The European Union’s response has been to attempt to redesign the mechanism itself. Rather than abandoning investment adjudication, the EU has sought to make it resemble public adjudication. This is evident in the Investment Court System (ICS) established in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with Canada (CETA) and in the EU’s support for a Multilateral Investment Court (MIC) through UNCITRAL Working Group III. These two examples illustrate the EU’s use of legal design as external policy actorness: by changing who decides disputes, how adjudicators are appointed, whether hearings are public, and whether decisions can be appealed, the EU projects a constitutionalized vision of legitimate investment adjudication.

The EU’s constitutional starting point matters. After the Lisbon Treaty brought foreign direct investment within the common commercial policy, the Union gained a stronger role in a field previously dominated by Member States’ bilateral investment treaties. This explains the EU’s dual approach. Internally, the Court of Justice has treated intra-EU investment arbitration with suspicion. In Achmea, Komstroy and PL Holdings, it objected to arbitral tribunals interpreting or applying EU law outside the EU judicial system. Externally, the EU still negotiates investment protection mechanisms, provided that the model is redesigned and carefully limited.

Legal design becomes foreign policy when procedural rules do more than organise a dispute. In investment adjudication, design determines who exercises authority, how adjudicators are selected, whether proceedings are public, whether awards can be appealed, and how treaty parties may control interpretation. These choices allocate power. Yet a standing investment court cannot be exported through market access alone. It requires treaty consent and political acceptance. This is why the EU works bilaterally, by embedding the ICS model in agreements, and multilaterally, by using UNCITRAL Working Group III to build support for a permanent court.

The political crisis around ISDS became especially visible during the debates over TTIP and CETA. Civil society organisations, public-interest advocates, anti-globalisation movements and Eurosceptic actors argued that investment arbitration gave private economic actors privileged access to challenge public regulation. The European Commission responded by reframing ISDS as a rule-of-law problem. Its reform agenda focused on the right to regulate, tribunal legitimacy, and appellate review. Once ISDS is described in rule-of-law terms, the answer becomes institutional design. A tribunal that can impose liability on a State for sovereign regulation cannot be treated as purely private arbitration.

CETA is the clearest bilateral expression of this approach. Its ICS changes traditional ISDS in several ways. Disputing parties no longer choose arbitrators for each case; adjudicators are appointed in advance by the treaty parties. Cases are allocated by rotation, reducing incentives for adjudicators to cultivate reputations with repeat users. CETA also introduces appellate review, ethics rules, independence safeguards and greater transparency. Treaty parties retain the power to adopt binding interpretations, limiting adjudicatory overreach. Still, CETA remains a hybrid: decision-making is judicialised, while enforcement continues to rely on international arbitration infrastructure.

The EU’s model is judicialised in a specifically EU constitutional way. This became clear in Opinion 1/17, where the Court of Justice held that CETA’s ICS was compatible with EU primary law. The CETA Tribunal may interpret and apply CETA, but it may not authoritatively interpret EU law or bind EU institutions and courts on the meaning of EU legal rules. Domestic law may be considered only as fact. Opinion 1/17 also suggests that an external investment tribunal must satisfy minimum standards of independence and access to justice. The Tribunal must therefore be independent in individual disputes, but not so autonomous as to threaten the EU legal order.

CETA was never intended to remain only bilateral. Article 8.29 commits the parties to pursue a multilateral investment tribunal and appellate mechanism. UNCITRAL Working Group III has become the main forum for this project. Through it, the EU seeks to transform CETA’s bilateral judicialisation into a multilateral template built around standing adjudicators, appellate review, ethics rules, transparency, predictable case allocation and a structure capable of applying across multiple treaties. The MIC project is both normative and strategic, as it reflects the EU’s commitment to multilateralism while moving investment disputes toward a public-law framework more directly controlled by States.

The initiative, however, remains ambitious. Ratification remains difficult, and CETA itself shows how a flagship model may remain only partially operational. The EU also faces constitutional ambivalence, by rejecting intra-EU arbitration while promoting reformed external adjudication. Legally, the distinction rests on the autonomy of EU law; politically, it can appear that the EU accepts international adjudication only when redesigned on its own terms. Fragmentation is another obstacle. International investment law consists of thousands of treaties, divergent standards, survival clauses and pending proceedings. A multilateral court may discipline this fragmentation, but it cannot immediately replace the existing treaty network.

The EU’s reform of ISDS reveals a broader pattern in its external action. Europe’s power in a fragmenting world is increasingly legal, institutional, and constitutional. In investment law, legitimacy has become a question of institutional architecture. The promise lies in recognising that investor challenges to sovereign regulation require public-law safeguards, while its fragility lies in uptake and broader acceptance.

Note: This blog post is based on the article of the same title, presented at the UACES Graduate Forum, “Europe at a Crossroads: Integration, Identity and Power in a Fragmenting World,” held in Cluj-Napoca on 5 June 2026. I am grateful to Dr. Laura Lazăr for her valuable feedback during the presentation session.

The post Designing Legitimacy: The EU’s Reframing of ISDS and the Move Toward Standing Adjudication appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Faculty of Law and Criminology – KU Leuven

Project Activities and Intellectual Outcomes

My time in Belgium was structured around translating theoretical legal analysis into concrete scholarly contributions and academic dialogue. A central pillar of my activities was the dissemination of my latest research on the intersection of EU internal market principles and digital health delivery.

