The Institute for European Studies (IES), Vesalius College (VeCo) in Brussels and the Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) of the University of Warwick in the UK are offering a joint training programme on the Politics of International Development. 

The training will be held at the West Midlands Europe Hub in Brussels on Friday evening 17th January and all day Saturday 18th January 2020.

The training, aimed at early to mid-career professionals, will provide a solid introduction to the Sustainable Development Goals in context and detailed knowledge on the framing, implementation and implications of Sustainable Development Goal 16 on peaceful, just and inclusive societies. It will take a critical approach to the dominant international development agenda. It will enable participants to situate the Sustainable Development Goals in an intellectual history of thinking on development, as well as the contemporary challenges of the pressures on multilateralism and resources and demands...

For the next Multiannual Financial Framework, the Commission has proposed a new mega instrument in the area of external action that will make migration a key focus of the EU’s development cooperation. The nexus between migration and development will thus take centre stage in the EU’s engagement with third countries. In this context, it is interesting to look at current policies combining external migration governance with development cooperation. While the EU seems to assume that policies concerning migration and development cooperation are coherent, a closer look reveals that this is not always the case. Particularly concerning aid conditionality and the emphasis on short-term versus long-term goals, development cooperation and migration policies have different objectives, at times leading to incoherence in the EU’s external policies. 

Marie Lamensch, Research Professor of International and European Tax Law at the Institute for European Studies and the Law Faculty of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, has co-authored the second edition of the book “Taxing Global Digital Commerce”, with Arthur Cockfield (Queen’s University) and Walter Hellerstein (Georgia Law School). This new book includes a detailed and up-to-date analysis of income tax and VAT developments regarding digital commerce under the OECD and G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) reforms.

Marco Giuli spoke about the challenges and opportunities with the energy transition in Italy in light of the EU's climate objectives at the annual Vanvitelli Forum, organised in The Hague by the Clingendael Institute and the Istituto Affari Internazionali with the support of the Dutch and Italian Ministries of Foreign Affairs.

On October 18, the EDGE Programme organised a full day of presentations, discussions and conversations on long-term challenges to democracy. The agenda included many activities to foster research creativity and intellectual exchange, from an academic speed-dating to the launch of the first ‘EDGE Book’, i.e. the edited volume on ‘The Edges of Political Representation. Mapping, Critiquing and Pushing the Boundaries’. Researchers and Professors from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the Institute for European Studies, joined a roundtable discussion on the future challenges of democracy and a closing speech on “What Future for Parliamentary Politics and Democratic Engagement?”, by Cristina Leston-Bandeira (University of Leeds).

In the context of a thematic 'research' week, the Spanish high school Institut Vall de Llémena has invited experts from different research areas to explain to the students how to conduct scientific research. Davesa disentangled the rationale behind social sciences research based on his own experience at the Institute for European Studies (IES) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).

On Thursday 14 November, IES PhD candidate Stephan Klose defended his doctoral thesis on role theory’s added value for International Relations and EU studies. In his dissertation, Stephan addresses two shortcomings in the role theory literature – role theory’s conceptual ambiguity and the lack of engagement of role theorists in relevant disciplinary debates – which together have obscured role theory’s value for the study of international affairs. 

On 24 October, Ilke Adam gave a keynote speech at the landmark European Conference ‘From Tampere 20 to Tampere 2.0. Towards a new programme (2020-24) for EU migration and asylum policies 20 years after the Tampere conclusions’. This conference brought together high-level policy makers, experts, academics and civil society leaders reflecting on the 20 years of European immigration policies and the way forward.  

On 16 October 2019 the VUB International Relations office organised its first Europe Day. The theme of the day was the 15th anniversary of the EU’s biggest enlargement, when 10 countries joined the European Union: Cyprus, Malta, Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Part of the EU day programme was an academic panel debate, organised in cooperation with the Institute for European Studies at VUB (IES), the Jean Monnet Chair and International Relations Office.

What better way to engage the Youth in EU decision-making, than by reversing the roles and giving the baton in policy work to the youth itself? The students from IES’ LLM in International and European law (PILC) had this unique opportunity as a part of the ALL-YOUTH research project that IES researchers Ferran Davesa, Jamal Shahin and Harri Kalimo have been contributing to over the past two years under the lead of Tampere University. To actually chair a Council Working Party was an innovative way to break new ground on the matter. The PILC students had worked as four teams, facilitated by Prof Harri Kalimo,  on key themes of youth participation – online, social media, non-discrimination and education – and provided the Council experts their insights on what they considered as main barriers and bottlenecks in these areas, as well as policy solutions to solving them.