2019
Rupture and renewal in Europe: ARENA's 25th anniversary conference
Time and place: Nov. 18, 2019 12:00 PM – 6:00 PM, House of Literature
ARENA will celebrate its 25th anniversary with a half-day public conference at the House of Literature on 18 November 2019.
2019 marks the 25th anniversary of ARENA Centre for European Studies, and 25 years of studying European integration. It is also 25 years since the referendum on Norwegian EU membership and the EEA Agreement came into force.
The Europeanisation of the nation state has come a long way, and the non-member Norway is also deeply affected by the integration process. Yet, the breadth and depth of Europeanisation is not very well known among the population at large. Meanwhile, the EU in 2019 is dealing with a number of external and internal challenges, including Brexit; geopolitical strains in the Union’s relationship with both Russia and the United States; challenges to the freedom of the media and the rule of law in some member states; continued difficulties in the reform of the monetary union; and populist challenges to representative democracy and expertise on which the Union depends. At the same time, as Brexit demonstrates, there is a lack of knowledge of how the EU actually works among officials as well as the population at large.
We mark the 25th anniversary of ARENA with a conference addressing the current crises and challenges the EU is facing. We also ask: how can researchers advance knowledge of key processes of integration and disintegration? How can ARENA contribute to further that research?
Programme
- 11:30: Coffee and registration
- 12:00: Welcome
- Erik O. Eriksen, Professor and Director, ARENA Centre for European Studies
- Åse Gornitzka, Vice-Rector, University of Oslo
- 12:15: ARENA and the EEA Agreement 25 years
- Ine Eriksen Søreide, Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs
- 12:45: Keynote speech: From Europe’s Would-Be Polity to Power
- Brigid Laffan, Director and Professor, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute
- 13:15: Panel: Populist opposition and the quest for reform
- Chair: Asimina Michailidou, Senior Researcher, ARENA Centre for European Studies
- Brigid Laffan, Professor, European University Institute
- Magdalena Gora, Assistant Professor, Jagiellonian University
- Christopher Lord, Professor, ARENA Centre for European Studies
- Hans-Jörg Trenz, Professor, ARENA Centre for European Studies and University of Copenhagen
- 13:45: Discussion and Q&A
- 14:15: Coffee break
- 14:30: The EU's present predicaments: Snapshots from ARENA's research
- Chair: Jarle Trondal, Professor, ARENA Centre for European Studies and University of Agder
- Can differentiation solve Europe’s current challenges? Prof. John Erik Fossum
- EU in the world – a promoter of global justice? Prof. Helene Sjursen
- How to solve the legitimation problems in the Eurozone? Prof. Christopher Lord
- What kind of mandate for the unelected in Europe? Postdoctoral fellow Andreas Eriksen
- 15:15: Discussion and Q&A
- 15:45: Reception. Remarks by:
- Ingjerd Hoëm, Vice-dean for education at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Oslo
- Ragnar Lie, Former Administrative Director of ARENA, Reflections on ARENA and Norwegian social science
2017
The New Politics of EU External Relations
Time and place: Mar. 9, 2017 – Mar. 10, 2017, University of Gothenburg
Guri Rosén organises a workshop that aims to analyse how the processes of parliamentarisation and politicization affect the EU's external relations.
The Lisbon Treaty triggered a small revolution in the field of EU external relations by giving the European Parliament (EP) the power to veto international agreements. To date, it has done so on three occasions, first with SWIFT in 2010, a second time on the Fisheries Partnership Agreement with Morocco and the last time with Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in 2012. Particularly the negotiations on ACTA attracted a lot of public attention, and some have claimed the EP’s veto to be a consequence of the strong public opposition. This resonates with one of the big fears among some member states that parliamentarians would contribute to politicize external policy, making it an even more unruly. Thus, focusing on the negotiation of international agreements, the main ambition of this workshop is to analyze how these processes of parliamentarization and politicization affect the EUs external relations.
2016
Conference on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
Time and place: Mar. 14, 2016 – Mar. 15, 2016, University of Gothenburg
Together with the Centre for European Research (CERGU) at the University of Gothenburg, Guri Rosén at ARENA co-organises an interdisciplinary conference on the TTIP in Gothenburg on 14-15 March 2016. EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström will hold a keynote address.