During my stay, I finalised two major publication projects that address critical regulatory gaps in the current European healthcare landscape:

First, I completed an article titled “The Telemedicine Paradox: Why Data Moves but Care Does Not”, recently published in the the European Journal of Health Law. This paper examines how the legal framework for cross-border telemedicine remains fragmented and argues that for the EHDS Regulation to succeed, it must move beyond technical interoperabil­ity to address the underlying legal-ethical conflicts of digital sovereignty.

I drafted and submitted a second paper, “The Digital Scalpel in Cross-border Telemedicine: Slicing the Medical Act in DrSmile case,” which is forthcoming in the European Journal of Risk Regulation. This paper examines how corporate digital health models challenge traditional definitions of the “medical act” across national borders.

Beyond writing, the research stay served as a platform for continuous peer review and academic exchange. On April 24, 2026, I presented the core arguments of my DrSmile paper at the “Pitch Please” seminar series at KU Leuven. This interactive format allowed me to gather crucial feedback and recommendations from fellow doctoral students and senior researchers just before final publication.

A major milestone of my stay occurred on May 20, 2026, when I delivered my Doctoral Seminar. This milestone session allowed me to present the comprehensive legal framework of my Ph.D. project alongside the outcomes of my first chapter and drafted articles to the host faculty, marking a significant step forward in my academic progression.

Library of the University of Leuven

The Power of Proximity: How the Microgrant Supported My Development

The financial and institutional backing of the UACES Microgrant was instrumental in embedding my research within the geographical heart of European governance. Being based in the Brussels-Leuven ecosystem allowed me to participate in high-level policy discussions that would have been inaccessible from afar.

For instance, on April 23, 2026, I attended the fourth edition of the Health, Ethics, Law and Technology Symposium in Brussels, which focused explicitly on the implementation of the European Health Data Space (EHDS) Regulation. Engaging with policymakers and legal experts a year into the EHDS rollout provided me with real-time insights into how data portability and digital infrastructure are being operationalised at the EU level.

Furthermore, this stay facilitated vital cross-institutional collaboration. On May 28, 2026, I was invited as a guest speaker to the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) by the Health & Ageing Law Lab (HALL) for their monthly HELT Talks series. This invitation not only expanded my professional network but also allowed me to position my research within broader conversations regarding digital health access.

Parallel to my individual research, the stay provided the perfect environment to execute my leadership responsibilities as the Co-Chair of the Young Scholars Interest Group (YSIG) of the European Association of Health Law. While at KU Leuven, I continued my work as a member of the Scientific Committee organizing the upcoming Young Scholars Workshop for the 10th EAHL Conference in Uppsala (September 2026). Additionally, I was appointed Co-Editor of the conference’s upcoming Special Issue.

A small glimpse of Leuven

Key Findings and Academic Learnings

My research stay yielded several critical insights regarding the future of EU health law, particularly concerning how cross-border digital health interacts with national jurisdictions. First, as explored in my forthcoming DrSmile paper, the commercialisation and digitalisation of healthcare are unbundling traditional medical procedures. When a medical service is split into digital triaging, remote prescription, and localised execution across different Member States, assigning regulatory accountability and liability becomes incredibly complex. Second, participating in specialised academic forums widened my research lens. It underscored that the regulation of cross-border telemedicine cannot look at market access alone; it must actively account for algorithmic bias and the fundamental right to equal healthcare access.

Moving Forward

The three months spent at KU Leuven, enabled by the UACES Microgrant, have been transformative for both my doctoral thesis and my professional growth. By combining intensive writing with active participation in European health law networks, I have been able to anchor my theoretical research in the practical realities of current EU digital governance.

I am deeply grateful to UACES, my host Prof. Steven Lierman, and the academic communities in Leuven and Brussels for their support, critique, and inspiration. The insights gained during this stay will undoubtedly shape my work on EU internal market law and digital health for years to come.

The post Bridging the Gaps in Cross-Border Telemedicine: Reflections on a Brussels-Leuven Research Journey appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Photo by Fer Troulik on Unsplash

Lise Moawad

The rise of university alliances has become a defining feature of the contemporary European higher education landscape. While transnational partnerships that have emerged through programs such as the European Universities Initiative (Gunn 2020) have received much attention, local university alliances, especially those based in capital cities, remain relatively understudied. These local configurations are especially complex as they operate simultaneously across multiple scales: urban, national, European, and global. But as such, they constitute privileged sites for examining how universities, cities, and policy actors jointly construct institutional narratives in an increasingly interconnected academic environment.

This post brings together the results of two complementary empirical studies conducted as part of the ‘Matters of Research Assessment and its Implementation (MAI)’ project at the Robert K. Merton Center for Science Studies (2023-2026). By examining the various forms of academic collaboration, including local university alliances, we bring to the fore the idea of a ‘New Geography of Knowledge’ in Europe, where discourse matters almost as much as the decisions taken.

Knowledge metropolises in the making

The first study, co-authored with Cornelia Schendzielorz, focuses on two emblematic cases, the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) and Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL), analysed as objects of local, national, and European knowledge policy strategies. Drawing on desk-based document analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, we examine the roles and functions attributed to these alliances both by the universities themselves and by the cities in which they are embedded. Particular attention is paid to how Berlin and Paris mobilise these alliances to position themselves as “knowledge metropolises.” Our findings reveal that the institutionalisation of BUA and PSL relies on the articulation of diverse ideological repertoires, including narratives of capital-city centrality, international competitiveness, scientific excellence, national identity, and globalisation.

