project. NestIOr has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 802568). The project focusses on three areas: energy and environment, security, and finance.

• CHANCE: Jean Monnet Chair in EU Politics in a Changing Global Context

The JM Chair by PCE member Dr. Giselle Bosse aims to contribute to broadening the focus of European Studies at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS) by expanding course content and research lines dealing with the challenges and chances for the EU in a changing global context. ​Challenges include significant shifts in the global order and rising great powers, which defy established principles of liberal international order; new security threats such as hybrid and cyber warfare; climate change; and major global technological change and innovation. 

In this context, CHANCE aims to contribute to:

• strengthening research and teaching in the field of EU international relations at FASoS;
• consolidating and further developing research and teaching on the impact of a changing global context on EU politics and policies;
• supporting students and young scholars building their careers;
• increasing the visibility and relevance of FASoS research and teaching to academic and non-academic stakeholders at local, regional and national levels.

• EUCTER: Jean Monnet Network on European Counter-Terrorism

EUCTER is a Jean Monnet Research Network that provides research-led excellence in teaching and learning at the intersection of two fundamental areas of EU policy: the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, and EU counter-terrorism policy and law. 

The project aims to discover and explain if and why EU counter-terrorism cooperation, as well as external relations (i.e. CFSP/CSDP, human rights, legal dimensions, etc.) have added to an increased relevance, and if and why diplomacy can add to the counter-terrorism tool set in the EU’s cooperation with third partners via its own delegations at the bilateral and multilateral levels.

Dr. Giselle Bosse contributes to this network by providing expertise on EU counterterrorism policies in the post-Soviet area, with a focus on the implications for human rights and democracy. Dr. Yf Reykers and Dr. Mariëlle Wijermars contribute research on the cybersecurity and democratic legitimacy dimensions of EU counterterrorism policies.

• EU-East: Jean Monnet Chair on democracy and integration in Europe

The JM Chair by PCE member Dr. Gergana Noutcheva  on Democracy and Integration in Europe 30 Years after the Berlin Wall addresses the internal challenges to the EU democratic acquis and their implications for the EU’s external democracy promotion role, most notably in the context of the EU enlargement policy and the Eastern Partnership by:

• Strengthening the teaching at Maastricht University of Eastern Europe, the transformation processes that the post-communist region has experienced in the past 30 years since the collapse of communism and how they have affected the internal cohesion and the external credibility of the EU with respect to its core democratic values;
• Conducting and supervising research on the democratisation and de-democratisation of postcommunist countries, including the EU’s impact on these processes, and inspiring the new generation of professionals and researchers interested in this field of study;
• Reaching out to the community of practitioners and policy makers with policy proposals and recommendations about keeping up the EU’s internal democratic quality and enhancing the EU’s external democracy support role, especially in the EU’s immediate vicinity;
• Engaging civil society members, students, teachers and the general public in a debate about the state of East-West integration as well as the future of EU Enlargement and Neighbourhood policies.

• DeLab: Deliberation Laboratory

Deliberation Laboratory (DeLab): Artificial Intelligence and the Society of the Future is a four-year research project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. It seeks to develop a moderator using artificial intelligence (AI) that can recognise escalating conflict in social media and intervene to de-escalate the situation.

The multi-disciplinary project team comprises specialists in computerised linguisitcs, philosophy, and AI, in Germany, Poland, Scotland, and the Netherlands. The UM team, led by Prof. John Parkinson , is developing and applying cultural script theory to detect the linguistic 'scripts' of conflict, before testing different AI responses in the laboratory and in the wild.

• ADHOCISM: Ad hoc crisis response and international organisations

International organisations (IOs) are created with the aim of solving collective action problems when a crisis arises. Yet, member states have repeatedly established ad hoc crisis responses in situations where IOs might be expected to play a central role.

ADHOCISM asks what is the impact of ad hoc crisis responses on international organisations? In this way, ADHOCISM wants to contribute to filling this knowledge gap through a systematic study of ad hoc crisis responses in two policy domains: security and health. With this paired comparison, ADHOCISM wants to tap into a broader empirical governance phenomenon. Ad hoc crisis responses are here understood as loose groups of actors that agree to solve a particular crisis at a given time and location outside of an existing international organisation in the same policy domain. Ad hoc crisis reponses can, in the short-term, lead to more rapid and effective crisis responses among like-minded states, but if international organisations are no longer seen as the principal instruments to confront global challenges, the risk is also that the relevance of these international organisations will diminish, and similar trends may unfold in other domains.

