Rather than try to second-guess where the Youth Mobility talks end up, I want to focus instead on the big open question of future relations, namely: how does the UK decide what it wants?

For all Burnham’s talk of a dialogue, there’s been essentially nothing about the mechanics of having that dialogue, or even who might be involved in it. It’s all a bit underpant gnomes.

The graphic below sets out the most immediate questions we might ask of Number 10, but beyond some kind of tentpole speech around the time of the summit on 20 November there’s no definite pathway.

If we assume that the goal is a new policy to stick in the next Labour manifesto, then there’s not actually a need to do anything more than internal party mechanisms to find a consensus position among members and getting it approved by conference.

But the impression is clearly one of something broader, across party lines.

So maybe we’re looking for a policy statement or a resolution to be voted on in Parliament to signal the breadth of the consensus Burnham talks of building.

If MPs/parties are the focus, then it’s logically some kind of working group or conference to hammer out ideas and common positions, more or less open to outsiders to watch.

But Burnham also seems to want the general public involved too: we might assume this goes beyond just voting in elections.

This is where is becomes much more complex.

Maybe it’s some kind of consultation exercise, or even a consultative referendum (although, really?). Maybe it’s a citizens’ assembly, but still with the question of how to translate that from the specific citizens to the wider population. And all these take a lot more time to do properly, which might be tricky if you want to have it conclude in good time for a general election.

And all this before we get into the questions of whether Burnham really does want to not pre-judge the outcome (despite some clear preferences) and of how to determine what might be the least objectional way of weighing evidence.

And evidence will be weighed here.

While you might get a broad consensus view from economists on impacts on GDP for various models of relations, you won’t get the same from political scientists on political consequences. Even when people do agree on what matters, they can easily differ on what that points to (just cast your mind back to 2016’s debate).

Add in that most people either don’t confidently understand the issues or don’t care too much about finding out more and you have a recipe for a difficult process. Which might be why we’ve yet to hear what it looks like.

But it will matter, because procedural aspects will be part of building the kind of resilient consensus that Burnham is seeking and that the EU will look for when deciding whether it wants to indulge whatever new British line emerges.

Working on this might be the more important activity for the government in the next two weeks.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic153

The post Andy Burnham and the Gnomes appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

As part of the incipient debate on the UK’s future relations with the EU, Andy Burnham has been out and about this week, trying to balance not pre-judging the outcome of a nominally collective discussion and decision with his own views.

Even though we assume his predisposition to the UK becoming a full member state of the EU once again, it’s also worth noting the likely impact of the burgeoning ‘Made in Europe’ agenda working through Brussels, which will further weaken the viability of the status quo.

Hence the somewhat convoluted formulation of his recent remarks, pushing membership back into some point before he dies and saying:

“I can’t see myself ever recommending anything that would involve joining the euro or Schengen.”

This prompted me to once again search my feelings* about the mechanics of such an outcome, feelings that have been present ever since we kicked off the swell of reports/briefings from various organisations, almost all of whom seem to take the view that not joining the Euro or Schengen might be a bit tricky, but nothing too insurmountable.

True to my nature, I’m not sure it’ll be quite that simple.

I’m going to focus here on the Euro, but it would be much the same for Schengen should the Irish government announce their desire also to participate once the UK becomes a member state. Which would be fun.

So we know that not all EU members use the Euro (and not all Euro users are member states, incidentally). There’s only one state with a treaty-level opt-out, namely Denmark, which negotiated a protocol during the negotiation of the Maastricht treaty in 1992, which gives it the right to decide whether to proceed to the final stage of Euro membership.

But there are also Sweden, Poland and Hungary. When they acceded they formally committed themselves to becoming full Eurozone members, but have all subsequently decided that they do not wish to do that. To this end, they have not made their currencies part of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), which manages and minimises forex fluctuations, and which is an essential criterion for Euro membership.

The Commission, in its periodic Convergence Reports, notes this in somewhat sniffy terms, but it’s understood that there is neither a means nor a will to force these states on their way to ERM and then Euro membership.

And this is where most people seem to have stopped. The UK doesn’t want to use the Euro; not all member states use the Euro; the EU seems to be fine with that; problem solved.

The fundamental difference between these 4 states and the UK is that when the former negotiated and became members they all were clear and sincere in their intention to become full Eurozone members.

As a reminder, part of the EU’s very long run-up to Eastern enlargement was a worry that new states in Central and Eastern Europe wouldn’t be able to cope with the demands of membership. So in 1993 the Union set up what became known as the Copenhagen criteria, which detailed the (rather vague) accession requirements set out in Art.49 TEU.

These criteria became primarily known for the hurdles they established in relation to a functional free-market economy, able to survive being thrown into the single market, and to robust liberal democratic political institutions and practices. These were – and remain – the tools with which the EU moulds applicant states to its preferences and/or allows them to be parked in an indefinite limbo (waves to the Western Balkans).

But there’s a third element to Copenhagen, namely an obligation to adhere to the aims of political, economic and monetary union. This is not simply about a volonté européenne, a demonstration of general and durable sympathy with the nominal aims of the Union, but also a practical following-through on that. This includes join the Euro once the appropriate convergence criteria have been met.

This was not an issue for any of the 4 states we’ve mentioned, all of which were enthusiastic at the point of accession. And while their politics did change afterwards, they were then member states and so out from under the cosh of Copenhagen.

The UK is not in that situation.

