On November 18 and 19 the Université libre de Bruxelles, the Cevipol, the Institute for European Studies and the University of Cambridge are organising an international conference in the framework of the research project “Conflicts of sovereignty in a European Union in crisis (SovEU)”. The project, which received a two-year funding grant (2018-2020) from the Wiener-Anspach Foundation, is directed by Christopher Bickerton (Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge), and by Ramona Coman, Amandine Crespy and Wiener-Anspach Alumna Nathalie Brack (Department of Political Science, ULB).
Presentation
Conflicts around sovereignty form the core of the scholarly and lay narratives on European integration. More integration at the EU level is associated with a transfer of sovereignty from nation states to supranational institutions. Resistance to ‘ever closer union’ is taken as evidence of a reassertion of national sovereignty.
This project is premised upon the original hypothesis that the existential crisis faced by the EU over last decade is not a product of a conflict between national sovereignty and supranational institutions but rather the result of conflicts at the national level between different conceptions of national sovereignty, specifically the struggle between popular and parliamentary visions of national sovereignty.
This project will empirically test this hypothesis using three paradigmatic cases: constitutional reform in Poland regarding the rule of law, ratification of the EU Canada Comprehensive Trade Agreement (CETA) in Belgium and the UK’s decision to leave the EU (Brexit).
The programme of the conference is available here (please register via this page).
For more information on the SovEU project, you can visit its website