The interdisciplinary conference deals with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the US that is currently under negotiation. On the one hand, many appraise the positive effects of TTIP, which is expected to increase the EU economy by billions of Euros and create several hundred thousand jobs. On the other hand, given its broad geographical coverage and its comprehensive scope the prospects of an EU-US trade deal have attracted significant criticism.
This conference aims at enabling a dialogue between research and policy on pertinent issues for a Swedish, European and international community. One ambition of the conference is to gather scholars from the fields of economics, law, and politics to exchange views and provide different perspectives on common issues. However, the event also engages policy-makers, practitioners and business representatives from multinational corporations and SMEs. The panels are going to cover topics reaching from the broader effects of TTIP, its political and economic dimension to particular policy fields such as issues of regulatory cooperation and investment protection, including the proposed investor-state dispute settlement. Moreover, addressing issues related to global governance and inviting third-country perspectives on TTIP, this event attempts to take a global perspective beyond the EU-US policy domain.
2013
Europe in crises, Europe as the crisis?
Time and place: – , University of Oslo
The European Union has entered the fifth year of a profound existential crisis. What started as an American financial crisis has come to question the very existence of the European Union, and indeed, has revived secessionist tendencies in several of its Member States (in particular Spain and the United Kingdom). Why is this? What is the present status of crisis? The multiple crises facing the European Union speak to the need for radically rethinking the European Union and the way in which decision-makers, intellectuals, scholars, and the public approach it.
This academic conference aims at engaging in such rethinking by addressing the following questions:
(1) What kind of crisis is Europe presently going through? We need to move from general and imprecise talk of crisis to the specification of its nature and various facets; thus focus on a multitude of crises: economic, financial, fiscal, macroeconomic, political and democratic.
(2) How did the crises come about? Crises come about suddenly but are often the result of long-term processes. The subprime crisis, important and meaningful no doubt, mainly exhibited and helped to trigger a series of structural weaknesses that explain the depth and breadth of the crises. They render clear why the European Union was so deeply affected, indeed more deeply than other polities that at first sight should have been worse hit, such as the United States.
(3) What has Europe done to govern the crises? The EU has taken a large number of policy decisions and instituted structural reforms at the European level to govern the crises. Many of them are stop-gap measures to deal with emergencies and contingencies. What is the general thrust of these measures? Are they mere situational responses or do they fit into a deeper more systematic pattern?
(4) How have the crises transformed the European Union? The repertoire of decisions taken to govern the crises has been presented as exceptional and as a range of temporary measures. What impact have they had thus far and what impact are they likely to have in the mid- and long-term? What structural changes do they represent for the Union? How are they transforming the deep constitution of the European Union?
(5) How should the European Union deal with the crises? The more the Union does, the less it seems to achieve. There is a growing realisation of the need to do something very different than has been done up to now. But what? Can the Union be mended within the present Treaty framework? Is there any chance for a European constitutional moment? What of national constitutional resistance in the name of the core values of the European social and democratic state, the state of the welfare state and the collective rights of citizens?
(6) Is there a future for the European Union? Or will the present institutional embodiment of European integration perpetuate a situation of crisis?
Conference outline:
Session 1: Which and whose crises? Conceptualising the crisis (Chair: Erik Oddvar Eriksen)
Session 2: How did we get there? (Chair: Agustín José Menéndez)
Session 3: How has the crisis changed the European Union? Crisis government as a vehicle of constitutional mutation (Chair: John Erik Fossum)
Session 4: Does the European Union have a future? Is that future compatible with the democratic political project of European integration? (Chair: Erik Oddvar Eriksen)
2011
Fading nation-states? The impact of European integration on Central and Eastern Europe
Time and place: Mar. 18, 2011 – Mar. 19, 2011, Centre for European Studies, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
Six years after the 'Big Bang' enlargement of the European Union new questions are emerging in the social sciences which deal with assessing the effects of enlargement on the member states and the structure and way of functioning of the EU.
One of the major, overarching questions is the transformation of stateness and the future of the nation-state in the region of Central and Eastern Europe. A vast amount of literature on European integration is questioning the possibility of nation-states in Europe functioning in an unchanged form, particularly their autonomy and problem-solving capabilities.
This debate is not given sufficient attention in CEE countries, where the move towards European integration was perceived as a way to reestablish sovereignty and independence and to reconstitute as liberal-democratic nation-states.