As some have noted, Sterling (and the British economy in general) was always a highly problematic potential member of the Eurozone, given its weak synchronisation of its economic cycles, structure of activity and exposure to international markets. Therefore it’s a moot question whether it could even meet the Art.140 TFEU convergence criteria if it wanted to: readers with time on their hands can discover A LOT more about this by looking for works on late 1990s British politics and the Blair-Brown stand-off on the matter.

But inability to meet convergence criteria is a different thing from not wanting to meet those criteria.

More pertinently, the Commission would be obliged to note in its opinion on any accession application from the UK that appears not to be a satisfying of the third Copenhagen criterion, nor an intention to satisfy it (read the opinions on Sweden and Hungary for examples of how this wasn’t an issue for them). Even if a Labour government was to change its tune on this, there would still be obvious questions about whether this was sincere and/or resilient to future changes in government.

If the ERM-loophole doesn’t work, and the UK isn’t going to have a wholesale change of heart, then this really only leaves a Danish-style opt-out.

While not legally difficult to draft, the issue comes back to the politics of the situation.

Marginally, such an opt-out would be both a precedent for other acceding states and a legal recognition that European integration has its limits (even if these are already very clear in practical and political terms).

But more important would be what an opt-out says about the British commitment to membership.

The reason we are discussing any of this is because the UK decided to withdraw, through its 2016 referendum. An obvious concern for the EU is that this might just be the start of another cycle, and if the UK can’t even get over itself to say yes to the Euro, even hypothetically, then is that cycle not going to be quite shallow and short?

Equally obviously, if you’re worried about such things, then getting Sterling into the Euro makes even more sense. Disentangling currencies is an order of magnitude more messy than disentangling EU membership, so it might encourage future Leavers to think again. Shonky politics, I’ll note, to argue that we try to make leaving so painful you never want to go, and pretty poor economics too, but that doesn’t mean someone isn’t thinking it.

In short, Euro membership isn’t really about legalities but politics and what it says about the depth of British sincerity to become members once again. The EU has been very clear that relations have to work for them, not least because they see themselves as the bigger party in those relations: starting from a position of what you want to avoid is a strategy that is likely to run into problems very quickly for any British government.

* if David Henig’s going to slip in cultural references, then who am I to argue?

The post Obligations and understandings: the UK and the Euro UPDATED appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Andy Burnham’s announcement last month that he wanted to start a dialogue about the UK’s future relationship with the European Union has prompted a wave of contributions pitching the advantages of various particular models.

But, as we move into what the Prime Minister says he intends to be a careful discussion about how European policy fits into his wider vision for the UK, it seems useful to provide some more context around particular claims being made.

One such instance is the question of how long it might take the UK to once again become a full member of the EU.

For those critical of such an option, there are plenty of cases highlighting how it is no quick fix: Serbia is into its twelfth year of negotiations, North Macedonia has been an official candidate for membership since 2005 and has still not started substantive negotiations. Even in the much-heralded urgent case of Ukraine , which sped from submitting an application to join in February 2022 to opening negotiations 22 months later, there is no suggestion that these will close any time soon.

Of course, the UK is neither a relatively small West Balkan state, nor a war-torn Ukraine. Indeed, it might be argued (as it in a recent report from Best for Britain) that where there is a high level of existing policy alignment and clear political will then things can move much faster.

Finland is the poster-child of the ‘speedy’ accession. From applying in in March 1992, it took only two years and nine months to become a member state in January 1995.

This speed can be explained by a number of factors. Most obviously, Finland had spent the two years prior to its application negotiating participation in the European Economic Area (EEA), which effectively extended the EU’s single market into neighbouring countries. Given that the bulk of what the EU did at that time was linked to that domain, this left relatively little to be covering in the accession negotiations.

Second, Finland was one of the least picky accession states: as David Arter has noted, the country did not ask for any exemptions or opt-outs from EU policy, unlike its neighbour Sweden. Apart from some difficulties in translating the Common Agricultural Policy to marginal Arctic cultivation, there were minimal points of friction, further aided by the relatively small size of the Finnish economy overall, as compared to the EU’s.

Finally, Finland had come out of a fundamental change in its geopolitical situation. Having had to practise delicate non-alignment under the shadow of the Soviet Union, the collapse of communism (and much associated trade), the country had to make a conscious choice about reorientation. The lack of realistic alternatives to the EU, especially once Sweden had decided that the EEA was insufficient, helped to underpin the political choice. While it would be wrong to claim very broad and deep political consensus for membership, it was certainly still the most enthusiastic of the countries looking to join the EU immediately after the end of the Cold War.

So where does this leave the UK?

Like Finland, the UK has substantial areas of regulatory policy that still maps closely to the EU. While some divergence has occurred, the country has much less distance to close than states that have never previously been part of the EU.

However, apart from this it is hard to draw many useful parallels between the two.

Notwithstanding the changes in the geopolitical realm since the 2016 referendum, the UK has not undergone the same kind of transition that Finland did in the early 1990s; indeed, we are only now producing the start of a debate about whether Brexit arrangements still work. It is notable in this context that Burnham’s starting point was not geopolitics, but barriers to trade.

Moreover, as has been clear in recent months, the UK is unlikely to be a relatively pliant partner to the EU in any accession negotiations, but rather one with significant interests and a desire for special treatment.

British pushback on raising tariffs on Chinese EVs as a price for participation in the Made in Europe package under discussion in Brussels joins resistance to EU students paying domestic university fees as topics to be resolved ahead of the November summit. And such issues pale in comparison to the discussions that will ensue during an accession process on British participation in the Euro and the Schengen zone, as well as budgetary contributions.

