210124 SE M5: EU and Europeanisation (2023S)

The course focuses on the foreign policies of the European Union (EU) and selected Member States in times of multiple crises. The course explores important changes in the EU’s international environment as well as internal challenges to EU foreign policy. Externally, the EU faces an increasingly contested liberal order and a major war between Russia and Ukraine. Simultaneously, the EU’s neighborhood is increasingly conflict prone and instable, triggering migration flows and the proliferation of illiberal values. Domestically, the EU faces severe internal conflicts, marked by Brexit, growing nationalism, populism and new protectionism. The central aim of the seminar is to enable students to understand the workings of the EU foreign policy-making system and central challenges the EU faces both externally and from within. In addition, social science writing, presentation and communication skills will be practiced as different steps in developing the seminar paper.
• Phase one presents key theoretical and empirical works on EU foreign policy and important external and internal challenges faced by the EU. In this phase, students will choose the topic for their papers.
• The second phase consists of plenary sessions to hold and discuss student presentations on their seminar papers. Students will be divided into groups in line with their selected topics and guided in developing the research design of their seminar paper. The sessions will allow for in-depth debate of individual topics, and student-only meetings in each group. Methods include individual work, peer feedback, presentations, and debate.