Agenda

The Finnish Institute of International Affairs will launch its new flagship event FIIA Forum on the 30 of September 2020. The topic of FIIA’s main event of the year is geoeconomics: FIIA and the guest speakers will look at how the emerging tech and trade wars are taking us towards a Geoeconomic World Order.

“The key to security and wealth in our time is no longer the geopolitical control of physical territory, but the ability to control the economic links that connect the world,” says Dr. Mikael Wigell, the Director of the Global Security Programme at FIIA (pictured).

“In this age of hyperconnectivity, geoeconomics has become the new power politics. Western strategic lenses have yet to adjust to this new situation, in which interdependencies are weaponized for the pursuit of power politics.”

The event’s speakers include Dr. Thomas Wright from the Brookings Institution, Director Victor do Prado from the World Trade Organization, Visiting Research Professor Carla Norrlof as well as Programme Director Mikael Wigell from FIIA.

30 September 2020

During this two focused half-day hands-on workshops participants learn how to find their way through the ‘jungle’ of EU-related websites and discover how to identify official vs unofficial and reliable vs unreliable EU information sources.

1-2 October 2020

Learn more here.

Speaker: Denys Gorbach, Sciences Po, CEE & MaxPo

If “hegemony is born in the factory”, what kind of hegemony is produced on the post-Soviet shopfloor, governed by informal conventions rather than explicit rules, equipped with ancient machinery requiring expertise above that of regular “taylorised” workforce, and conditioned by a plethora of non-monetary wage forms provided (or not) by the employer and/or the state? In my presentation, I wish to examine the hegemonic norms of political and moral economy in today’s Ukraine acting at the scale of a workplace. In each of my cases, informality is a constituent element of the hegemonic setting, albeit playing different roles and resulting in different configurations. I also argue that informality, both implicitly present and explicitly thematised in the everyday discourse, is the principle which allows to draw connections between the political imaginaries on the workplace and the macro scales. Finally, this can be contextualised by Ukraine’s place in the global political economy, with its uneven and combined characteristics reinforcing the tendencies observed at the micro scale.
My research is based on the fieldwork I have been conducting in a large industrial city in the south/east of Ukraine from January to June 2019. It included in-depth interviews with employees of two mining companies, owned by Ukrainian oligarchs with little legitimacy, of a vertically integrated metallurgical holding owned by an “embedded” oligarch, and of a metallurgical factory owned by a foreign corporation. This is complemented by data from participant observation gained while working at a small window-making factory founded in the 2000s in the same city, as well as close observation of a series of wildcat miner strikes during the same period.

Using the general Gramsci-inspired theoretical framework and the insights of Hillel Ticktin, Simon Clarke and Michael Burawoy regarding Soviet and post-Soviet factory regimes, I analyse differences between the life-worlds of workers in these factories, relating them to the structurally different context in which they find themselves. The latter is structured by the varying degree of informality at the workplace as well as by the specific shape it takes in each case. All enterprises feature “path dependent” informal bargaining and underinvestment as cornerstones of their factory regimes, but specific ways in which these common traits are manifested and reactions they elicit from workers range from archaic manufactory attitude at the “new” factory to exit, voice, and loyalty in the mines torn between owners, at the foreign-owned metalworking factory, and at the “native” oligarchic holding, respectively.

The general trend is not towards eliminating informality as a “post-Soviet residue” but rather towards renegotiating it with different outcomes. This unilateral renegotiation of formerly hegemonic informal conventions at and beyond the workplace in favour of dominant groups produces two types of reactions which can be related to the two major“populist” political imaginaries, “pro-Soviet” and “pro-European”. On the global level, the export-dependent, patronalistic “variety of capitalism” characterised by constant tension between the “traditional” norms of moral economy and the austerity-driven formalising “reforms”, used to flourish in the conjuncture of the global commodities boom of the 2000s. The hegemonic crisis it is currently muddling through is part and parcel of the profitability crisis which has struck global capitalism since the last decade.

Learn more here.

CONFERENCE TALK, followed by Q&A

Welcome address by Rector Federica MOGHERINI 

Introductory remarks by Professor Dr Inge GOVAERE, Director of the European Legal Studies Department

The event is compulsory for all LAW students and will be livestreamed for all other students and staff in Bruges and Natolin (including interaction Q&A), and for external guests (without Q&A). The link for the livestream will be made available on the website of the College of Europe before the event.

Learn more here.

The European Union’s diplomatic efforts and external representation are inherently different from the Member-States’ external policies. The EU, with its strong background in peace mediation and public diplomacy, can be considered a unique diplomatic entity and a fascinating study-object.

This three-day interactive course is designed for the participants to learn about EU diplomacy, to share experiences and to improve their diplomatic skills. After a short introduction to the EU's external affairs and the European External Action Service (EEAS), the course will focus on relevant diplomatic skills. Practical sessions and exercises on political reporting, effectively communicating across cultures, and political analysis will add to the participants’ knowledge and skillset.

All modules are delivered by high-level experienced professionals in the field of European and national diplomacy, reporting, communication and negotiations. The programme is designed to be as interactive as possible; active participation is required and networking opportunities are strongly encouraged throughout the course.

5-7 October 2020

Learn more here.