The second study, co-authored with Josepha Gollanek, expands the comparative perspective by analysing eight university alliances and networks located in European capital cities: Lisbon (Consórcio da Região de Lisboa do Projeto Universities Portugal – Connecting Knowledge), Madrid and Barcelona (Alianza 4 Universidades), London (University of London), Paris (Université PSL), Brussels (Brussels University Alliance), Bratislava (Accord Project), Stockholm (University Alliance Stockholm Trio), and Berlin (Berlin University Alliance). Grounded in organisational theory and based on the analysis of public documents and press reports, our research investigates the stated objectives, legitimacy-building strategies, self-evaluations, and success narratives developed by these alliances.

We explore how such organisations establish standards, foster collaboration, and narrate their own effectiveness within evolving higher education governance frameworks. Although the conditions and criteria for success vary considerably across Europe, the differences lie less in the stated objectives than in the extent to which alliances are able to demonstrate that these objectives have been achieved. Media visibility, self-evaluation, and strategic storytelling become essential resources for institutional durability and recognition, creating dynamics akin to a Matthew effect in which already-visible alliances continue to attract attention and legitimacy.

Governing academic assemblages

By bringing out both the diversity and convergence of alliance strategies across European capitals, these two studies aim to provide a better understanding of the territorialisation of higher education governance and the growing role of metropolitan knowledge politics in Europe. Together, they reveal that local university alliances are more than administrative or academic coordination. Instead, they function as multi-scale political and symbolic assemblages where cities and universities negotiate their visibility and legitimacy. Their success obviously depends on financial resources, institutional structures, and stakeholder support, but also on political expectations that are harder to grasp.

Our findings also underline several major challenges facing local university alliances. First, these organisations must constantly negotiate tensions between cooperation and competition. While alliances are intended to create synergies, pool resources, and increase institutional visibility, they are simultaneously shaped by highly competitive academic environments and by pressures to conform to dominant models of excellence. Second, the pursuit of harmonisation and institutional integration may come at the cost of diversity (Benneworth 2019). Our results suggest that reducing institutional plurality risks reinforcing a narrow and normative conception of higher education centred on already prestigious models and actors.

Above all, the most significant (and unsolved) issue seems to be governance itself. We demonstrate that the careful balance between autonomy, consolidation, collaboration, and competition (Nelles 2012) is complicated by historical legacies, political cultures, organisational asymmetries, and spatial layouts that vary widely among cases. These layered dimensions make it hard to classify such alliances using simple typologies, but also show why a historical, geographical, and discursive approach is crucial to analyse them. Ultimately, local university alliances are policy constructs that make ongoing changes in the rescaling of scientific competition in Europe visible.

Lise Moawad is finishing her PhD in Sociology at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where she focuses on the political uses of the social sciences. She is also a research fellow at the Robert K. Merton Center for Science Studies, currently working on a project examining the evaluation and governance of research collaborations. She was previously involved in a research project at the same centre focusing on the societal impact of research. Before entering academia, she worked for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She won the Evidence & Policy 2025 Carol Weiss Prize for the article ‘Social studies, technology assessment and the pandemic: a comparative analysis of social studies-based policy advice in PTA institutions in France, Germany and the UK during the COVID-19 crisis‘.

References

Benneworth, P. (2019). Mergers in higher education. Towards a conceptual framework. In L. Cremonini, S. Paivandi & K. M. Joshi (Eds.), Mergers in Higher Education: Practices and Policies (pp.1–18). Studera Press.

Gunn, A. (2020). The European universities initiative: A study of alliance formation in higher education. In A. Curaj, L. Deca & R Pricopie (Eds). European Higher Education Area: Challenges for a New Decade (pp.13–30). Springer International Publishing.

Moawad, L., & Gollanek, J. (2026). ‘To survive, you must tell stories.’ Comparing success narratives of local university alliances and networks in European capital cities. European Journal of Higher Education, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/21568235.2026.2648833.

Moawad, L., & Schendzielorz, C. (2026). Knowledge metropolises? A comparative multi-scale analysis of local university alliances in capital cities. European Educational Research Journal, OnlineFirst. https://doi.org/10.1177/14749041261437238.

Nelles, J. (2012). Comparative Metropolitan Policy: Governing Beyond Local Boundaries in the Imagined Metropolis. Routledge.

The post Local university alliances, capital cities, and the ‘New Geography of Knowledge’ in Europe appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Effective ethics-policy advisory systems are increasingly important in the context of rapid technological change, declining public trust in science, and shifting geopolitical dynamics. Questions about who becomes an ethics expert and who advises governments on ethical issues, who controls the narrative on major cross-national issues such as regulation and ethics of AI and ethics of future planetary health become particularly important.

The main focus of the recent article Ethics-policy advisory ecosystems: enhancing operative, discursive and adaptive capacities is the comparison between different ethics-policy advisory systems. The article that I co-authored with members of the Ethics & Expertise team, led by Professor Jessica Pykett and published in Contemporary Social Science, develops a novel framework for such comparison. In this blog post I offer an introduction to its key argument and reflect on the wider ethics-to-policy research agenda.

