This edited volume explores the opportunities and challenges facing the European Union in the future from different disciplines and assesses the EU’s prospects across various policy areas. Using the European Commission’s 2017 White Paper presenting five different scenarios for the future of Europe to 2050 as an organising framework for analysis and debate, the volume reflects upon the drivers of the EU’s future, including its changing place in an evolving world, a transformed economy and society, heightened threats and concerns about security and borders, and questions of trust and legitimacy. The concluding chapter summarises and compares the findings to determine which of the scenarios is the most instructive to understand and plan European Futures to 2050, and beyond. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European integration, EU politics/studies, and more broadly international relations, as well as European policy-makers.

This book dissects the complex social, cultural and political factors which led the UK to take its decision to leave the EU and examines the far-reaching consequences of that decision. Developing the conceptual framework of securitization, Ryder innovatively uses primary sources and a focus on rhetoric to examine the ways that political elites engineered a politics of fear, insecurity and Brexit nationalism before and after the Brexit vote. He situates Brexit within a wider shift in international political ideas, traces the resurgence in popularity of far-right politics and explores how Britain and Europe now face a choice between further neoliberal reform or radical democratic and social renewal.

Romania hosts the 2012 Bologna / European Higher Education Area Ministerial Conference and the Third Bologna Policy Forum. In preparation for these meetings, The Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI) organised the Future of Higher Education - Bologna Process Researchers’ Conference (FOHE-BPRC) in Bucharest on 17-19 October 2011, with the support of the European University Association (EUA) and the Romanian National Committee for UNESCO. The conference brought the voices of researchers into international-level policy making in higher education. The results of the conference are presented in this book. Until now, empirical evidence supporting policies and reforms in higher education has often been a matter of local or regional focus. The development of a pan-European process in higher education policy drives a need to explore wider research topics on which to base policies. This book offers an unprecedented opportunity for higher education researchers to interact and contribute to the political process shaping the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), and to national policy agendas in more than 100 participant countries for the 2012 ministerial events. The book collects more than 50 articles focusing on vital issues in European higher education. These are arranged in sections addressing the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) Principles; Teaching and Learning; Quality Assurance; Mobility; Higher Education Governance in the EHEA; Funding of Higher Education; Diversification of Higher Education Missions; Higher Education Futures and Foresight.

Analyzes the roots of Europe's economic decline, examining institutions of the European Union and exploring possibilities for reform.

Written in an accessible style for a wide audience, this book traces the spreading out of energy policy from being a relatively narrow concern to becoming the focus of renewed worry about energy dependence, and to developing into the Union's highest profile international policy through EU leadership on climate change.

This volume brings together experienced Professors and PhD researchers from all over Europe to summarise the crucial dilemmas that the European Union has to confront during its current multilevel crisis. The chapters are organized into four parts. The first section deals with constitutional issues of the EU, namely multilevel democratic governance, gender equality, and participatory democracy, and the impact of the crisis on them. The second analyses public governance issues, with reference to urban planning as a new policy for the EU, state aid and privatization of public companies, corporate governance principles for public companies, and EU case law on freedom of establishment of companies. The third part discusses certain issues of the EU internal market and external trade, namely the Europeanisation of labour relations, the relation between EU environmental law and international agreements, the dilemma between regionalism and multilateralism in international trade law, and the Eurasian Economic Union. The fourth section explores the Eurozone crisis from different perspectives and areas, namely political philosophy, economics, political science, administrative science, and law.

As a continent, the economy of Europe is currently the largest on Earth. The European Union, or EU, an intergovernmental body composed of most of the European states, is one of the two largest in the world. Of the member states in the EU, Germany has the largest national economy. Thirteen EU countries share a common unit of currency, the Euro. Major economic sectors in Europe include agriculture, manufacturing, and investment. The majority of the EU's trade is with the United States, China, India, Russia and non-member European states. This book focuses on the latest economic and political issues in Europe.