{"title":"On framing the EU","authors":"Andrea Pareschi","doi":"10.30950/jcer.v19i1.1235","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30950/jcer.v19i1.1235","url":null,"abstract":"This article makes the case for conceptualisation of attitudes towards the EU as interpretative ‘frames’, to be employed as analytical tools for comparison within and between European countries. At present, this move is all the more necessary. In fact, multiple asymmetrical crises and the entrenchment of ‘differentiated integration’ have compounded the contested, open-ended nature of European integration; in parallel, EU studies have increasingly acknowledged the context dependence, heterogeneity and ambivalence of such attitudes, moving beyond the presumption of stable support or opposition. The article leverages a variety of extant works and the empirical outcomes of a deductive-cum-inductive research endeavour to craft a comprehensive inventory of 16 interpretative frames. Then, it highlights a fundamental application, discussing practices that enable the construction of a frame-based approach to mass-elite congruence on European integration. Further suggested developments entail the study of Euroscepticism, national ‘issue cultures’ and ‘issue fields’, and mass-level attitudes towards the EU.","PeriodicalId":44985,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary European Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49164109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Financial compliance in Cohesion Policy: how to protect the EU financial interests from domestic fraud","authors":"Julia Walczyk, N. Dotti","doi":"10.30950/jcer.v19i1.1261","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30950/jcer.v19i1.1261","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the importance of Cohesion Policy in reducing regional disparities and stimulating economic growth across member states, it has been exposed to compliance challenges. These challenges are evidenced by a higher number of errors and irregularities against other areas of the European Union’s budgetary expenditure. Especially fraudulent irregularities may put the EU’s financial interests at risk. The question arises, thus, how to protect this EU’s largest investment area from fraudulent actions. This article addresses the following research question: How did Member States fight fraud in cohesion policy by taking preventive measures during the period 2014-2020? This contribution takes an exploratory, triangulated approach based on documentary analysis, analysis of a statistical dataset and interviews in the case of two countries, Italy and Slovakia. The findings will first show what measures Italy and Slovakia took to prevent fraud and, second, relate these measures to the countries’ performance in the fight against fraud.","PeriodicalId":44985,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary European Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44887297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"To Tie Each Other’s Hands: Italy Negotiating the Introduction of Constitutional Balanced Budget Rules and Independent Fiscal Institutions (2010-2013)","authors":"Federico Bonomi","doi":"10.30950/jcer.v19i1.1197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30950/jcer.v19i1.1197","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents an in-depth qualitative case study on the negotiations underlying the introduction of an Independent Fiscal Institution and a Constitutional Balanced Budget Rule in Italy. The article looks at the interests of the relevant actors in the negotiation process of the Six Pack, Euro Plus Pact, Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance, and Two Pack by conducting interviews with the negotiators and analyses of parliamentary records and press declarations. The article demonstrates that functional mechanisms explain the outcome of such negotiations better than the consolidated literature of Liberal Intergovernmentalism, which expects that the preferences of the constellation of national actors are the key drivers of EU grand bargains impacting on member states’ core state powers. As a matter of fact, Italian negotiators decided to accept the introduction of such instruments because they were potentially helpful in reducing macroeconomic risks both domestically and in other EU member states without having particular political costs, and not because domestic actors showcased clear preferences in favour of them. The results contribute to the academic debate on the integration of the Economic and Monetary Union by testing hypotheses deriving from traditional EU integration and International Relations literature and paves the way for future research allowing for a greater generalisation.","PeriodicalId":44985,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary European Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47165781","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Socialising the European Semester? The limited influence of Danish social partners on EU policymaking","authors":"Yi Ma","doi":"10.30950/jcer.v19i1.1169","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30950/jcer.v19i1.1169","url":null,"abstract":"Many scholars have debated the role of social policy in the new economic governance after the financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis. While