The article uses the notion of an ethics-policy advisory ecosystem to examine how ethics advice is provided to public bodies. These systems comprise national ethics bodies or commissions and many other actors contributing knowledge to policy through ethics expertise. These ecosystems consist of actors, institutions, mechanisms and practices interacting in different ways to provide expert advice, together adding up to what Braun & Kropp (2010) call ‘government ethics regimes’. Such regimes are different from technocratic forms of expertise in their forms of reasoning, value orientation and public communication.

In this paper we argue that advancing our understanding of governance capacities can strengthen scrutiny within ethics-policy advisory ecosystems. We examine how ethics advice is sought and provided at a national level. Based on this examination we propose parameters that help understand how scientific and moral questions interact in policymaking. Observing these dynamics allows us to identify key capacities that shape how advice is produced within different ecosystems.

Ethics advice and expertise

Before we start, it is useful to consider key categories we use in the article. Ethics advice refers to the provision of normative know-how to guide action, while ethics knowledge refers to specific content rooted in moral philosophy. It may draw on formal knowledge but also on lived experience and other forms of expertise.

Ethics advice shares some features with scientific advice. Both rely on epistemic communities (groups that produce and share specialised knowledge) and follow rigorous research standards, including using peer review. On the other hand, ethics knowledge is based on the ‘entanglement of facts and values, diversity of lived experiences and power dynamics’ (Parker, 2026). The key distinction is that ethics advice explicitly addresses normative questions within policy choices, making visible competing values and trade-offs. This contrasts with the appeal to value-free and neutral methods associated with the scientific method.

Overall, there is a lack of empirical evidence on how ethics advice is organised and provided. Existing research on national ethics bodies or commissions has explored their effectiveness (e.g. Köhler et al. 2021), de/politicisation (e.g.Littoz-Monnet, 2021) and deliberative elements (e.g. Bogner, 2019; Stahl et al., 2019). Yet here is little evidence of how advice on ethical issues (for instance, impact of new technologies) informs government decisions. Little is known how it interacts with other types of knowledge, particularly with science and technology studies.

Understanding how these systems operate and what capacities they possess has been a central focus of the Ethics & Expertise research project, on which this article is based.

Analysing national ethics-policy ecosystems

After outlining the history of ethics advisory ecosystems in the paper, we compare three different ecosystems (UK, Germany and Australia) using the ‘Most Similar Systems Design’ case selection method. This method allows us to capture small divergences in advice provision, in actors involved and advice justified across different cases. We also conducted institutional mapping (national maps available for Australia, Germany, and the UK), identifying hundreds of ethics bodies across the three cases. The findings are based on 60 semi-structured interviews, conducted in 2024, with those who previously served on public ethics advisory bodies and public sector professionals who have sought such advice.

We conclude that the UK currently has a dispersed ecosystem of government ethics advice, Germany has a formal centralised one, and Australia is more informally networked. Through this process of understanding three different ethics-policy eco-systems, we have developed a novel analytical framework to advance comparative international research.

Comparative framework for comparing ethics-policy advisory ecosystems

Complex national ethics-policy structures have previously been found to be adhocratic (Pykett et al., 2023; Sommer et al. 2024), informal and transient (Wilson et al., 2024) in their forms of governance, composition, remit, influence, public engagement and decision-making powers. To understand and compare these systems, we created a comparative framework, centred on three capacities: operative, discursive and adaptive. We outline each of these capacities in in the table below.

Table: Framework for comparative analysis of ethics-policy advisory ecosystems (Pykett et al 2026)

In the paper we provide an in-depth analysis of each of the three countries and their characteristics across these three capacities.

The importance of ethics-policy advice infrastructure

We draw three main conclusions from the comparative analysis. First, ethics-policy ecosystems must evolve to address future crises, including political polarisation and the growing power of technology platforms. This requires strengthening both institutional capacity and ethics literacy among policymakers. There are growing efforts to strengthen professional and institutional capacities, for instance, the Rapid Ethics Assessment and Learning Method, the Ethics Communication initiative, and the recently launched Ethics Advisory Mechanism to the European Commission.

Secondly, we highlight the issue of democratising and pluralising ethics expertise. More attention should be paid to how ethics advice is sourced and communicated, particularly in light of the growing public distrust in science.

Lastly, we draw methodological conclusions about using nested cases in comparative analysis of complex ethics-policy advisory systems. We encourage other scientists and researchers to use this framework in their research on ethics advice governance. The framework offers a systemised way to compare how different governance and cultural aspects impact the ethics-policy advisory landscape, and thus shed some light on how to attain successful and impactful ethics advice in times when it is much needed to improve regulation and governance.

The post Ethics-policy advisory ecosystems: how can we draw comparisons? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The post Recognising the Full Breadth of European Studies: UACES Awards 2026 appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

This scholarship has supported my one-week stay in Brasília. The award was spent on return flights to Brussels and accommodation fees. This fieldwork trip forms an integral part of my PhD research, as it allowed me to meet interviews in-person, observe their work in Embassies and in the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Itamaraty.