And the EU itself has cooled on enlargement in general: no country that has joined this century has managed to do it in less than 7 years and 11 months, start to finish. That is partly because the states involved have had further to travel in transitioning their economics and polities to the EU’s requirements, but it is also because member states have become increasingly worried about the impacts that enlargement has on them (namely in terms of migration and financial assistance). Those are both quite marginal concerns in the UK’s case, but there is also a wider concern about how increasing membership dilutes the weight of any one member, making them less able to secure their interests: here, the arrival of a large country like the UK is liable to unsettle many of the arrangements put in place since it left.

And it is this very fact of being a re-accession that will cause perhaps the biggest difficulties. From the EU’s perspective, the UK decided barely a decade ago to leave the Union. There is understandable concern in European capitals that the current swing towards closer integration might be followed in relatively short order by a swing back to radical divergence: the fragmentation of  party politicsin the run up to the next general election make the prospect of a Reform or Conservative-led government a clear possibility. All this even before (not always correct) memories of the UK as an ‘awkward partner’ during its membership make EU politicians ask whether the costs of a UK return outweigh the benefits.

Any credible estimation of how long re-accession would take needs to be mindful of this and recognise that the chances of managing it within the life of a single parliament are very small indeed.

The post How long does it take to join the EU? Why the UK in 2026 isn’t Finland in 1992 appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The 2024 Pact on Migration and Asylum is the latest test. Which perspectives on gender equality made it into the package, and why did they prevail over alternatives? Recent events in Brussels make the question more urgent.

On June 23^rd, 2026, a Taliban delegation held talks with the EU in Brussels on the issue of returning failed asylum-seekers to Afghanistan, an entirely unprecedented visit. The Commission said 15 member states took part in a technical meeting co-chaired by Sweden. The stated focus was on people who have committed serious crimes or pose security threats, but the talks also covered resuming consular services and “a dignified return process.”

Human rights activists and MEPs warned that the meeting risks normalizing a regime that has banned girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade and that seeks to erase women from public life. Among them, Human Rights Watch argued that EU countries undermine their credibility by condemning Taliban abuses while cooperating on forced returns.

This exact tension has been analyzed by the literature. After 2021, the EU made women’s rights a central pillar of its Afghanistan policy, including through a “by women, for women” approach. This was enabled by political convenience: the broad recognition of gender apartheid made feminist commitment cheap. Now that migration control is on the table the commitment is being tested at a real cost. Against this backdrop, the contradiction in this event, between promoting Afghan women’s rights in EU external action and negotiating return agreements with Afghan authorities, is precisely why we should analyze how gender is addressed in migration governance.

Texts do not write themselves; someone does. To understand how gender ended up in the Pact, or didn’t, we can look at the architecture of relations that actors built with one another during the negotiations. Social Network Analysis (SNA) maps these relations, and it is increasingly used to study power relations among actors in the same policy domain.

What makes the method valuable here is that it shows not only who was present and who held influence, but also who was not in the room. A network reveals gaps as clearly as connections. It lets us assess whether migrant women’s organizations and other intersectional actors were actually included, or whether access stayed with organizations closer to the EU’s status quo. Established, EU-based women’s organizations have been described as representing predominantly white, professional women, while the women most affected by the Pact may sit at the periphery of the network, if they are represented at all.

While SNA typically employs quantitative data to count interactions and calculate their weight, the integration of expert interviews adds the qualitative layer that moves this method towards capturing the meaning of the relationships under scrutiny and of what actors exchange. As a result, this integrated approach shows which actors pushed explicitly for gender-related objectives, what ideas about gender they brought to the table, and which actors contested those ideas.

Network analysis and gender studies do meet, mostly around gender policy issues such as equality or employment. But few accounts combine the two to study gender within a specific policy field, and fewer still look at gender policy networks in migration. That is the space this research aims to fill.

The interviews conducted so far point to the fact that gender is not simply absent from the Pact’s negotiation. It is folded into the broader language of vulnerability, and intersectionality is diluted along with it. And while this notion provides additional leeway to allow gender-sensitive provisions during implementation, avoiding politically loaded terms that would trigger contestation during the negotiations, its use bears questions about the consequences of not naming gender in policies. This fits what critical border scholarship finds in the Pact’s texts. The issue relates to reducing social categories of age, gender, geographical origin, sexual orientation and disability to a vulnerability “check list”, which does not go under the surface and hence fails to grasp more profound and structural ways in which vulnerability occurs along migration routes.

In the Commission texts analysed by Häkli and Peltonen, for instance, gender appears mainly as a label that flags certain people for care, such as pregnant women or single-parent families. That is not the same as a lens for asking how border policies affect women and men differently. The authors warn that this logic reproduces racialised, gendered and classed hierarchies among asylum seekers. Gender enters the Pact as a marker of fragility, not as a question of equality. My research therefore asks who put it there, and who could have put it differently.

Asking who pushed for gender equality, and who was left out, shows how one of the EU’s founding values fares where security and humanitarian logics collide.

This research is not only relevant for feminist studies, but also vis-à-vis the literature related to EU integration theories and concepts investigating the role and relevance of normativity within European policy, especially in relation to migration. It further responds to the need to bridge mainstream theories with feminist literature for theoretical and societal reasons, to identify the shortcomings of both the EU migration policy’s study and application.

The post Who Shapes Gender in the EU Migration Pact: A Network Approach appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Since then, there has been a fair amount of (sometimes hyperventilated) comment and discussion about what this relationship might look like, usually in flavours of Why My Prior Preference Was Right Then And Right Now.

