EuroChallenge
EuroChallenge ;was a major research project that addressed the place of Europe in the context of a rapidly and radically changing global order. It originated from EURECO the existing interdisciplinary initiative between the Faculty of Humanities, the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Social Sciences for European research at the University of Copenhagen. The Research Centres involved in the project was CEP, CEMES, and iCourts. The project was funded by the UCPH 2016 funds and ran from 2013-2017.
THE PROJECT IS CLOSED
Project period: 2013-2017
Principal Investigator (PI): Ben Rosamond
Work Packages
The project was organised into three work packages (WP), each inherently interdisciplinary in design and personnel.
- Work Package I. The European Market Space and the New Global Economy: Constructions, Paradigms and Policies.
- Work Package II. The European Legal-Politico Space in a New Global Order? The Global Challenges to European Markets, Human Rights and Constitutionalized Democracy.
- Work Package III. Complex Diversity: The Social and Cultural Interpretations of Changing European and Global Order.
Research Centres Involved
Centre for European Politics (CEP)
Department of Political Science
Faculty of Social Sciences, UCPH
Centre for Modern European Studies (CEMES)
Faculty of Humanities, UCPH
Centre of Excellence for International Courts (iCourts)
Faculty of Law, UCPH
The EuroChallenge Team of Researchers:
- Ben Rosamond, Professor Department of Political Science
- Hans-Jörg Trenz, Professor Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, Faculty of Humanities, and Director of Centre for Modern European Studies (CEMES)
- Mikael Rask Madsen, Professor Faculty of Law, and Head of iCourts, Centre of Excellence for International Courts
- Marlene Wind, Professor Department of Political Science, and Director of Centre for European Politics (CEP), co-founding member of iCourts, and Chair of the EURECO Academic Board
- Niklas Olsen, PhD, Assistant Professor Centre for Modern European Studies (CEMES), Faculty of Humanities
- Rebecca Adler-Nissen, PhD, Professor Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences
- Salvatore Caserta, PhD Fellow at iCourts – the Center of Excellence for International Courts, Faculty of Law
- Neriman Deniz Duru, former Post Doc, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, Faculty of Humanities
- Juan Antonio Mayoral Diaz-Asensio, Assistent Professor at iCourts – the Center of Excellence for International Courts, Faculty of Law
- Solomon Tamarabrakemi Ebobrah, former Post Doc at iCourts – the Center of Excellence for International Courts, Faculty of Law
- Mikkel Jarle Christensen, Associate Professor at iCourts – the Center of Excellence for International Courts, Faculty of Law
- Joelle Dumouchel, former Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences
- Michael Joseph Bossetta Jr., former PhD Fellow, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences
- Charlotte Galpin, former Post Doc, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication. Faculty of Humanities
Affiliated Researchers:
- Ian Manners, former Professor Department of Political Science
- Christine Søby, former PhD fellow, Department of Political Science
- Jens Ladefoged Mortensen, Associate Professor Department of Political Science
- Peter Nedergaard, Professor, Department of Political Science
- Chenchen Zhang, former Post Doc, Department of Political Science
- Alf Jonas Henrik Hermansson, former Post Doc, Department of Political Science
- Kerstin Bree Carlson, Post Doc, iCourts, Faculty of Law
- Amalie Frese, PhD fellow, iCourts, Faculty of Law
- Maryna Lambert, former PhD Fellow, Department of Political Science
- Julie Hassing Nielsen, former Post Doc, Department of Political Science
- Rune Møller Stahl, Post Doc, Department of Political Science
- Morten Rasmussen, Associate Professor and director of Centre for Modern European Studies, Faculty of Humanities
EuroChallenge was a major research project that addressed the place of Europe in the context of a rapidly and radically changing global order. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the project examined the intersection of a changing global configuration on the one hand and still unresolved tensions of European integration on the other across the market, politico-legal and socio-cultural domains.
These three overlapping and inter-related European forms of order represent the key forms of post-war supranational integration. They each represent solutions to the dilemma of how to organise European space and on what principles in a globalising world. Yet domain contains unresolved and on-going tensions. As the world supposedly moves into a crisis-riven and uncertain phase beyond ‘globalisation’, so each of the three domains faces key challenges to the delicate European compromises of the past half century: between respectively market and social cohesion, supranational governance/law and democracy, and cosmopolitan diversity and the value of national communitarian purpose.
The challenges are not just about whether Europe can find its footing as a competitive growth pole in the changing global economic landscape, important though that is. It is also about whether Europe will continue to be a legal, regulatory and normative standard-setter for the world as a whole. By standard-setter is meant much more than the capacity of Europe to maintain its position as leading supplier of regulatory tools for a liberal economic order. It also implies something much broader, namely the extent to which the European intellectual and policy discourses that have shaped and continue to shape modern market and democratic societies can be sustained in new and challenging conditions.