National Museum of the Republic designed by Oscar Niemeyer 

Understanding Brasília as a city geared towards diplomacy

I arrived in Brasília in the late afternoon, around 19h. Given Brazil’s position in relation to the Equator it means that it always becomes dark around 17h. I called my uber to the hotel and observed from the ride the city in the dark. You could already tell the white round brutalist Nieymer buildings from a distance: quiet, clean, and extremely well planned – to the smallest details. Every corner, every roundabout, every building was not there by chance. This was the view of a city who was entirely designed for civil servants, like career diplomats. In my walks to the interview locations, I would notice that, instead of street signs, you have country flags. ‘Turn right, into Wing South, for the Spanish, Peruvian, Paraguayan Embassy in SQN345,’ said the GPS. Having been only founded in the 1960s, the notion of space and time in Brasília us designed by its diplomatic headquarters, rather than schools, hospitals, or even commercial buildings. For a diplomacy nerd like me, Brasília was almost being like a kid in Disneyland.

After having done nearly three years of fieldwork in Brussels about how the EU – Brazil multi-level partnership works in practice, I came to Brasília with the goal of understanding how this is being done on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. From afar, which is often where the researcher is, one can read about these practices through joint statements of the EU – Brazil Strategic Partnership, public statements from political leaders, or through social media posts of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the European External Action Service. I have also heard the side of the story from Brussels, by conducting interviews with European and Brazilian diplomats stationed there. Yet, what I have realised in the last three years of talking to diplomats is that, as a researcher who is interested in knowing about the nitty-gritty details of world politics, more often than not, it is not enough to just hear, if you are interested in diplomatic practices. There is an imperceptible value in the mundane, every day, routine aspects of diplomacy. Details, such as informal discussions, diplomatic demarches, lunches with colleagues, which we often regard as irrelevant. But, as political ethnographers will tell you: it is about making the familiar strange, and the strange familiar.

Itamaraty Palace

Making the familiar strange and the strange familiar

For this reason, I wanted to have a grasp of how this partnership was viewed from those working in Brasília: how did the EU matter in the current geopolitical landscape for Brazil? Was the EU important in Brasília in the day-to-day tasks of Brazilian diplomats working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs? Do they meet frequently or not at all? What did an everyday of a Brazilian and European diplomat looked like in Brasília? More concretely, what diplomatic practices help to sustain cooperation when there is political contestation? Given that my focus rests on tracing the logic behind these diplomatic practices to understand how they matter in world politics, my fieldwork in Brasília was informed by an ethnographic approach towards practice-tracing. In other words, I conducted several (on and off the record) interviews with Brazilian and

European diplomats about their routines in Brasília, and spent some dedicated time to observing the spaces (embassies, receptions, waiting halls, cafeterias, institutional buildings, offices) in which they circulate in. It is important to note that this fieldwork in Brasília would not have happened without UACES’s support through the PhD Fieldwork Fellowship, of which I was lucky to have been selected.

The EU and Brazil have shared a strategic partnership since 2007; however, this has not been without its political crises. Due to the nature of democracy, political governments, with different visions about world politics, change throughout time. Some governments, such as the current one in Brazil are more favourable to having a strong partnership with the EU, while others, such as the government of Bolsonaro, have not. In October 2026, Brazil is heading towards another Presidential election. While Lula enjoys a narrow majority, Bolsonaro’s son, Flávio Bolsonaro, is doing well in the electoral race, too. How can then the career diplomats working in Brasília ensure that there is continuity in this partnership, knowing that in October 2026, the political willingness of the Brazilian government might change soon? In the specific case of the everyday cooperation between Brazil and the EU, interviewees revealed these relational strategies are key to ensuring continuity in their cooperation.

Looking back at the interviews I had with diplomats in Brasília, one thing is certain: the devil is in the details. The current geopolitical and societal landscape is certainly forcing diplomats to adapt to new realities: both Brazilian and European diplomats are being faced with structural challenges as to how diplomacy is done. To be a diplomat entails no longer the traditional political work of mediation but demands that career diplomats are able to work in different policy fields. As one of the interviewees explained to me, ‘diplomats are like radar people’, that is, diplomats need to be able to anticipate potential political storms ahead, and if so, to know how – and most importantly whom to talk to – to deal with it. In times of growing political turmoil, interviewees revealed that there can be certain relational strategies and rituals which help to manoeuvre potential disruptions. For example, having a coffee with your regular diplomatic counterpart, a short phone call to update on negotiations, or a diplomatic demarche can often help to facilitate the continuation of international cooperation.

Hallway, while waiting for an interview (somewhere in Brasília)

Methodological challenges: positionality, confidentiality and trust

Nevertheless, it is important to note that this fieldwork was not without its challenges. While, in theory, doable, access to these elite spaces is not always easy for a researcher. These are often closed-door and secretive rooms for diplomats: an essential part of diplomacy, yet the one that is probably the most hidden away. In effect, this was one of the issues that I encountered in preparation and during my fieldwork in Brasília. To prepare for my fieldwork, I drew in from my own professional network which I have built for over the last three years for contacts (and willingness to meet, which made a world of difference). Yet, during my interviews, I still encountered some issues about questions of confidentiality. For example, one of the most insightful conversations I had was not recorded given that it was more informal and to respect the privacy of the interviewee. The fact that I did not record it allowed me as well to build a level of trust which would have not been possible otherwise. While ethnographic is an incredibly rich methodology, it does raise some considerable questions about how to study such an elite can demand significant trade-offs in research.