But one thing that has been missing is any more detail about what Burnham actually, specifically has in mind for this ‘dialogue’. Indeed, it’s not even clear who the dialogue might be between.

Monday’s statement to Parliament might have been that moment, as the Prime Minister dropped a bunch of international matters on the floor of the House. That neither Iranian involvement in the Fairford incident nor future UK-EU relations was felt to be serious enough to merit a statement of their own points both to a busy time in international relations and to Burnham’s standing intention to focus more on domestic matters (logically, given that these are much more immediately likely to secure votes in a general election).

But the statement was very light on details too. Other than that he will do something around the time of the 20 November summit to ‘present options’, we have no guidance on process, who’s involved, how long it will take, whether any decisions will come out of it, nor what actions will flow from any decisions that are made.

As a best guess – and it is a guess – Burnham will do some kind of high profile speech to start a form of public consultation/debate, presumably with a nominal end-point that will get captured in a reflection document. That document either gets debated in Parliament as the basis from some new mandate to negotiate or – more likely – becomes the basis of a new Labour party manifesto commitment for the next general election.

Given that Burnham was repeatedly pushing back not only on indicating a preference option but also on going across existing red lines, it’s hard to see him trying for anything more than this, certainly within this Parliament.

None of this is intrinsically wrong, but with only just over a month until the summit the absence of any articulated plan, especially one where “[a]t every stage, the British public will be the boss”, seems to confirm the extent to which this whole project was sprung on government by Burnham, leaving it running to catch up. That in turn points to a more extended process, to set up lines for the next Parliament, rather than any hurried dash to set new policy.

From a European perspective that might be the better way of doing things too. Given understandable concerns about whether this is simply another swing of the Brexit pendulum, the effort to seek out more consensual and non-partisan policy positions might better enable the exploratory talks that this development seems likely to produce. Of course, should there be a Conservative/Reform-led government, the limits to that will be all too obvious.

In the meantime, it is useful to keep watching how the plans develop and who gets to set those decisions, especially if there is a genuine commitment to popular involvement.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic152

The post A dialogue on Europe, but with whom? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Knowledge Politics and Policies Standing Group at the 2026 ECPR General Conference in Krakow

The 2026 edition of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) General Conference took place at Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland), 8-11 September. Over four conference days more than 2000 participants presented in over 500 panels discussing some of the most important topics of our times including democratic backsliding and resilience, radicalisation, climate change, and technological transformation. 

This is a special year for our ECPR Standing Group Knowledge Politics and Policies, as we celebrate the 10th anniversary of our Standing Group and the 15th time of organizing our section at the ECPR General Conference. Our Standing Group (initially under the name ‘Politics of Higher Education, Research and Innovation’) was established in 2016 following earlier successful sections at the ECPR General Conference and the previous UACES collaborative research network ‘European Research Area’ (2013-2016). Our section and Standing Group has evolved into an active research network with currently more than 200 members having initiated and supported a range of collaborations leading to joint projects, special issues, and edited volumes.

This year our section had 10 excellent panels on topics such as politics and policies of Artificial Intelligence, academic freedom, science diplomacy, research security and more. To learn more about the questions discussed, please see below panel summaries prepared by the panel chairs. 

Artificial Intelligence

Inga Ulnicane

The panel on politics and policies of Artificial intelligence has become a traditional element of our section, taking place the 7th year in a row. If in 2020 our first panel on this topic seemed to be the only one in the General Conference dedicated to AI, then over the years the number of  panels discussing AI across various sections has grown considerably. It is good to see that our AI panel keeps attracting a lot of interest and continues to be a place where field shaping publications and next steps are discussed. This year again speakers included authors of some of the most cited publications on AI governance and policy. 

Based on her recent World Bank working paper, Roxana Radu discussed the global landscape of national AI strategies. Tero Erkkilä presented his joint work with Konstantinos Kostas comparing various global governance indices on AI readiness. Inga Ulnicane talked about her research on limitations and alternatives to offering AI as a quick technological fix to complex societal challenges. Meng-Hsuan Chou provided findings from her study on how platform workers are portrayed on legacy and social media in Singapore. Finally, Susan Robertson’s talk was based on her recent article co-authored with Michele Martini on the use of AI in education. 

The panel was followed by an informal meet-up of AI politics researchers bringing together participants from the ECPR General Conference with attendees of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) conference that took place at the same time just across the road. Enthusiastic response and interest to the informal meet-up invitation exceeded expectations and led to vibrant interdisciplinary conversations. The meet-up confirmed high demand for more activities of high-quality research focusing on AI politics . If you are interested in upcoming activities, please get in touch!

Knowledge, Politics and the Changing Academic Profession

Panel chairs and presenters

What happens to the academic profession when both its mission to contribute to the public good and its authority over the production of knowledge are increasingly contested? This was the question at the heart of the panel Changing Profession, Changing Times. Chaired by Meng-Hsuan Chou (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) and Eva Hartmann (University of Cambridge, UK), the panel zoomed in on four areas to examine this question, with contributions from Yiran Zhou (University of St Andrews), Premysl Rosulek (University of West Bohemia), Christopher Pokarier (Waseda University), and Eva Hartmann. The four contributions demonstrate that the challenges facing the academic profession cannot be reduced to questions of working conditions or institutional management. They concern the societal role of academia itself. 