The major aim of the workshop is to investigate how the new member states seek to consolidate as nation-states in relation to European integration and how state autonomy is at the same time challenged by European integration.
Workshop topics
Contributions are encouraged related to the following broad topics:
- Democracy after the enlargement. The EU was for many years perceived in the CEE countries and their elites as the ultimate guarantor of democracy with the conditionality policy stressing the role of democratic standards for prospects of enlargement. How does the EU today -- six years after the enlargement – contribute to democracy in the new (and also old) member states? What are the positive and negative effects of the enlargement and European integration on the functioning of democracy, civil participation in European societies, functioning of the public sphere, and quality of civil society?
- Society beyond the nation-state. The following areas will be of particular interest: What is the impact of the EU enlargement and its consequences on the transformations of collective identities in CEE countries? What is the impact of migration in Europe on the CEE countries? How does transnationalisation influence the activities and strategies of social actors? What are the mainstakeholders in the process of communication and norm diffusion within the EU (between local and regional, national and supranational level)? How is the image of Europe present in collective memories in CEE?
- Questioning the east-west divide after enlargement. Emphasis will be placed on both the regional groupings of states and endurance of political projects such as the Visegrad Group for the cooperation within the EU but also the potential cooperation and divisions within the EU institutions such as the Council of the EU etc. How do actors from various levels (national, regional, local) from the CEE countries participate in the multidimensional reality of European integration? What are the differences between the actors in the EU? Does the east-west divide explain the differences?
Organizer: ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo and Centre for European Studies, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
2011
CEMES-EURECO symposium on 'Cosmopolitanism contested'
Time and place: May 3, 2012 9:00 AM – May 4, 2012 5:00 PM, Centre for Modern European Studies, University of Copenhagen
CEMES and EURECO - in cooperation with ARENA - holds a symposium on cosmopolitanism in light of the current challenges to European democracy. It invites leading North American scholars to enter a debate with their European colleagues on the future prospects of cosmopolitanism in Europe and the world.
Cosmopolitanism refers to the notion of a society that is open to the world. It is not only a contested concept but the contemporary debate has given rise to many different strands of cosmopolitanism.
Conceptual contestation and ambiguity compound the methodological challenge of properly deciphering the thrust and the actual impact of contemporary cosmopolitanisation processes.
In contemporary Europe, a part of the world that is frequently held up as a cosmopolitan vanguard, these scholarly concerns coincide with an increasingly heated political debate over cosmopolitanism’s future. In Europe the cosmopolitan vision is one of an open society based on rights and justice and respect for difference. This vision is defended by supranational political arrangements that are increasingly identified as part of an elite project that warrants popular resistance. Critical cosmopolitanism faces criticisms not only in intellectual debates but is also facing increasingly intense societal contestation throughout the Western world. Current developments in European integration linked to economic and monetary crisis, populist backlash, Euro-skepticism, islamo-phobia and most recently also rightwing fundamentalism and violence challenge the notion of cosmopolitanisation as an irreversible process.
How do the various expressions of anti-cosmopolitanism manifest themselves in contemporary Europe? How to discern the proper boundaries between cosmopolitanism and reactions to it (‘anti-cosmopolitanism’)? Is there an intrinsic link between Europeanisation and re-nationalisation (which, in fact, occurs simultaneously and is increasingly constraining the development of European integration)? Does cosmopolitanism beget resistance?
This symposium seeks responses from critical social theory on cosmopolitanism in light of the current challenges to European democracy. It invites leading North American scholars to enter a debate with their European colleagues on the future prospects of cosmopolitanism in Europe and the world.
Moderators: EURECO professors Ben Rosamond (Centre for European Politics) and Hans-Jörg Trenz (Centre for Modern European Studies)
Participants:
- Seyla Benhabib (Yale University)
- Richard Wolin (NY University and CEMES Honorary Professor at KU)
- John Erik Fossum (ARENA, University of Oslo)
- Adrian Favell (Sciences Po)
- Gerard Delanty (University of Sussex)
Programme:
- Towards a Critical Social Theory of Cosmopolitanism (Calhoun, Wolin)
- Contemporary challenges to cosmopolitanism in Europe (Fossum, Delanty, Parker)
Organizer: CEMES, EURECO, and ARENA