In conclusion, the fieldwork in Brasília became a crucial part of my doctoral research. Often times, research in international relations tends to focus on the understanding the macro picture of diplomatic relations between different countries, yet, it is crucial to not lose sight of the fact that world politics takes place between every day human interactions.

The post UACES Fieldwork Scholarship: Exploring EU–Brazil Diplomacy in Practice appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The post The Value of the UACES Annual Conference: Academic Quality, Community and Value for Money appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

On 9 May 2026, we celebrate Europe Day and the fourth anniversary of the closing event of the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) hailed as a landmark transnational democratic experiment. During CoFoE hundreds of randomly selected citizens from all EU Member States deliberated alongside Members of European Parliament (MEPs) and national parliaments (MPs), producing far‑reaching recommendations for the European Union’s future.

Yet, for all the fanfare, the political follow‑up has been sobering. Most visibly, member state governments have declined to open the process of treaty reform based on the Conference’s proposals, despite the European Parliament’s plea to do so. While the CoFoE inspired a new generation of European Commission’s Citizens Panels and made them a permanent feature of the EU’s participatory toolbox, these deliberative fora remain largely disconnected from parliamentary arenas where political conflict and decision‑making actually take place. At the same time, the EU and its member states are experiencing the crisis of representative democracy manifested by decreasing trust in parliaments, increasing polarisation, populist electoral gains and widespread citizens’ dissatisfaction with democracy in general.

Four years on, one uncomfortable question looms: is the EU drifting towards a model of citizen participation that is rich in symbolism, but thin on political impact and true connection with representative policy-making?

Our recent JCMS article analyses how both MEPs and MPs talk about increased citizen participation in EU policy‑making. We depart from the premise that citizen participation is more likely to gain attention and appreciation from members of parliament when it is institutionally “coupled” with representation and the formal policy-making stage. To achieve our goal, we examine debates in the European Parliament, inter-parliamentary committee meetings, and several national parliaments between 2020 and 2023. We explore the underlying factors behind these positions, such as party ideology, institutional level, and views on European integration. Based on this analysis, we develop a refined typology of political discourses on EU‑level deliberative mini‑publics (DMPs), distinguishing between consultative, sceptical and power‑sharing stances.

A consultative Union – by design

Our first key finding is both simple and striking: across arenas and party families, a consultative discourse clearly dominates which means that parliamentarians overwhelmingly appreciate citizen participation and see value in deliberative mechanisms – as long as they remain advisory and do not fundamentally redistribute decision‑making power. In this discourse, citizens should be regularly asked, listened to, and perhaps even involved “permanently,” but final authority must stay firmly with elected representatives.

In practice, it suggests that most parliamentarians support what we call a “consultative Union”: a system where citizen participation is welcomed, but structurally non‑binding. The Commission citizens panels fit this logic very well – they create new spaces for citizen input, yet their policy-shaping potential remains largely discretionary.

MPs and MEPs: more similar than you might think

The second and unexpected finding concerns the relationship between national and European parliamentary arenas. While we might expect supranational MEPs to be more supportive than national MPs of transnational citizen involvement in EU policy-making, and national MPs to be more sceptical of EU‑level participatory innovations, our analysis suggests otherwise. We find no significant discursive differences between MEPs and MPs.

Such finding not only confirms that political conflict increasingly cuts across, rather than between, the national and supranational levels but is also normatively important since any EU participatory instrument that aspires to be more than window‑dressing needs the support of both national and European parliamentarians. The example of CoFoE showed how quickly legitimacy clashes emerge when that support is uneven.

Power‑sharing or populist plebiscites?

Perhaps the most politically explosive insight from our study is that not all calls for “giving power back to the people” mean the same thing. At first glance, there seems to be substantial support for what we label power‑sharing discourse: representatives who are willing to put citizens on an equal footing with politicians and accept binding forms of citizen involvement in EU decision‑making.

But once we look closely, this power‑sharing discourse splits into two very different strands.

In what we call deliberative power‑sharing discourse parliamentarians advocate binding deliberative mechanisms whose recommendations would directly shape EU reforms – and see citizens as partners in co‑constructing policy. This language is most prominent among Greens/EFA, the radical left and some liberal actors, who stress that strong participation can reinforce representative democracy.

On the other hand, plebiscitary power‑sharing discourse opposes institutionalized, transnational citizen deliberation postulating instead referendums that bypass parliaments and EU institutions. This strand is particularly visible among Eurosceptic and far‑right representatives, who demand EU‑wide referendums on European questions and present them as the only “real” expression of the people’s will.

This finding matters for how we interpret populism’s relationship to democratic innovation. It shows that far‑right and hard Eurosceptic parties may be enthusiastic about direct‑democracy instruments, yet deeply hostile to transnational deliberative settings such as CoFoE due to their distrust of EU‑organised participatory forums as biased or manipulated. Instead, they favour top‑down referendums whose questions and framing they hope to control. In this plebiscitary power‑sharing discourse, citizens are invoked less as co‑deliberators and more as a weapon, or at least a legitimating force for decisions aimed at weakening EU institutions.

Beyond consultation: reconnecting citizens and parliaments

What follows from these findings for the EU’s broader “citizen turn” is that the real challenge is not to invent ever more participatory instruments, but to better connect existing deliberative experiments to representative politics at both EU and national levels.