The increasing securitisation of research raises questions about academic autonomy and the purposes of science. Using Australia mainly as a case study, Christopher Pokarier explores how nationalist pressures challenge the cosmopolitan orientation of higher education. The rise of “pseudoscience” – knowledge presented as scientific despite lacking a scientific foundation – adds a new dimension to the politicisation of academic knowledge, further pressuring the authority of scientific expertise, as Premysl Rosulek pointed out for the Czech Republic. In addition, the acceleration of academic work underpinned by a publish-or-perish culture raises questions about the conditions necessary for producing reliable and meaningful knowledge, as Yiran Zhou demonstrated in her study of Chinese academics. Reflecting on these developments therefore means asking not only how universities are changing, but also what kind of profession academia is becoming—and what role it can play in increasingly polarised societies.

Data and International Politics

The panel on data and knowledge interdependencies in international relations featured four presentations. Ivan Josipovic started his talk with a vignette around a German platform that traces knifing incidents in Germany, which, he argued, was difficult to comprehend using established conceptions of data activism. He proposed a more differentiated typology of civic data activism in migration governance along two dimensions: degree of epistemic alignment with state institutions and degree of centralized control over data infrastructures. Martin Albrecht Haenig presented a mixed methods research proposal on the landscape of European think tanks and their knowledge production about China. His research features a large-scale analysis of discourses derived from policy documents as well as process tracing to establish an understanding of how discourses translate into political decision-making. 

Yamini Yogya presented research on the circulation and mediation of knowledge in the context of the Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Yamini showed structurally divergent national knowledge flow networks and discussed how such structures affect the implementation of effectiveness of such science-policy-initiatives. Paul Dunshirn presented an interdisciplinary research paper on data interdependencies in global biodiversity monitoring, for which he systematically extracted data sources used in biodiversity research using a machine learning approach. His findings indicate strong global dependencies on publicly-funded U.S. American data sources, highlighting the vulnerability of biodiversity monitoring to ongoing funding cuts. Overall the panel highlighted emerging political questions affecting global flows of knowledge and data across policy contexts and different methods for capturing the interdependent relationships between involved actors.  It provided a vantage point for further research on both the factors shaping such interdependencies and the effects they have on political decision-making and policy.    

Knowledge, Power, and Citizenship

The panel Epistemic Governance in Higher Education: Knowledge, Power, and Citizenship, chaired by Hila Zahavi, brought together three papers exploring how institutions shape knowledge, education, and their political and administrative consequences. Yuan Zhou presented joint work with Duancheng Yang on how China’s National Social Science Fund reshapes political science through research funding and disciplinary priorities. Tao Zou presented joint research with Tatiana Fumasoli examining the unequal effects of Erasmus Without Paper digital infrastructure across European higher education institutions. Finally, Martin Dybdahl examined the political returns to higher education in Germany and the UK, distinguishing the effects of university education from selection into higher education.

European Higher Education Governance

The panel European Higher Education Governance in Practice and Context, chaired by Lise Moawad (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), explored the practical dynamics of European higher education governance through a variety of case studies, revealing how the deployment of academic infrastructures (university alliances, doctoral reforms, quality standards, and scholarly communities) produce differing effects depending on national and disciplinary contexts. The presentations highlighted the tensions between European coordination, local adaptations and structural inequalities, and questioned the validity of certain commonly held notions in higher education studies.

David Joshua Schröder (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) began by outlining the different modes of engagement found in publicly funded university alliances, and the relationships these maintain with their member universities and external stakeholders, against the backdrop of the question of agency. Next, Jacek Lewicki (SGH Warsaw School of Economics) presented a pilot study on the implementation of a political programme for developing doctoral studies in Poland. He focused in particular on the 2018 shift in the structuration of doctoral education and what this entailed in terms of quality assurance.

Teresa Teixeira Lopo (Universidade Lusófona), for her part, examined the standardised roll-out of the Bologna Process from a critical perspective, using a case study of Paris-Saclay. She explored the various meanings of ‘pedagogical innovation’, a term that is often positively connoted and value-laden. Finally, Stanisław Krawczyk (University of Wrocław), Tessa DeLaquil (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) and Rasmus Harsbo (Adam Mickiewicz University) examined what the regionalisation of scholarly communication might reveal. To do so, they compared Polish history, where regionalisation is experienced as a constraint, and Danish game studies, where regionalisation is naturalised.

Governing Grand Challenges Through Transnational Strategic Partnerships 

Agata Lambrechts

The Panel on Governing Grand Challenges Through Transnational Strategic Partnerships chaired by Agata Lambrechts and Alina Felder-Stindt, focused on the emergence of these partnerships as flagship instruments in European and global governance. Setting the macro-level context, Agata Lambrechts examined how grand societal challenges themselves function as distinct ‘governance means’ in European policymaking within the education and training field. Through an analysis of the European Universities initiative and Centres of Vocational Excellence, her work demonstrated how challenges orient collective action, mobilise diverse stakeholders, and enable EU steering toward broader societal goals beyond mere economic competitiveness. Complementing this, Alina Jasmin Felder-Stindt introduced a joint conceptual framework with Linda Wanklin to systematically categorise transnational skills initiatives. By mapping configurations like cross-border education clusters and higher education alliances, she illustrated the diverse governance logics at play.

Moving from macro-policy to institutional realities, the panel also looked into the organisational design and everyday tensions of implementing these partnerships. Kim Waechtler addressed the structural friction within European Universities initiative alliances, introducing the concepts of Temporary and Permanent Meta-Organisations to capture how institutions navigate the clash between long-term strategic ambitions and strict, project-based deadlines. Her analysis suggested that these alliances actively sustain this temporal tension, resulting in a distinctive hybrid governance model. Building on this institutional focus, Lukas Fuchs explored how universities use these novel transnational channels to renegotiate their core purpose. He argued that as external pressures mount to address practical societal needs, alliances serve as crucial networks for moral reflexivity, allowing institutions to self-confidently re-imagine their material relationship with society beyond traditional appeals to academic freedom.