Guiding Research Questions
EuroChallenge was guided by four overarching research questions, which are profoundly important intellectual questions as well as tangible political and social problems:
- What is the scale of the challenges posed to Europe by the shifting global configuration?
- In what ways, to what extent and with what political, legal and social effects are European policy-makers and citizens conceptualising the shifting global configuration and its concomitant challenges?
- How effectively, given the scale of the EU’s own crisis, can Europe’s collective institutions manage the intra-European effects of this new global configuration?
- To what extent, in part by redefining and reframing its unresolved internal challenges, is the EU showing itself as a global agenda-setter?
An Interdisciplinary Approach
The EuroChallenge project worked from the assumption that thoroughgoing intellectual engagement with Europe’s role in the face of new global challenges requires not only the insights provided by several disciplines, but also active dialogue between them.
Work Packages
EuroChallenge was organised into three work packages so as to reflect the three interconnected domains or spaces within which European integration had been most profoundly influential and important: the market domain (WP1), the politico-legal domain (WP2), and the socio-cultural domain (WP3). For more information on each work package please click the links below.
Work package I: The European Market Space and the New Global Economy: Constructions, Paradigms and Policies
This work package focused on the ways in which policy elites in Europe, conceptualise the new global order, the extent to which neoliberalism sits at the heart of European economic policy calculus and how, if at all supranational economic policy designs in the new global order are moving beyond the well-established EU regulatory mode of governance.
Work package II: The European Legal-Politico Space in a New Global Order? The Global Challenges to European Markets, Human Rights and Constitutionalized Democracy
This work package asked questions about the viability of Europe’s role as a producer of ‘universals’ in the realms of market regulation, human rights norms and models of constitutional democracy. It examined the degree to which developing societies are adopting or neglecting European models of politico-legal space.
Work package III: Complex Diversity: the Social and Cultural Interpretations of Changing European and Global Order
This work package dealt with the challenges to European socio-political space of the changing global order. It examined both societal responses to the global crisis and changing citizens’ allegiances and loyalties in light of the macroeconomic and politico-legal shifts.
Methods Meetings
EuroChallenge members and affiliated European studies researchers regularly met for methods meetings to discuss work in progress. The aim of the meetings was to present methods and data at an early stage and discuss any problems that have been encountered, as well as receive feedback and collaboration on work that was not yet ready for public dissemination.
Conferences and workshops
- In november 2017 Professor Hans-Jörg Trenz organised the workshop 'The New Populist Right and Europe: Visions and Divisions' as well as the public roundtable 'From Populism to non-democratic hybrid regimes in Central and Eastern Europe'.
- In January 2016 Post doc in EuroChallegne Julie Hassing Nielsen organised the workshop:A Lens on Euroscepticism: The Impact of Eurosceptic Attitudes on the 2014 European Parliament Elections. The workshop took place from 21- 22 January 2016 at the Department of Political Science at University of Copenhagen.
- In November 2015 Post doc in EuroChallenge's WP1, Joelle Dumouchel organised the Workshop: Practice in International Relations and International Political Economy.
- EuroChallenge hosted The CFP: Second annual IPE/Öresund Workshop After the Crisis? European Crises and Emerging Alternatives. Wednesday 16 December at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen.
- EuroChallenge hosted the 3rd midterm conference of the Political sociology research network of the European Sociological Association (ESA) in November 2014.
- Work package 3 hosted the 4th and 5th of December 2014 the 2-days workshop: 'Towards ComplexDiversity? Understanding new challenges for the accommodation of difference and diversity in Europe and the World'.
EuroChallenge was launched with an inaugural workshop in November 2013.
Research seminars and debates
- In June 2015, Cornel Ban, Assistant Professor of Political Economy at Boston University, presented his new book, ‘Ruling Ideas’ (a brief summary is attached) at the invitation of the IPE group.
- May 12th 2015, EuroChallenge and the Centre for European Politics hosted a roundtable debate on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) currently being negotiated between the European Union and the United States.
Ben Rosamond “Europe's Global Challenges: market, law and society”, EURECO Distinguished Lecture Series, University of Copenhagen 17 September 2013.
Hans-Jörg Trenz "Europe after the crisis: The making or the unmaking of a political union?", EURECO Distinguished Lecture Series, University of Copenhagen 12 November 2013.
Rebecca Adler-Nissen "‘Lazy Greeks’ and ‘Nazi Germans’: Negotiating International Hierarchies in the Euro Crisis", EURECO Distinguished Lecture Series, University of Copenhagen 28 October 2014.
Deniz N. Duru "Multiculturalism and Conviviality in Europe and Beyond", EURECO Distinguished Lecture Series, University of Copenhagen 4 November 2014.
Hans-Jörg Trenz organized in cooperation with the German embassy a public event on the European Parliament elections: From secondary to primary? May 2014, University of Copenhagen.
Marlene Wind co-chaired the big public conference: Danmarks Fremtid i EU’s Retlige Samarbejde (Denmark’s Future in EU Justice and Home Affairs), 3 November 2015, University of Copenhagen. The conference was co-organised by Centre for European Politics, KU and The Danish think tank Europa.