Our study suggests that while many politicians are not opposed to citizen involvement per se, they are often wary of deliberative designs that either sideline them or appear to instrumentalise citizens. This is precisely why thinking seriously about institutional linkages matters: for example, involving both MEPs and national MPs in transnational citizens’ assemblies, or hosting pan‑European citizen panels in national parliaments during rotating EU Council presidencies.

At the moment, the Commission‑led citizens’ panels risk reproducing the main weakness of CoFoE: citizens are invited to deliberate, but their recommendations are only loosely coupled to the arenas where political conflict is structured and decisions are actually taken. This fuels suspicion that participation serves primarily to legitimise pre‑set policy trajectories – “democracy without politics”, as some have called it.

Karolina Borońska-Hryniewiecka is Associate Professor at the Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Science, and Associated Research Fellow at the CESSP, Paris 1 – Panthéon Sorbonne. She is currently leading an NCN OPUS-funded project exploring transnational political discourse on EU institutional reform. Her work appeared in, among others, West European Politics, European Political Science Review, Journal of European Integration, and Parliamentary Affairs.

Jan Kotýnek Krotký is Assistant Professor at the International Institute of Political Science, Masaryk University. He is currently leading a post-doctoral project on citizen participation in the EU, supported by the Czech Science Foundation. His articles appeared in journals such as West European Politics, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, and European Security.

The post “Consulting Citizens? Be Our Guest – But Only on Our Conditions” appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Out of these moments has much research emerged. To take one example, the 2004 volcanic ash cloud that closed transatlantic air transport for over a week, trapping hundreds of European international relations scholars in Canada as their conference was ending, reputedly produced dozens of articles, funding bids and collaborative networks as people found they had time to sit, talk, brainstorm and advance ideas that might otherwise have been lost to the constant pressures of managing a regular workload.

All of which is to say that the advancement of knowledge through research doesn’t follow a straight or foreseeable path. And the growing focus of funding bodies on strategic priorities risks undermining the valuable possibilities that come from a rich and supportive research environment.

The move towards funding priority topics is partly understandable by the desire of funders to demonstrate their direct contribution to areas of political and public interest: research for gain instead of research for its own sake, if you will. In an age of tightening budgets, performance metrics and stakeholder accountability the incentives are clear.

But we now find ourselves at risk of moving too far in this direction.

Firstly, the world moves fast and uncertainly. If priorities are updated too slowly, then we risk missing important new agendas, but if they move too quickly, there is a danger that funding never lasts long enough to allow for the production of sufficiently deep analysis and findings. Supporting researchers to follow many paths – that may for time to time becoming more salient – actually improves the ability to speak to changing needs.

Secondly, priority relies on the existence of a pool of experienced researchers who can bid into designated pots of funding. But if there isn’t the support to allow such people to learn and develop in the absence of targeted monies, then the upsides of prioritisation are severely eroded.

And finally, research has never been just about material benefits. The pursuit of knowledge – in all its forms – is a human endeavour, with intrinsic value. Just as higher education can’t be simply a vehicle for getting a better-paid job, so too must research retain its wider purpose of supporting our understanding of the world and of ourselves.

That means we need to protect funding streams both within individual institutions and from external funders to allow researchers the opportunity to pursue their own agendas and ideas, and to be able to share, discuss and develop them with their communities of practice.

Having been a chair of UACES, which brings together European Studies researchers from across the world and from multiple disciplines, I have been repeatedly delighted and educated by what the rich tapestry of a vibrant and mutually supportive research environment can bring to my own work and to the full range of stakeholders, from politicians to the general public, activists to journalists.

If we can continue to preserve the value of supporting research in the broadest sense then we can not only make targeted funding work more effectively and sustainably, but also ensure that the broadest values of research are protected and shared with everyone.

Simon Usherwood is Professor of Politics and International Studies at the Open University and former Chair of UACES.

The post Why Research Needs a Supportive Environment as Much as Funding Priorities appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Image from Education under Attack / Save Schools in Ukraine: https://saveschools.in.ua/en/

Kateryna Suprun

In the increasingly turbulent economic environment facing many European higher education institutions (HEIs) (Pruvot et al., 2025), performance-based funding (PBF) remains a popular instrument for allocating at least part of core public funding (European Commission, 2023). Traditionally, PBF involves governments rewarding HEIs for meeting specific objectives – an approach often assumed to improve university performance (Kivistö & Mathies, 2023). Yet a key question is: does steering by incentives actually change how HEIs work, or does it merely encourage them to look good on paper?

In my recent article (Suprun 2026) published in the Policy Reviews of Higher Education, I draw on the strategic response framework (Oliver, 1991) to establish if the PBF policy recently adopted in Ukraine has made HEIs change their internal practices. Guided by interviews, surveys and document analysis, I explore the lived experiences of 22 public HEIs between 2020 and 2022 and invite their reflections on the revival of the PBF policy in 2024 amid a protracted military crisis. This approach allows tracing how Ukrainian HEIs have responded to the PBF policy and to which extent they have internalised its expectations.

From Policy Design to Institutional Practice

The PBF policy implementation in Ukraine tells a story of policy relevance shaped by political power struggles. Formulated against a backdrop of vested interests, an inflated higher education network, and a historical reliance on student numbers, the PBF policy aimed to make public funding transparent, apply uniform performance indicators, and strengthen better performing HEIs. It was introduced during the policy window of 2020, facilitated by the political turnover, became suspended with the outbreak of the all-in Russian war in 2022, and returned to the policy agenda in 2024, after yet another change of government.