Governing the Politics of Research and Knowledge Security

Research and knowledge security have become prominent concerns for governments, funders and universities. Decisions about international partnerships, access to data, researcher mobility and emerging technologies are increasingly framed in terms of risk and strategic competition. Yet the meanings of research and knowledge security remain contested, as do their implications for academic openness and cooperation. This panel examined how these concepts are constructed, translated into policy and put into practice across different institutional and regional settings.

Chaired by Cristina Pinna (University of Groningen), Governing the Politics of Research and Knowledge Security: Rethinking Knowledge, Power, and Global Academic Cooperation brought together five papers. Gabriele Manca examined how references to China shape definitions of risk and justifications for research security measures in European academic and policy debates. Cristina Pinna and Annina Lattu compared how the EU and China govern open science alongside research security, identifying different approaches to openness and protection and their implications for EU–China academic cooperation.

Moving from policy debates to institutional responses, Mitchell Young, Zuzana Krulichová and Tomas Nigrin compared the Czech Republic and the Netherlands. They examined how relationships between states and universities shape responses to higher education interference. Monika Szkarłat studied the securitization of scientific cooperation in the European Arctic, focusing on Svalbard and the roles of states, EU institutions and scientific organisations amid geopolitical tensions.

Building on her experience in France, Valérie Zwilling shared a practical perspective on the shift from openness towards greater awareness of security concerns. Her paper brought the panel back to the practical challenge researchers face in sustaining collaboration while recognising the vulnerabilities that openness can create. Together, the papers showed how research security is defined and put into practice across different contexts. They raised questions about how institutions can address security concerns while maintaining the conditions for international scientific cooperation.

Academic Freedom

Krakow marks the second time for a panel on academic freedom at the Knowledge Politics and Policies section, coinciding with a still growing scholarly and policy interest in the theme. Anna Gall presented a paper titled “Unpacking Performances of Science Politicisation” where she explored the process through which science becomes politicized as the “rightful place” for science is being negotiated.  Drawing on perspectives from STS and political science, the paper built on cases from sustainability science and security-related research as vignettes. Mari Elken and Peter Maassen presented the paper titled “Academic Freedom and Political Polarization in Europe”. Exploring particularly the role of illiberal regimes, the paper analysed the different versions of the illiberal playbook in Hungary, Italy and Poland, to explore the various ways in which such regimes have tried to take control over higher education, comparing this to experiences in countries where such regimes have not obtained a strong position. The presentations were followed by a rich discussion on the issue of academic freedom and how securitization of science, increased political polarization and politization of science shape the conditions for research in Europe.   

Science Diplomacy

The panel Science Diplomacy’s Competitive Orientation included three contributions and was chaired by Mitchell Young of Charles University. The panel was influenced by the recent turn towards research security, which has become a key pillar in science diplomacy. Two of the papers related to this. Rachel Fishberg from Aarhus University presented her co-authored paper “Critical research as classificatory work from within”, which examined how the category of “critical research,” as it appears in policy discussions around critical materials and technologies, is translated from EU and state policy levels into institutional research governance. 

Adam McCarthy from University of Manchester presented a comparative study, titled “Science Diplomacy and the Making of AI Governance: A Comparative Study of UNESCO’s Ethics of AI and the EU AI Act View Paper Details”. As the lead author of a team working on these topics, he provided insights into this broad ranging examination of two different AI governance processes, comparing four aspects: definitional work, expertise legitimisation, authority building, and governance tools. Finally, Wojciech Szczerbowicz from University of Wrocław presented “Small states, knowledge hubs and the Arctic: science diplomacy in the foreign policy of the Nordic states” which was drawn from parts of the newly published book Science Diplomacy and Foreign Policy in Northern Europe (Szkarłat et al, 2026). He talked about the intersection of foreign policy and science diplomacy, which were addressed in tandem in each country case studied in the book. 

European University Alliances

Panel chairs and speakers

The panel The External Dimension of European University Alliances: Universities as Transnational Actors, co-chaired by Marina Cino Pagliarello and Andrew Gunn, examined how European University Alliances are increasingly moving beyond their original role in internal European integration and developing a more visible external dimension. Bringing together work on academic diplomacy, expert knowledge, policy transfer and institutional change, the panel explored how universities and alliances operate across the boundaries of higher education, transnational governance and European external action. Contributions included research on the European Commission’s role and influence in Indonesian higher education, the policy effects of the European Universities Initiative in Serbia, and European University Alliances as infrastructures of higher education diplomacy, including the case of CIVICA for Ukraine as well as examples of alliance engagement in Africa and Asia through academic partnerships, capacity-building and wider transnational cooperation. 

A central theme emerging from the discussion was the need to look beyond conventional accounts of EU influence based solely on normative power and to consider more closely the role of knowledge power: the capacity to shape institutional practices, policy agendas and transnational relationships through expertise, research, education and sustained cooperation. At the same time, the panel stressed that universities and alliances should not be treated as formal foreign-policy actors. Their significance lies precisely in the hybrid space they occupy, where institutional autonomy, national priorities, EU-level strategies and local adaptation intersect. The discussion therefore highlighted both the growing diplomatic relevance of higher education cooperation and the importance of examining how knowledge travels, is translated and becomes influence beyond the EU. 

