For many EU citizens, working across the border is the only way to make a living in the EU. The battle for cheap labour has now become a well-oiled machine, in which almost all Western European countries participate. Nevertheless, the employment situation of EU Mobile Citizens, workers of low-skilled and -paid jobs, is often substandard. Challenges are housing, health care and working conditions. In addition, due to the lack of registration in municipalities, it is impossible to have an overview of the numbers and to offer effective help. This is a problem in small to medium-sized cities, where many workers live to work in agriculture, transport, construction, meat industry and logistics. For this study, 32 interviews were conducted in eleven small to medium-sized towns (SMSTs) in Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, Poland, and Spain. The study uses three different perspectives: EU representatives of participating regions, municipalities, and employers. The outcomes show that most SMSTs deal with a shortage of housing, and a lack of grip on the registration process of EU citizens. Although there are some success stories, most SMSTs are not in touch with each other to share these. The paper concludes with proposals for further action-research and collaborations to impact local policies.
DOCUMENT
In opdracht van de Vereniging van Nederlandse Gemeenten (VNG) heeft European Impact Hub de resultaten samengebracht uit het onderzoek van 250 studenten European Studies aan de Haagse Hogeschool. Het doel van dit rapport is om duidelijk te maken hoe in kleine tot middelgrote steden gewerkt wordt aan huisvesting en registratie van EU-arbeidsmigranten. Op basis van gestructureerde interviews met onder andere Europese vertegenwoordigers in Brussel, lokale beleidsmakers en lokale uitzendbureaus zijn de volgende conclusies geformuleerd. Uit de interviews met de Europese vertegenwoordigers in Brussel blijkt dat de bal vooral uit het eigen speelveld wordt geschopt. Ook blijkt dat de vertegenwoordigers van de deelnemende gemeenten bij de EU vaak niet op de hoogte zijn van de problemen in de regio's. Daarnaast laten de interviews zien dat de deelnemende gemeenten tegen dezelfde problemen aanlopen als het gaat om huisvesting. Ondanks dat huisvesting hoog op de politieke agenda staat blijft de situatie nijpend, in de ene plaats nog meer dan in de andere. Registratieprocessen verschillen per land. Het beschikbaar stellen van het registratieproces in verschillende talen en het vereenvoudigen van het registratieproces blijken succesfactoren. Toch is dit niet overal het geval, in La Palma del Condado dient het registratieproces herziend te worden omdat het te eenvoudig is. Over de problematiek rondom de Europese vertegenwoordiging raadt dit rapport aan de resultaten te bespreken met de afdelingen sociale zaken van de respectievelijke permanente vertegenwoordigingen (PV/EU)'s van de lidstaten, alsmede de (gezamenlijke) inspecties.
DOCUMENT
This report is the result of a research interest stemming from the case presented by the City of Budapest on the misalignment between EU funding opportunities and the interdependence of the national government. The main research question was “Which channels exist for a local or regional government to access EU funding directly, without the need for interference of the national government?”. Recent political developments in Hungary have led to an increasing amount of budgetary challenges for the City of Budapest. Besides domestic factors, the European Commission’s decision to suggest to withhold cohesion and RRF funds to Hungary raises the question of what different avenues of direct EU funding instruments might be at the city’s disposal. Therefore, the aim of this research is to provide recommendations on what avenues the City of Budapest might want to invest in in terms of advocacy activities on the EU level. We first conducted a desk research, mapping the current landscape of EU funding instruments under the direct management of the EU (the overview can be found in the appendix). Secondly, ten interviews were conducted in October and November 2022 with several multi-level stakeholders from the European Parliament, the European Commission, the umbrella organisation of cities in the European Union ‘Eurocities’, a Hungarian journalist and a regional representation in Central-Eastern Europe. Based on these conversations, we identified five main findings with corresponding recommendations for action.
DOCUMENT
This lessons learned report gives an overview of the output and results of the first phase of the REDUCES project. The introduction states the relevance of combining a policy approach with business model analysis, and defines the objectives. Next, an overview is given of circular economy good business practices in the regions involved. Examining these business practices helped to define the regional needs for circular economy policy. This business approach proved to be a solid base for developing regional circular economy action plans, the last chapter of this report.