The PBF design has undergone changes in each year of its active implementation, signalling an incremental transition pathway, political volatility and war-induced adjustments of the performance metrics. The resulting fragmented and contested implementation of the PBF policy – often associated with ‘gaming the results’ (Mathies et al., 2020) – calls for its analysis from the perspective of HEIs as street-level bureaucrats tasked with its day-to-day execution.

The strategic responses of the consulted HEIs towards the PBF policy closely correspond to their gains or losses from its implementation: winners tend to comply, while others engage in compromise and manipulation. PBF beneficiaries find it easy to follow the PBF rules: they perceive the PBF targets consistent with their university goals and view the PBF logic beneficial for institutional effectiveness. At the same time, their reported dependence on PBF is modest – ranging from just a few percent to no more than one third of core budget, – supporting the argument that high-performing universities advance their work regardless of PBF incentives (Shea & Hara, 2020).

In contrast, loss-exposed HEIs feel coerced towards PBF, consider its metrics constraining, and experience uncertainty in their financial prospects. Paradoxically, these are precisely the institutions that rely most heavily on PBF disbursements, with some depending on them for up to 70% of their public funding. As the organisational responses of universities are clearly differentiated, the question is if those receiving larger incentives are more inclined to steer by performance internally.

How Universities Adapted Internally – and Where They Did Not

The data indicate changes taking place in most of the engaged Ukrainian HEIs, with several clearly emerging trends. PBF beneficiaries are particularly active in introducing internal performance structures and funding models that mirror or adapt the system-level metrics. The reported changes to institutional policies and practices concentrate primarily on the performance areas of external research funding and internationalisation. While the universities adversely affected by PBF have attempted to become more performance-driven, their efforts were reversed with the temporary halt of the national policy in 2022 – unlike those of PBF-winning HEIs who continued with performance practices.

The PBF policy has also produced a few unintended consequences, hindering institutional changes. Limited coordination among national authorities has triggered audits of universities, making them comply simultaneously with the PBF policy and its preceding regulations on student-staff ratio and pay scales. Confronted with these contradictory demands, many HEIs continued to base their financial planning on the outdated model of historical funding.

The one-size-fits-all design of the PBF model, favouring research-intensive and internationally-exposed HEIs, has too yielded frequent grievances on the part of the financially vulnerable HEIs, lacking research capacity and global networks. Finally, the zero-sum logic of the PBF policy and restricted financial autonomy have discouraged or disabled some HEIs to act on the performance targets.

Implications for Policy and Practice

The case of Ukraine shows that HEIs adapt internally when they feel aligned with policy objectives, capable of introducing changes and engaged to the decision-making process. Albeit counterintuitively, the PBF policy volatility appears to function as a double-edged sword: while universities are caught in a perpetual turbulence, frequent revisions also reduce the likelihood of opportunistic behaviour.

Importantly, most consulted HEIs recognise the relevance of the PBF mechanism also in times of protracted war. However, their testimonies highlight unresolved inquiries beyond the current design of the PBF policy: do policy-makers acknowledge the value brought by HEIs through their third mission activities? And if so, how can they be measured and incentivised in a transparent and objective manner?  Whether future iterations of the PBF policy will be able to address these challenges remains to be seen.

Kateryna Suprun is a Doctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, Finland, and a member of the Higher Education Group. Her research explores policy implementation in higher education, with a focus on performance-based funding models and Ukraine. She has previously worked at the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine on higher education and digital transformation policies, alongside emergency humanitarian planning and resource mobilisation. She has also held various roles under the World Bank, European Commission, and European Higher Education Area frameworks.

Bibliography:

European Commission. (2023). Final report of the study on the state and effectiveness of national funding systems of higher education to support the European universities initiative. Volume I. Publications Office. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2766/885757

Kivistö, J., & Mathies, C. (2023). Incentives, rationales, and expected impact: Linking performance-based research funding to internal funding distributions of universities. In B. Lepori, B. Jongbloed, & D. Hicks (Eds), Handbook of Public Funding of Research (pp. 186–202). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800883086.00019

Mathies, C., Kivistö, J., & Birnbaum, M. (2020). Following the money? Performance-based funding and the changing publication patterns of Finnish academics. Higher Education, 79(1), 21–37. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-00394-4

Oliver, C. (1991). Strategic Responses to Institutional Processes. The Academy of Management Review, 16(1), 145. https://doi.org/10.2307/258610

Pruvot, E., Estermann, T., & Popkhadze, N. (2025). Financially sustainable universities. State of play and strategies for future resilience. European University Association. https://www.eua.eu/images/Funding_briefing_final.pdf

Shea, S. O., & Hara, J. O. (2020). The impact of Ireland’s new higher education system performance framework on institutional planning towards the related policy objectives. Higher Education, 80(2), 335–351.

Suprun, K. (2026). Implementation of the performance-based funding policy in Ukrainian higher education: impact on institutional behaviour? Policy Reviews in Higher Education, 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/23322969.2026.2622677

The post Chasing Indicators or Changing Practices? Ukrainian Universities under Performance‑Based Funding appeared first on Ideas on Europe.