When they joined the EU Central and East European states committed themselves to meet EU norms on international development aid. Small budgets, weak social support and limited political commitment have so far limited the impact of aid from CEE. However, it is too early to dismiss them as ‘premature donors’ argue Simon Lightfoot and Balazs Szent-Ivanyi.

The idea to promote familiarity, mutual trust, a collective European identity and support for European integration by giving citizens the possibility to interact across borders is at the heart of a wide array of EU policies, such as the Erasmus student exchange or town twinning projects. This idea goes back to Karl W. Deutsch’s transactionalist […]

Academics studying the EU should be the real eurosceptics. Not only can we translate the greek word skepsis as "enquiry”, modern science owes much to philosophical and methodological scepticism. However, it seems that academics interested in the EU have struggled to come to grips with a the phenomenon of political euroscepticism which appears to be quite a different thing compared the philosophical notions of skepticism.

The opening plenary session started on the same impressive multi-disciplinary note as the first day of the conference. Headline contributors included EU legal scholar Dagmar Schiek and economist Malcolm Sawyer - both from the University of Leeds - as well as Dermot Hodson and Fabian Amtembrink.

UACES 43rd Annual Conference takes place at the University of Leeds between 2-4 September 2013. In this post, Simon Usherwood (University of Surrey), reflects on the first plenary which looked at euroscepticism and its consequences for European integration.

UACES 43rd Annual conference takes place between 2-4 September 2013 at the University of Leeds. In this post, Andy Morton (University of Leeds), reports from the first day.

Should the EU introduce common standards for the regularisation of irregular migrants even though the principle is often contested?