Standing Group Business Meeting

At our Standing Group Business meeting, we discussed our recent successes and future plans. Former include an international workshop on AI politics research that took place at the ECPR Harbour House earlier this year and was supported by the ECPR Research Development Grant awarded to our Standing group. As in every Business meeting, we celebrated our most recent winner of the excellent paper award from an emerging scholar, Synne Lysberg from University of Bergen (Norway). We also took our traditional group photo that together with similar photos from previous years allows us to trace continuities and changes in our Standing Group and section. Our future plans include preparing the section for the next ECPR General Conference that will take place at the Pompea Fabra University in Barcelona, 7-10 September 2027. If the topics discussed in our section are of interest to you, watch out for the next call for applications for our excellent paper award and join us for our future activities!

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The session brought together 12 experts with experience in areas including academic publishing, leadership, diversity and inclusion, and different early career researcher profiles and pathways. Rather than following a traditional panel format, the activity was organised around small rotating groups. Participants moved between the different experts throughout the session, allowing them to engage with a range of perspectives and have more focused conversations in a smaller setting.

The four areas were chosen by asking a fairly simple question: what do Early Career Researchers need to know to navigate academia today? Leadership in Academia focused on the different forms leadership can take at an early career stage: from organising projects and events to taking on responsibilities within your university department, and ultimately contributing to the wider academic community. Career Development focused on the uncertain, and often difficult, transition that comes after the PhD stage. We brought together different experiences and pathways from people working both within and beyond academia, to show that there is no single route forward and that life after the PhD does not have to follow the cookie-cutter transition straight into academia. Publishing gave participants the opportunity to have one-to-one time with our editors and look behind the curtain of a process that can sometimes feel opaque. We gave them space to talk openly about ideas, peer review, rejections, and finding a journal where their work might feel right at home. Equality, Diversity, Inclusion & Community focused on the environments in which academic careers actually unfold, and on what it means to build spaces where people feel welcomed, supported, and able to participate fully in academic life.

This format encouraged participants to take an active role in shaping the discussions. They were able to ask questions about the experts’ professional trajectories, experiences, and career decisions, while also discussing some of the challenges and opportunities associated with developing a career in and beyond academia. The conversations provided practical insights into different career paths, as well as an opportunity for participants to learn from experiences that may not always be visible through more formal conferences or training sessions.

An important outcome of the activity was the opportunity for participants to expand their professional networks. The small-group format made it easier to establish direct contacts with experts and with other participants attending the session. Beyond exchanging advice and experiences, the activity therefore helped create connections that participants could potentially continue developing during the UACES Annual Conference and thereafter. The diversity of the experts’ backgrounds, who hailed from institutions across Europe, also meant that participants were exposed to different approaches to research careers, leadership, publishing, and creating more inclusive academic environments.

Feedback from participants was very positive. The informal nature of the activity was particularly valuable in creating an open atmosphere in which participants felt comfortable asking questions and discussing their own experiences and concerns. The experts also contributed to this atmosphere through their willingness to share personal experiences and engage openly with participants.

The setting contributed significantly to the success of the session. As the conversations developed, most of the groups moved to the courtyard of the Hollar Building at Charles University. This provided a relaxed and pleasant environment for continued discussion and networking, and reinforced the informal character of the activity. The courtyard ultimately became a natural space for participants and experts to continue their conversations beyond the initial structure of the rotations. For us, this was probably the best sign that our format had worked: once the structure and the rigid format of the rotations had faded into the background, people simply kept the conversations going. What started as a planned, and very structured, networking activity gradually evolved into something more natural, with conversations going beyond not only the allotted time, but also the event itself, continuing throughout the Annual Conference and possibly even beyond that.

Overall, the session achieved its main objectives of facilitating peer learning, professional exchange and networking. By combining structured rotations with informal conversation, it created space for participants to gain practical insights, make new contacts, and reflect on their own potential career paths. The positive feedback and continued conversations in the courtyard demonstrated the value of creating informal, accessible spaces for connection within the wider UACES Doctoral Training Academy. We would also like to extend our sincere thanks to all the experts who participated in the session and generously shared their time, experiences, and insights with our participants. Their openness and willingness to engage in conversation were an essential part of what made the session so valuable and helped create the welcoming and informal atmosphere that allowed the discussions to continue well beyond the planned format. 

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Either they’ve kept quiet on the matter or they’ve offered much talk. Probably only the LibDems of the national parties have both adopted a new policy objective and talked explicitly about how it fits with their wider plans. Sadly for them, that got rather overtaken by Burnham’s commitment to look at the ‘different options‘, which everyone seems to be taking as a pathway to a re-accession commitment in the next manifesto.

While Burnham’s move is the big one from the season, it shouldn’t obscure the other developments we’ve seen.

ECHR withdrawal has become a mundane part of both Reform and Conservative policy, grounded solely within the frame of controlling borders and immigration. Neither party seemed to make much of the effects of withdrawal generally, let alone its impact on UK-EU relations. As a reminder, the Trade & Cooperation Agreement provides for extensive retaliatory measures and suspensions of provisions should one party leave the Convention; a provision including in large part for just this kind of scenario.

This incidental collapsing of much of the architecture of relations is part of a wider piece by these parties to move beyond Brexit, which they now singularly fail to defend as a success. Indeed, it was telling that Kemi Badenoch’s only mention of Europe in her speech yesterday was to argue that re-opening things was a waste of time:

“Can you imagine having to go through that again? So much time lost. Arguing with ourselves, arguing with the EU, going round and round in circles, businesses not knowing whether they should invest. He [Burnham] wants to do it all again. I think that is a terrible idea.”