DOCUMENT
Whereas different aspects of teaching and learning in Higher Education are often discussed within an academic community, teaching the EU seems to receive less attention. Especially in recent years we testimony the decreasing interest to EU studies in universities, including some signs of disappearing from educational curricula. Even more sad is the state of teaching the EU in economic faculties and other disciplinary areas. Teaching the EU is not always considered as an important and necessary part of these curricula. At the same time, in the still remaining studies of the EU, mainly situated in studies of politics or international relations, there is a tendency, with a few exemptions, to stick to a rather traditional approach of teaching the EU that does not change for years, no matter what the developments in the world are. In this paper I plea for the change of the existent paradigm in teaching the EU. The new global realities, such as a developing climate crisis and EU green economic transition, war in Europe and changing global security landscape, (still) continuing migration crisis and growing poverty worldwide, radicalization of political systems and intensifying populism, require to change the way the EU subject has been taught in universities. The scholars teaching the EU subject have to rethink the existent answers to the main educational questions, such as what, why, how and who is being taught about the EU. I propose a different approach to teaching the EU that not only redesigns the existent teaching practices of the EU, but also makes the introduction of EU studies in other than political science or international relations curricula, such as economic, business, environmental or many other interdisciplinary studies, possible and indispensable.
DOCUMENT
Sustainable future is impossible without well-functioning sustainable economy that is based on new energy system with renewable and new energy sources. The European Union has put incredible efforts to transform the European economy into a circular, energy efficient and climate-neutral that at the same time provides an optimal business environment for sustainable growth, job creation and innovation. As the European Union has committed to make Europe the world's first carbon neutral continent the question is what are the regional contributions to the achievement of this ambition and making the European economy more sustainable and climate-neutral? The round table, organised by the Jean Monnet Chair in Sustainable EU Economy, brings together experts, policy makers, and representatives from business and academia to discuss different regional initiatives aimed at making the regional economy more sustainable and climate-neutral, and will especially focus on one of the most successful collective efforts to develop a sustainable regional H2 economy in the Northern part of the Netherlands.
DOCUMENT
This document combines four reports on existing regional business support programmes for inclusion or understanding of circular economy (CE) objectives, deliverable DT3.1.2 from the transform-CE project. Besides a general overview on national and regional level, the focus is on a selection of national and regional programmes aimed at the plastics industry. After explaining the format to structure the programmes, the results for the four regions are presented: Greater Manchester (UK), Rhineland Palatinate and North-Rhine Westphalia (DE), Wallonia (BE), Central Netherlands (NL).
MULTIFILE
Op 3 april zijn er parlementsverkiezingen in Hongarije. Volgens de laatste opiniepeilingen (23 maart) zou de huidige regeringspartij Fidesz 50% van de stemmen krijgen, terwijl de eensgezinde oppositie, met de conservatieve Péter Márky-Zaj als kandidaat, 43% van de stemmen zouden krijgen. Die uitslag zou betekenen dat Viktor Orbán voor de vijfde keer premier van Hongarije zou worden.
MULTIFILE
In 2004 the report Intellectual capital of the European Union was published (Andriessen and Stam, 2004). This report provided insight in the value of the intellectual capital of the 15 countries of the European Union, in relationship to the goals set by the European Council in March 2000. Since this report, the EU grew from 15 to 27 countries and the Lisbon goals were reformulated in 2005. The aim of this paper is to repeat the measurement of the intellectual capital (IC) of the enlarged European Union (EU) in relationship to the new Lisbon goals. In order to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy, the EU decided to focus on “delivering stronger, lasting growth and creating more and better jobs” (CEC, 2005d, p.7). In this paper we translate this overall goal in 38 indicators. As the data was not available for all the new member states, we decided to limit our paper to the so-called EU-19. Based on our measurements we conclude that the EU-19 is still behind Japan and far behind the USA, however the EU is catching up as both Japan and the USA have considerably lower growth figures than the EU-19. From an IC perspective, the EU is geographically divided. The Nordic countries are still the best performing countries. The southern European countries and the new member states stay behind. However, as the new member states invest more in their IC, it might be expected that their positions will improve in the future. The aim of our paper was to measure the progress of the Lisbon Agenda for growth and jobs. Based on our measurements we conclude that the EU-19 is successful in terms of creating more and better jobs, but not successful in terms of delivering stronger, lasting growth.
DOCUMENT
De afgelopen maanden is de Hongaarse overheid druk bezig geweest met bezoekjes aan Brussel om de Europese Commissie te overtuigen van de puike staat van de rechtsstaat in Hongarije. Reden voor deze bezoeken van de Hongaarse regering is het voorstel van de Europese Commissie om het uitkeren van EU-fondsen aan een lidstaat te blokkeren. Eurocommissaris Hahn stelt dat Hongarije mogelijk zo’n €7,5 miljard aan EU-fondsen misloopt als het niet snel 17 afgesproken hervormingen doorvoert die de rechtsstaat waarborgen. Het zou gaan om 65% van de voor Hongarije beschikbare middelen van de cohesiefondsen.
MULTIFILE