some researchers argue that social policy continues to be subordinated in favour of the economic imperative, others observe a partial but progressive socialisation, both in terms of EU policy outputs (i.e. more focus on social policies) and the governance procedure (i.e. more participation of social actors). This article contributes to this debate by providing a national perspective. Specifically, it investigates whether procedural socialisation at the national level leads to output socialisation at the EU level. Based on two case studies from Denmark during the European Semester, this article finds that despite their active participation, social partners have had no noticeable influence on the Commission’s Country Reports or Country-Specific Recommendations. The results indicate that procedural socialisation may not easily translate into output socialisation. The article argues for more nuanced insights into the socialisation debate.","PeriodicalId":44985,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary European Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47191327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Iconsistency of Czech Presidential Diplomacy and the Growth of Czech Foreign Trade with China","authors":"R. Čuhlová, J. Nesiba","doi":"10.30950/jcer.v19i1.1166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30950/jcer.v19i1.1166","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyzes the relation between the diplomatic activity of Czech presidents and the economic trend of bilateral trade between the Czech Republic and China during 1993-2019. The investigation is based on a statistical survey of diplomatic steps and economic figures. Although the policy of the first Czech President Václav Havel (1993-2003) was cautious towards China, Czech-Chinese bilateral trade exchange was nevertheless consistent and relatively balanced. In the period of President Václav Klaus (2003-2013), after the accession of the Czech Republic to the EU, the trend of trade balance continued to the detriment of Czech exports despite the trade volume growth. However, the decline of exports to China was similarly observed in other Central European countries. That was also a period when Czech presidential diplomatic acts towards China became more numerous. In the period of President Miloš Zeman (2013-until now), the diplomatic activity of the Czech President increased significantly according to the number of official visits and signed documents. Simultaneously, there has been a significant decline in Czech exports and Chinese reinvested profits in the Czech Republic. The authors substantiate the findings by quantitative analysis and describe the development of Czech presidential diplomacy from the perspective of Czech-Chinese economic relations during 1993-2019 as inconsistent.","PeriodicalId":44985,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary European Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42390250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Teaching European Integration in Italian Upper Secondary School","authors":"Lucia Boschetti","doi":"10.30950/jcer.v18i2.1274","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30950/jcer.v18i2.1274","url":null,"abstract":"An extensive study of the representations of Europe in history textbooks has been conducted with regards to Italian lower secondary school (Pingel 1994, 2000, 2003a, 2003b; Cajani 2003). These studies have included considerations upon the history of European integration, although this was not their exclusive topic. To date, however, few pieces of research have addressed how the history of European integration is dealt with in Italian textbooks for upper secondary school (Accardo, Baldocchi 2004; Challand 2009). The present paper examines how curricula and textbooks portray the integration process in upper secondary school. It focuses on the position they attribute to Italy in different phases and the extent to which they use recent findings of historiography.","PeriodicalId":44985,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary European Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48534853","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Teaching the European Union in Brexit Britain","authors":"O. Parker","doi":"10.30950/jcer.v18i2.1270","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30950/jcer.v18i2.1270","url":null,"abstract":"This contribution to the Special Issue focuses on how we might incorporate ‘peripheral thinking’ on the EU, with a particular focus on teaching the EU at a ‘new periphery’: in Brexit Britain. First, it considers the challenges of teaching the EU in the context of what now feels like an almost permanent crisis in the EU. It argues in favour of a ‘critical-pluralist’ approach: that is, an approach that fully engages with a ‘peripheral’ (including ‘critical’, ‘normative’ and ‘dissident’) set of ideas as part of a commitment to scholarly pluralism. Second, it suggests--with reference to the recent experience of updating an EU politics textbook--that a ‘question driven approach’ might be one pedagogically practical way of presenting such a plurality to our students. Finally, it turns to consider how such an approach might be realised in the classroom, in the particular context of teaching the EU at the EU’s ‘new periphery’, the