Marlene Wind invited to talk about the Danish Justice and Home Affairs Opt-out at the Ministry of Transport, 1 September 2015, Copenhagen.
Marlene Wind invited speaker on Europe’s Future at the Annual Ambassador Meeting in the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 28 August 2015, Copenhagen
Marlene Wind invited to give a public talk about What could be the political and economic consequences of a Grexit from the Eurozone at an event organised by Fondsmæglerselskabet Investering and Tryghed, June 2015, Copenhagen
Marlene Wind invited public talk at Kammeradvokaten (The Legal Adviser to the Danish Government). The event was organised by Dansk Forening for Europaret (DFE), May 2015, Copenhagen
Marlene Wind gave the talk 'Who is afraid of European Constitutionalism’ at the Danish Foreign Ministry, 26 March 2015, Copenhagen
Marlene Wind invited speaker at the Conference on the Refugee Crisis organised by the Danish Red Cross. Talk entitled: “EU’s Asylum Policy and the Danish Justice and Home Affairs Opt-Out”, 10 February 2015, Copenhagen
Mikael Rask Madsen gave the talk ’Domstole og den ny internationale retsorden’ at the Day of Research, Academy of Science, 26 April 2016, Copenhagen
Mikael Rask Madsen ’Human Rights in Europe: Past, Present, Future’, speech and discussion with French Ambassador to Denmark, François Zimeray, The Students Human Rights Association, 2016, Copenhagen
Rebecca Adler-Nissen was invited to give a public talk on ’Tilvalg eller parallelaftaler? – erfaringer fra UK’ at the conference Danmarks Fremtid i EU’s Retlige Samarbejde (Denmark’s Future in EU Justice and Home Affairs), 3 November 2015, University of Copenhagen. The conference was co-organised by Centre for European Politics, KU and The Danish think tank Europa.
Rebecca Adler-Nissen invited speaker at a public seminar about EU’s legal policies organised by DEO - The Democracy in Europe Organisation (DEO), a liberal adult education organisation working to promote a participatory European democracy, 2 June 2015, Copenhagen
Rebecca Adler-Nissen invited by the Danish Parliament’s Committee on European Affairs to talk and debate the Danish opt-out from EU justice and home affairs. Public event, Folketingets 26 November 2015, Copenhagen.
Many of the EuroChallenge researchers contributed on a regular basis to the public debate and were often used as experts in the media. Below is a list of selected written contributions.
Ben Rosamond ‘The UK’s EU Renegotiation: View from Denmark’, online article at European Futures academic blog from the University of Edinburgh and the Edinburgh Europa Institute, Published 19 February 2016.
Ben Rosamond and Holly Snaith ‘The new view from The Bridge’ online article at speri.comment: the political economy blog, University of Sheffield. Published 19 January 2016.
Ben Rosamond and J Hopkin ‘Deficit fetishism and the art of political bullshit: Part I’ Online article at speri.comment: the political economy blog, University of Sheffield. Published 15 July 2015.
Ben Rosamond and J Hopkin ‘Deficit fetishism and the art of political bullshit: Part II’ Online article at speri.comment: the political economy blog, University of Sheffield. Published 22 July 2015.
Mikael Rask Madsen and Salvatore Caserta “Caribisk frihed i Londons skygge” published in Weekendavisen, 20 December 2013
Mikael Rask Madsen 'Med international ret skal land bygges?' published in Berlingske Tidende. Co-author Henrik Palmer Olsen, 23 May 2014
Mikael Rask Madsen 'Domstolen i modvind' published in Jyllandsposten. Co-author Jonas Christoffersen, 26 November 2013
Marlene Wind (WP2) is a permanent columnist on European Affairs in the Daily Danish Newspaper Politiken.
Marlene Wind ’EU-Domstolen er fællesskabets største succes’ debating article in Altinget, 29 January 2015
Marlene Wind ’Danmarks enegang koster dyrt’ article on the consequences of Denmark’s opt-out from the EU Green Card system. Article in RÆSON, March 2014. Co-author Eva Maria Gram
Holly Snaith: News Broadcast - the New View from the Bridge, 21 February 2016
Holly Snaith: BBC world service radio interview on the Øresund bridge, 4 January 2016
Rebecca Adler-Nissen interviewed to both the French newspaper La Croix and the French media outlet CONTEXT about the Right Wings Parties’ Rhetoric in the debate on Europe, 17 June 2015
Marlene Wind chaired an event broadcasted live by the Danish television news channel TV2- NEWS a public debate co-organised by Centre for European Politics, KU and TV2-NEWS on the European Parliament Election, May 2014.
The project was financed by
EuroChallenge was financed by the UCPH Excellence Programme for Interdisciplinary Research
Project: Europe and New Global Challenges (EuroChallenge)
Start: 1 January 2013
End: 31 December 2017