Sylabus
1. Feb 22nd Intro + Integration Milestones Student Team Presentation Suggestions
2. Feb 29th Institutions and Policy-Making
3. Mar 7th The Single Market Commission vs. Big Tech
4. Mar 14th Agriculture and Cohesion Food Quality and Safety
5. Mar 21st Economic and Monetary Union Germany in the Eurozone ~ ~ March 28th - Dean’s Day - No class ~ ~
6. Apr 4th AFSJ Migration Crisis
7. Apr 11th Foreign Policy, Security, Defence EU relations with superpowers
8. Apr 18th Trade, Development, Enlargement EU Enlargement
9. Apr 25th Energy and Environment The Green Deal
10. May 2nd Dem. Legitimacy and EU Citizens Euroscepticism
11. May 9th European Identity “Idea(s) of Europe”
12. May 16th EU and the Member States, Brexit Blame It on Brussels
13. May 23rd If needed - 3 more student presentations: EU and Russia’s War on Ukraine; Citizens and the EU; EU Reform?
Anotace
To say that the European Union – with its multi-national, multi-level, hybrid governance structure – is a complex political entity… sounds almost like an understatement. Approaching individual EU integration problems can thus become a daunting task, as EU problems do not exist in a vacuum, but are enmeshed in a thick layer of formal procedures, informal norms and often national and inter-institutional tug-of-war, all of which obscure clear view.
In this course I want to untangle that “mess” of EU governance and show how things “hang together” rather than how they disappear into the procedural jungle. The goals of this course are thus easy/complicated enough: FIRST, the course will briefly cover European integration milestones and institutional framework, SECOND, it will introduce the main policy areas and THIRD, deal with dilemmas of European Union politics! Since this is a course on understanding the EU, the aim is to cover European politics in a way that makes it “closer” to the people – through real-life examples.
To this end, I want to connect textbook chapters with real life examples (via student presentations), institutional legacy with present-day political head-scratchers.