United Kingdom. While that context presented various teaching related challenges, Brexit as a case study was usefully deployed in a variety of ways in order to pursue the critical-pluralist approach that is advocated. ","PeriodicalId":44985,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary European Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43396588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"In Search of Epistemic Justice in the EU’s Periphery","authors":"E. Turhan, Rahime Süleymanoğlu-Kürüm","doi":"10.30950/jcer.v18i2.1272","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30950/jcer.v18i2.1272","url":null,"abstract":"As relations between the European Union (EU) and Turkey have progressed, so has the body of literature on the relationship – to the extent that we can now identify ‘EU–Turkey studies’ as a boutique sub-discipline of EU studies. This article provides a systematic mapping of the evolution of EU–Turkey studies from 1996 to 2020 in order to explore the degree of epistemic diversity featured in the discipline as an indicator of epistemic (in)justice. Utilising the research synthesis technique, we analyse a novel dataset involving 300 articles published in 26 SSCI journals to scrutinise the extent of epistemic diversity in the discipline. Our mapping reveals two central features of EU–Turkey studies. First, the transformation of the discipline has largely been contingent on critical milestones in EU–Turkey relations. Lately, increasing conflictual dynamics in bilateral relations resulted in diminishing scholarly commitment to studying EU–Turkey relations. Second, epistemic diversity has remained fairly limited given the lack of geographic diversity in authorship, the accumulation of the publications in specific journals, and the segregated co-authorship clusters that limit the amalgamation of different ideas and values. At the same time, knowledge production in EU–Turkey studies has been mainly Eurocentric, due to the almost exclusive use of grand and up-and-coming theories/concepts of European integration, while the proliferation of issue areas since the launch of the discipline has not culminated in a strong focus on non-traditional, avant-garde research topics as such. To ensure epistemic justice in the discipline, EU–Turkey studies should place stronger emphasis on unconventional issue areas and on the explanatory power of mainstream and unorthodox (IR) theories that have the potential to explore the relationship within the context of the multilateral system in which EU–Turkey relations increasingly operate.","PeriodicalId":44985,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary European Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48481225","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction: Teaching and Learning ‘Europe’ in ‘the Periphery’: Disciplinary, Educational and Cognitive Boundaries of European Studies","authors":"Başak Z. Alpan, T. Diez","doi":"10.30950/jcer.v18i2.1292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30950/jcer.v18i2.1292","url":null,"abstract":"This introductory article argues that there is a need to introduce a renewed approach to the field of European Studies which takes into account various perspectives from the ‘periphery’ to unfold complexities and challenges of teaching and learning ‘Europe’ away from the immediate geographical and conceptual focus of the European studies. By elaborating on the notion of ‘periphery’ and exploring how European Studies resonate beyond ‘the centre’, we aim to explore the complexities and challenges of the European studies in its relationality of the broader processes such as EU accession and global university education. This endeavour will contribute to the ongoing disciplinary debate on the future of European studies as well as the introduction of new methods of teaching and knowledge production by presenting alternative narratives on the challenges of the European integration and Europeanisation in the ‘periphery’.","PeriodicalId":44985,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary European Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44730406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Teaching EU Law in the periphery: Outlook in Turkey","authors":"Cenap Çakmak, Ali Özçeli̇k, Erhan Akdemir","doi":"10.30950/jcer.v18i2.1275","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30950/jcer.v18i2.1275","url":null,"abstract":"This study extensively reviews the EU Law curriculum in Turkish higher education institutions and further draws conclusions on the state of this curriculum as compared to the general EU courses. Based on the findings and the conclusions, the authors then discuss the factors for the inertia to place greater emphasis upon teaching the EU Law with reference to how Europeanization has been understood and interpreted in Turkey. The findings suggest that the reforms have not been appropriately backed by the curriculum and that Turkey has acted in conformity with its own peripheral agenda rather than committing itself strongly to internalize the EU legislation and incorporate it in its entirety into its legal domain.","PeriodicalId":44985,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary European Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46742757","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}