Dr. Yf Reykers  is the  co-Principal Investigator of ADHOCISM. The project is funded by the Research Council of Norway (FRIHUMSAM). The project runs from September 2021 until August 2025.

• John Karlsrud, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (PI)
• Yf Reykers, Maastricht University (co-PI)
• European University Institute

• RENPET: Reconceptualising European Power in an Era of Turmoil: contestation, relevance, sustainability

RENPET (Reconceptualising European Power in an Era of Turmoil: contestation, relevance, sustainability) is a Jean Monnet Network of senior and junior scholars, policy-makers and civil society representatives that focuses on debating the political, economic and societal role of the EU in international affairs.

RENPET actively fosters cross-disciplinary and multi-national dialogue among different foreign policy stakeholders, but most prominently RENPET engages in an inclusive manner with (local) communities that are often not considered the primary interlocutors for elite-exchange on foreign policy-making.

• Dr. Anna Herranz-Surrallés
• Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan
• ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo
• London School of Economics
• Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI)
• Leiden University
• University College Dublin
• University of Kent
• University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES)
• Sabanci University

• Need for speed: improving the institutional structure of international governmental organisations for rapid crisis responses

International governmental organisations (IGOs), such as the European Union (EU), United Nations and World Health Organization, are commonly seen as key actors in providing coordinated responses to crises with global dimensions. However, many IGOs have also been criticised for being too slow in their crisis responses. This is problematic, as speed matters for avoiding that crises escalate or cost lives. By studying the EU institutional architecture in the fields of health and security, this pilot project seeks to generate a set of hypotheses about how the institutional structure of IGOs can determine their crisis response time.

Dr. Yf Reykers  is the Principal Investigator of this project, which  is funded by a one-year grant from the NWO Open Competition Domain Social Sciences and Humanities – XS. It runs from August 2023 until May 2024.

• VISTA: ReVitalise the study of EU Single Market Integration in a turbulent age

The Jean Monnet Network project ‘ReVitalise the study of EU Single Market Integration in a turbulent age’ ( VISTA ) seeks to promote new research and teaching on contemporary developments in the single market in the areas of defence, the digital market, finance, and energy. It does so through the creation of new teaching materials at the involved universities, joint publications in academic journals, and policy papers.

• Dr. Aneta Spendzharova
• Dr. Johan Adriaensen
• Prof. Sophie Vanhoonacker
• University of Bristol
• Goethe University – Frankfurt
• National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (NaUKMA)
• Tallinn University of Technology
• CEPS-Brussels

• Between Politics and Technique: Designing International Extradition Law 1945-2000

'Between Politics and Technique: Designing International Extradition Law 1945-2000' seeks to examine the history of the international law of extradition during the short twentieth Century, one of the key elements to international law enforcement and respect for the international rule of law. The project aims to study how the development of this area of law played a key role in moving international law with respect to the treatment of individuals away from a rather discrete, legal-technical enterprise in 1918, and towards a highly visible and politicised process, which now seeks to be rendered technical again to evade the influence of politics on this body of international law.

This project, led by Dr. Pablo Del Hierro , has received funding from the Gerda Henkel Stiftung.

• The forgotten occupation: Everyday life and social interactions in the Luxembourgish occupation zone in Germany (1945-1955)

Felix Streicher 's PhD project 'The forgotten occupation: Everyday life and social interactions in the Luxembourgish occupation zone in Germany (1945-1955)' explores a case of foreign rule hitherto completely neglected in academic historical research: the Luxembourgish occupation in post-war Germany. The main focus of the project will be a detailed analysis of German-Luxembourgish social interactions inside the occupation zone through the lens of a history of everyday life, space and gender. 

This PhD research project is funded by a grant from the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR).

Photo: Musée National d’Histoire Militaire (Lux.), Fonds Aloyse Jacoby, K336_189.

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Studio Europa Maastricht is a centre of expertise for Europe-related debate and research founded in 2018 and supported by the partners of the Maastricht, Working on Europe programme: Maastricht University, the Province of Limburg and the City of Maastricht. Together we aim to position Maastricht, the capital of Limburg, as a meeting place for citizen dialogue and debate and establish a centre of excellence for research on Europe and European integration.

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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.

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[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: [email protected] , ( 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.

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