‘Progress is never linear, much less granted once and for all.’ Professor Federico Romero uses the Treaty of Rome Anniversary to reconsider how the EC/EU ‘nurtured – inadvertently, myopically, smugly – the frustrated discontent that now threatens it.’

Professor Federico Romero is Professor of History of Post-War European Cooperation and Integration at the European University Institute. He is also Director of the ERC project Looking West: The European Socialist Regimes Facing Pan-European Cooperation and the European Community (PanEur1970s), and co-directs the Alcide de Gasperi Centre for Research. He will chair a debate on ‘The European Union at Sixty’ at The State of the Union. 4-6th May 2017.

Wilders’ one-man show was unable to capitalise on populist momentum, but others are more organised, says Herman Lelieveldt. The visiting fellow in the Department of SPS explains why it is important not to fixate on how the PVV alone performs.
Herman Lelieveldt is a visiting fellow in the Department of SPS. He is Associate Professor in Political Science at University College Roosevelt in Utrecht.

Europe and the US have long held themselves as beacons for developing democracies around the world. […] But recent EU and US failures (immigration crises, border closings, racially-biased police violence, inequality, Brexit, etc.) are discouraging young democracies’ pursuit of liberal democratic institutions, and these developing countries are growing impatient with what they see as hypocritical preaching from the democratic ‘West’.
Anchalee Rueland is a Ph.D. candidate in SPS. She spent 8 months in Southeast Asia carrying out fieldwork on norm conflicts, and is currently writing a thesis entitled ‘Norms In Conflict: Non-interference vs Protection of Human Rights in Southeast Asia.’

During the electoral campaign, Donald Trump relied less on foreign policy, security, and defence advisors than any major party nominee in the past 70 years, making the shape and direction of U.S. foreign policy under his administration uncertain and difficult to predict. What might the election of Donald Trump mean for Europe and Europeans? Professor Ulrich Krotz, Chair in International Relations in the Department of Political and Social Sciences and the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, sheds some light on a situation that is anything but clear.

RSCAS visiting scholar and Professor of International Relations at the Central European University in Budapest Béla Greskovits reflects on the robust performance of the populist Fidesz party in Hungary. He points out the cultural weaknesses of the liberal-left in countries such as the US, France, and the UK, indicating where illiberalism has found fertile ground to take root.

European leaders and publics today are no doubt struggling to comprehend the implications of Trump’s victory for Europe and for world politics more broadly. Dr Richard Maher, Research Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies’ Global Governance Programme, gives his perspective in an op-ed on the result of the American elections.

‘It is a deeply historical moment, with unknown and unknowable outcomes,’ explains Professor Brigid Laffan, Director of the European University Institute’s Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, referring to the UK’s historic decision to withdraw its membership from the European Union.

Professor Brigid Laffan, Director of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies and Director of the Global Governance Programme at the EUI and Professor Ramon Marimon, Pierre Werner Chair at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies and Joint Chair in Economics and the RSCAS, give EUI Times brief opinions on what Brexit would entail.

Sabrina Marchetti is Research Associate at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies Global Governance Program in the Cultural Pluralism research area. From 2016 she will direct the ERC funded project ‘DomEQUAL’.

Anna Triandafyllidou is Robert Schuman Chair Professor at the RSCAS and Director of the Global Governance Programme’s Research Strand on Cultural Pluralism.