As it emerges from the pandemic, the European Union faces both challenges and transformational opportunities as it navigates toward a green and digital future. Supported by a budget that delivers the largest stimulus package in its history, the Commission’s policy priorities, including a digital strategy and a European Green Deal, take the Union into innovative new policy territory.  Are its policy goals, such as carbon neutrality by 2050, sufficiently ambitious?  Do they risk generating new divisions between leaders and laggards in the energy and digital transitions? Will the EU’s just transition measures provide a pathway to equitable and sustainable transformation?  The budget was also used to secure the EU’s democratic future, for the first time linking EU resources to the strengthening of the rule of law. Will the EU’s rule of law compromise be adequate to safeguard the fundamental democratic values of the European Union?  Finally, the internal politics of the EU faces transformation from the departure of the UK and from party system change in the European Parliament. Has the rise of the Greens and liberal parties in the EP meant the end of old grand coalitions and a new, more unpredictable era in parliamentary politics? 

 

The 2021 ECSA-C biennial conference, ‘A Post-Pandemic EU: a Green, Digital and Democratic Future?’ brings together scholars and practitioners from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds for a broad ranging exploration of these transformational developments. 

 

Our 2021 virtual conference features a keynote address by Professor R. Daniel Kelemen, Professor of Political Science and Law and Jean Monnet Chair in European Union Politics at Rutgers University.  

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ECSA-C presents the 2021 conference with the support of the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. 

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Download Call for Papers  PDF