The absence of substantive thoughts on either process or direction of policy should Burnham actually get moving on all this does not suggest that the Conservatives will find it as easy as they might have thought beforehand.

As a final observation, the absence of anyone arguing that the status quo is working points to medium-term instability in policy. Those on the left seem to want to explore well beyond the current red lines, while the right affects to be unconcerned about causing a major argument with the EU.

What the EU itself wants does not appear to be a major concern at this stage, but the volatility that British politics continues to display is likely to reinforce more cautious voices across the Channel that worry about making any kind of deal that might come unstuck very quickly.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic151

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Andy Burnham’s speech to the Labour party conference has fired the gun on something that felt pretty unlikely just a few weeks ago: a debate about the UK’s relationship with the EU.

Given that one month ago I myself was arguing that silence reflected a likely low profile for EU affairs for Burnham, I am forced to reconsider my position, which I happily do, even if I’m not yet fully sold on how far this new process will go.

Burnham’s speech highlighted the degree to which we shouldn’t oversell the move right now. The section on the EU was pretty short and vague in its intent, coming after a much more impassioned and developed exploration of social care; even electoral reform got more of a commitment than Europe.

But Burnham did move the dial in saying that Brexit had done “more harm than good”. With that came the implication that red lines might have to change or go, something confirmed by subsequent remarks that leave all options on the table.

As someone who’s spent years saying we need to have a public debate about what the UK’s relationship with the EU should be, including the costs and benefits of different options, it’s very odd to hear an actual Prime Minister say just that, and I guess I should feel more positive than I do.

Part of my hesitancy is that there’s a big gap between saying you want a debate to see if you can find a consensus picture and actually doing that. As we know, there has been a lot of talking about what individuals would like to see happen (as last week) which largely involves ignoring inconveniences like other people having ideas (and votes) too. Like the EU itself.

On this, Burnham has not said much, although there appears to be some recognition that there’s no point in coming up with a plan that won’t fly in Brussels or national capitals.

Moreover, there is also a tendency in British discussions to date to treat ‘Europe’ as a separate box from the rest of politics. If we might learn one thing from Brexit, then it is that involvement in the system of European integration comes with extensive and deep entanglements across the full range of economic and political life, in ways that aren’t immediately apparent. To flip that on its head, any discussion of European policy will also have to consider government policy in general, since the former can only be sustainable if it is married to the latter and the conceptualisation of the UK’s development.

Here, Burnham has been less explicit and given the relative disconnect of social care or electoral reform from the EU’s remit we might wonder if there becomes a splitting off of European work to allow the other items to press on.

And finally, despite everything we’ve experienced in the past decade, we risk forgetting that most people don’t have strongly held views on European integration or British policy. Preferences are relatively shallow and liable to shift, depending on what information you give people, a point highlighted by some polling over the summer by Britain Elects. More pertinently, the ability of campaigners to reframe options in active political debates was well demonstrated by the Leave campaign in 2016, building on long experience in articulating eurosceptic arguments; something largely absent in Remain.

This is perhaps where Burnham has been least adventurous. He seems to know his own mind on much of his politics and has previously expressed a desire for much closer EU relations, but here seems determined at this stage not to prejudge a debate where a consensus view might not quite match his.

Fair enough, but in the prospective of having to defend going across red lines, up to and including rejoining, there needs to be much more development of the rhetorical lines and arguments that will convey the logic and imperative of that change.

Go back to the conference speech and the section on the EU, which I include here:

“Later this year, there will be a UK-EU summit where one of the issues on the agenda will be how we best work together on immigration.

And beyond that we will work to secure gains for our industries most harmed by Brexit.

Conference, these are important concrete steps.

But they are not enough.

I say this to you and the country.

We will not give Britain the clear path we need into the rest of the century until we decide on a long-term relationship with what is still our largest market.

I cannot say to you truthfully that where we are is good enough.

Brexit has done more harm than good.

We need to restore a higher level of growth and prosperity for Britain.

So, I will take the opportunity around the summit to lay out to you, to lay out to the country, what I believe the different options are for Britain’s long-term relationship with our European partners.

And there are different options.

And I will see if we can find consensus around one which will give us clarity about our position, and the future of the continent we live in.”

So is this just about ‘growth and prosperity’ and ‘markets’, or does ‘the future of the continent’ cover something more? Burnham will recall that owning the rational argument in 2016 didn’t cut it against the emotional lines that Leave advanced, but we wait to see if he has his own take to bring to the matter.

So we wait for some more flesh on the bones of this moment. Potentially, it opens up a path to major movement in British policy, even if that seems likely to be limited to manifesto commitments in the general election to break current red lines. Certainly, the initial response has been at the better end of expectations, with generally positive reactions in Labour and more muted lines from Reform and the Conservatives (partly reflecting their focus on the pension triple lock, where they think there’s more traction).

The possible unblocking of the reset negotiations to allow for a late November summit is an important contextual development here, since it is a marker of how serious Burnham is about moving forward. The uncertainty here is that university fees seems to be parked in the youth mobility deal, something that had been a big EU ask: if it has been disconnected, then that suggests the EU is also up for moving things promptly and amicably. If that turns out not to be the case, then we are back to underlining the centrality of EU preferences in all this.

In the meantime, it might be helpful to start laying the groundwork for what’s coming. The following graphics offer a summary of possible models and some key points to keep in mind as the debate starts. As ever, my interest in how we might move towards a grounded and resilient relationship that works for most people means that I’ve got to step up on providing useful and impartial support, so if you have any questions or queries then do just ask.

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic150

PDF: https://bit.ly/UshGraphic149

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