CERiM research coordinator, Dr. Vigjilenca Abazi was invited to give an expert testimony at the European Parliament on the legal protection of whistleblowers in the EU Member States. The hearing was held on 21 June and included the rapporteur of the European Parliament on the topic, among many other MEPs and other relevant stakeholders. The European Parliament is in the process of drafting an own initiative report on an EU wide protection for whistle-blowers. The full hearing is available here.

Prof Marjan Peeters delivered a presentation on “EU climate law and its impact on national climate legislation” during the workshop “Role and functioning of national and regional climate laws and climate committees in the light of EU climate and energy policies” organised by the EEAC (European Environment and Sustainable Development Advisory Councils), Working group on energy and climate change, Brussels (Dutch Embassy) Monday 19 June 2017.

A publication of a special issue of the Asia Europe Journal, co-edited by CERiM Co-Director Thomas Christiansen, has recently been published by Springer. The issue entitled, The Rise of China: Challenges and Opportunities for the European Union, can be accessed via the following link. 

This special issue examines Europe’s response to the steady and dramatic rise of China over the past two decades. In particular, it explores the challenges as well as the many instances of engagement that define their relations today across a number of policy areas, including economic, diplomatic, and security relations. The contributions to this special issue demonstrate the varied, multi-faceted and to some extent contradictory nature of EU-China relations. The two sides are in an ever-closer economic embrace, yet they remain distant and occasionally antagonistic with respect to security concerns or normative discourses.

CERiM Co-director Ellen Vos represented TARN and presented her views on oversight and resources of fee receiving EU agencies at the Workshop on Oversight and resources of partially and fully self-financed agencies.The event was organised by the BUDG and CONT Committee of the European Parliament in Brussels on 4 May 2017.

The conference welcomed a number of key experts and practitioners from various disciplines. The day consisted of three panels, each addressing a different aspect (e.g. legal, epistemological, and scientific) on the relationship between expertise, knowledge, and policy-making in the EU. The first panel on epistemic and public contestation of expertise, chaired by Anna Herranz-Surralles, consisted of presentations by Dr. Marija Bartl (University of Amsterdam) and Johan Christensen (Leiden University) on an institutionalist approach towards understanding the use of knowledge in organizations and the use of academic research in advisory reports in Norway, respectively. The following panels addressed topics such as the use of expertise by the EEAS (presented by Sophie Vanhoonacker) and scientific knowledge in national courts in the Netherlands (presented by Marjan Peeters) The conference ended with a roundtable, chaired by Ellen Vos, on the role of expertise in EU policy-making. Participants included Anthony Teasdale (Director-General of the EP Research Service) and Arjen Meij (Former Judge in the General Court of the EU). The full programme and list of participants can be found here, though not all were able to present. For a more detailed report on the event, please find it below.

Edwar Elgar just published a book edited by CERiM members Bruno De Witte, Andrea Ott & Ellen Vos. Entitled “Beween Flexibility and Disintegration: the Trajectory of Differentiation in EU Law”, the volume discusses the particularly timely topic of EU differentiation in times of crises.

Differentiation was at first not perceived as a threat to the European project, but rather as a tool to promote further integration. Today, more EU policies than ever are marked by concentric circles of integration and a lack of uniform application. As the EU faces increasingly existential challenges, the book considers whether the proliferation of mechanisms of flexibility has contributed to this newly fragile state or whether, to the contrary, differentiation has been fundamental to integration despite the heterogeneity of national interests and priorities.

The Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law has switched publishers to Sage Publishing in January 2017. As part of this move, all copies of the MJECL will be available online for two months. For more information, please visit the following website.

From 3 to the 5 December 2016, almost 200 memory scholars as well as practitioners from many different countries came together in Amsterdam for the Inaugutal Conference of the Memory Studies Association in Amsterdam. 

The conference organized by CERiM Member Aline Sierp and Jenny Wüstenberg (York University, Toronto, Canada) welcomed leading figures in the field of memory studies, including Michael Rothberg, Astrid Erll, Ann Rigney, Daniel Levy, Jan Kubik, Erica Lehrer, William Hirst, Siobhan Kattago, Jeffrey Olick, Wulf Kansteiner and Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi. Hosted at De Nieuwe Liefde, the conference included three roundtables with well-known scholars, thirteen panels, as well as two professional development events.

A full report of the event can be downloaded as a pdf file. 

Conference Report: “Thinking Through the Future of Memory”, Inaugural Conference of the Memory Studies Association, 3-5 December 2016, Amsterdam

On Monday, 16th January 2017, Professor Michelle Cini, one of the leading scholars on the EU and author of one of the first articles on the Brexit result will give a lecture entitled: ‘The post-referendum Brexit debate in the UK: politics, expertise and influence’.

The event is scheduled to take place from 18.00 – 19.15 at the UCM Lecture Hall.

Following the lecture, Roy Kenkel and Bert de Wilde from the Department of European Integration at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs will give a presentation and hold a discussion on the approach of the Dutch Government to Brexit.

Attendance is free and open to all.