The Conference on the Future of Europe: Institutional Hurdles to Institutional Change

In July 2019, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented the Conference on the Future of Europe in the upcoming European Commission agenda. The year-long Conference will enable citizens and institutions of the European Union (EU) to deliberate the future of the EU. Besides the election of the European Parliament (EP), European citizens can engage in EU politics, for instance, through opinion surveys or the European citizens’ initiative. […]

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Coffee Conversation Recording and Summary. The New Pact on Migration and Asylum: Returns as a solution to European Solidarity?

On April 29th, PfEU held its second Coffee Conversation of the month, “The New Pact on Migration and Asylum: Returns as a Solution to European Solidarity?”. Our guest speaker was Florian Trauner, Professorial Fellow (UNU-CRIS), Jean Monnet Chair at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Visiting Professor at the College of Europe. He recently published a discussion paper together with Olivia Sundberg Diez on the effects of the New pact, which inspired this discussion. Our moderator was Chibuye Changwe, one of PfEU’s Migration Research Associates. […]

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Access to Covid-19 vaccines for asylum seekers, migrants and refugees

Since the end of December 2020, most European Member states have started carrying out vaccination campaigns following specific orders of priority. European countries have defined targeted groups who should get priority in these vaccination campaigns. For instance, apart from health care and frontline workers, older persons over 80 years of age or essential staff working in schools and universities were identified as categories that should have priority access to vaccines. […]

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Hydrogen is what states make out of it

On 8 July 2020, the European Commission adopted its new Hydrogen Strategy. The strategy supports deploying 40 GW of electrolyser capacity by 2030, fostering the decarbonization of hard-to-abate sectors such as international shipping or steel and cement production. In this sense, and due to its versatility, hydrogen could become a pillar of the European Green Deal (EGD). […]

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Coffee Conversation Recording and Summary. Distributional Impacts of Carbon Pricing

This discussion focuses on one of the most complex, widely-used yet contentious climate policy tools, carbon pricing, and its distributional effects. More specifically, PfEU experts discuss and explore whether by relying on this market mechanism, the least-well off in society actually have to disproportionately bear the costs of the fight against climate change. […]

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The Curious Case of Moldova and Its Implications for the Black Sea Region

Back in November, the pro-EU candidate Maia Sandu won the Moldovan race for Prime Minister against pro-Russian incumbent Igor Dodon by a margin of 57.75% of the vote to 42.25%. While not a major event even in European politics, this election could be a bigger sign of a major shift in Moldova from a traditionally stalwart Russian ally to a country with budding EU aspirations, or even possibly reuniting with their Romanian siblings to the West. […]

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The EU-China Investment Agreement: A win for China?

The conclusion of negotiations on the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) has been heralded as both a significant win for the EU and been criticized for threatening transatlantic relations and its tradition of upholding values-based trade. China’s unique and multi-faceted relationship with the EU as a negotiating partner, an economic competitor and a systemic rival are reflected in the nearly insurmountable challenges of establishing such an agreement. […]

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