Constructing EU peripheries: a critical assessment of EU enlargement policy in the Western Balkans
Talk given by Amelie Kutter at the 1st ValEUs conference, Nazerbaev University, Astana, Sept 13-16, 2024
Study trip to Strasbourg: the European Parliament 2024
On the occasion of the elections to the European Parliament 2024, a group of Viadrina students travelled to Strasbourg to visit the constituting plenary sessions and deepen insights from the project class ‘Which Europe do we vote for? The elections to the European Parliament and the green future of the European Union’ by Amelie Kutter.
The European Parliament and the EU’s green future after the 2024 elections
On the occasion of the elections to the European Parliament in 2024 and polarised positions on climate change, a group of students of the MA European Studies at European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), studied European elections, campaigns, the European Green Deal and negotiations on EU climate and biodiversity legislation. They travelled to Strasbourg to watch the constituting sessions of the new European Parliament and work out how European parliamentary politics works on the ground.
ValEUs. Jean Monnet Research & Education Network on Contestations to EU Foreign Policy
The project, titled “ValEUs. Research & Education Network on Contestations to EU Foreign Policy,” has secured 1.2 million euros in funding from the EU Commission as part of a Jean Monnet Policy Network (JMPN) for a three-year period starting from January 2024. This ambitious venture, involving 20 partner institutions from 17 countries across five continents, focuses on scrutinizing the foreign policy of the European Union and the challenges posed to its values.
ValEUs workshop ‘Critical Perspectives on European Values’, University Paris-8, 20-21 June, 2024
This first academic workshop of ValEUs, co-organised by Kolja Lindner at University Paris 8 and Amelie Kuter at European University Viadrina, aims to clarify the foundations of a constructive critical perspective on European values, engaging with their immanent critique, performativity and historical contextualisation.
What Europe do we vote for? Climate-political positioning in campaigns to the European elections 2024
Which Europe do we vote for? What is on offer for the voting population? This lunch lecture presents ad-hoc analysis of election campaign manifestos of German parties and their European party families that students of the class prepared.
Students’ conference ‘European peripheries’
At the students’ conference on ‘European peripheries’, hosted by Amelie Kutter at European University Viadrina on 18 July, 2023, students presented their collaborative work on trends of peripheralisation in EU border regions.
Polity-Construction or How the European Union is (De-)Legitimised: A Discursive Political Sociology Perspective
The paper, presented at the 28th Council for European Studies conference in Lisbon/ISCE on 29 July, 2022, introduces a ‘discursive political sociology perspective’ that combines the theory of meaning-constitution developed in linguistically informed discourse studies with Bour-dieusian political sociology and the political theory of polity-building. It shifts attention from outcome (legitimacy) to process (legitimation) and from identification with existing EU institutions to discourse practices that only establish the means of communicating and cognizing EU politics in its potential and postnational character.
Crisis and crisis narratives in Southwest Europe. Workshop for participants of the regional meeting of Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes
In the past decade, societies in France, Italy, Portugal and Spain have gone through mutiple crisis. The recent pandemic further aggravates calamities that were already visible during the financial and Eurozone crisis: social inequalities, dysfunctions in national systems of social security and health provision, political instability and non-sustainable economies. At the same time, the Covid-19 pandemic markes a shift in policies of crisis management: on both national and European levels, policy-makers have departed from austerity and agreed on stimulus programmes, instead. This workshop explores reasons for this policy shift and the role, crisis narratives play in making that shift more or less possible.
Book panel ‘Legitimation in the European Union’ with Amelie Kutter, Vivien Schmidt and Nicolas Hubé
At this panel, Amelie Kutter (IFES / Euroean University Viadrina) will present her book and Vivien Schmidt (Boston University) and Nicolas Hubé (University of Lorraine), who both worked and published extensively on the EU’s legitmation, will then review it, facilitated by Timm Beichelt (IFES / European University Viadrina).