How to navigate the EU’s diplomatic waters? Reporting, communicating and negotiating

The College of Europe Development Office is organizing a specialized training course on the main policy issues of EU external relations, at the Bruges campus on 5-7 October 2020. To provide participants with valuable insight into the workings of the EEAS, the seminar will cover the complexities of EU external affairs through a dynamic and comprehensive approach, offering workshops, case-studies and debates. It will be delivered by a faculty of excellence, consisting of distinguished academics and practitioners.

Learn more here.

On 5. October,  2020 at 10.00-11.45  an international conference will be organised by IWE CERS presenting the results of  the project  „Effects of Industry 4.0 on FDI in the Visegrád countries”.  The project was financed by the Visegrad  Fund and coordinated by the Vistula University, Warsaw.

Due to the unprecedented and uncertain situation caused by the coronavirus pandemic we decided to make our final conference – originally planned to be hosted in Budapest – completely online.

You may find all details about the project here.

In the framework of the Master of Arts in Transatlantic Affairs (MATA) programme, offered jointly with The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the College of Europe organises its fourth (virtual) High-Level Lecture on Transatlantic Affairs on 9 October 2020.

The lecture will be delivered by Dr Fiona HILL, who is a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings Institution, Washington, DC. She recently served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019. From 2006 to 2009, she served as national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at The National Intelligence Council. Prior to joining Brookings, Hill was director of strategic planning at The Eurasia Foundation in Washington, D.C. From 1991 to 1999, she held a number of positions directing technical assistance and research projects at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, including associate director of the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project, director of the Project on Ethnic Conflict in the Former Soviet Union, and coordinator of the Trilateral Study on Japanese-Russian-U.S. Relations. Among many other publications, she is the co-author of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin (Brookings Institution Press, 2015).

Dr HILL will address the topic: "Resetting Transatlantic Relations". Her lecture will be transmitted live from Washington, DC.

The lecture will be preceded by a Welcome Address by the Rector of the College of Europe, Federica MOGHERINI.
Rector MOGHERINI will also kick off the debate about the lecture, before opening the floor for a Q&A session.

Students and staff of the College of Europe can follow the event from the auditorium, but need to register to reserve a seat. These are limited, so when full, please register as an "other participant" using the link below.
Other participants are cordially invited to participate in this event remotely via WebEx. This also requires prior registration.
Both the participants in the auditorium and the online audience will be able to submit questions to the speaker.

The registration deadline is 6 October 2020, 10:00.

Learn more here.

This interactive course is delivered by  experienced professionals and designed for participants to learn about EU economic governance, and how fluctuations in the financial markets in recent years have impacted the economies of the individual countries of the euro-area as well as its central governance at EU-level.

Online, 12-14 October 2020

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Since Donald Trump’s first day in office, a large and energetic grassroots “Resistance” has taken to the streets to protest his administration’s plans for the United States. Millions marched in pussy hats on the day after the inauguration; outraged citizens flocked to airports to declare that America must be open to immigrants; masses of demonstrators circled the White House to demand action on climate change; and that was only the beginning. Who are the millions of people marching against the Trump administration, how are they connected to the Blue Wave that washed over the U.S. Congress in 2018?and what does it all mean for the 2020 Election and the future of American democracy?

Speaker: Dana R. Fisher, University of Maryland

Dana R. Fisher is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on studying democracy, civic participation, activism and environmental policymaking. Recent studies focus on the youth climate movement, the movement against systemic racism, and the American Resistance. She has authored over sixty peer-reviewed research papers and book chapters, and has written six books, including Activism, Inc (Stanford University Press 2006) and American Resistance (Columbia University Press 2019).

Learn more here.

In 2018, on the occasion of its 40^th anniversary, the Journal of European Integration inaugurated the practice of inviting a leading scholar to give the JEI Annual Lecture. Previous lectures were given by Dr Nathalie TOCCI (IAI Rome, 2018) and Professor Kalypso NICOLAIDIS (Oxford University, 2019).

The 2020 JEI Annual Lecture will be given by Professor Sven BISCOP on 15 October 2020 at the College of Europe (Bruges) and via a dedicated livestream. The event will be organized jointly with the organisers of the “EU in International Affairs” conference whose 2020 event was originally intended to include the annual lecture as a keynote address. The title of the lecture is: “No Peace from Corona: Defining EU Strategy for the 2020s”.

Learn more here.

The annual high-level "EU Diplomacy Lecture", organised by the EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies at the College of Europe in Bruges, will look at the role of the European Union in peace processes. Ambassador Roland Kobia, EU Special Envoy for Afghanistan, will share his insights on how peace processes really work in practice, with their achievements and their failures, and the lessons to be learned. Rector Federica Mogherini will deliver a welcome address. External participants can follow the event via the livestream provided on the event’s website:

Learn more here.

The workshop will assess the way in which the new structure of costs of electricity generation might require an upgrading of the current electricity market design, taking into account the need to provide correct investment signals and correct short-term market signals that preserve efficient market outcome in the long and short term.

Learn more here.

This four-day seminar gives a thorough introduction to trade law and policy and the WTO. The programme includes a broad overview of the sources and basic principles of international trade law, as well as its main actors and subjects. It offers participants a comprehensive analysis of the types of bilateral and plurilateral trade agreements as well as EU’s trade policies in a geopolitical sense.

Online, 19-22 October 2020

Learn more here.

The programme is recommended for officials, lobbyists, consultants, translators, information and communication managers and other professionals wishing to become more efficient in finding, discerning, and understanding information on the EU.

Online, 29-30 October 2020

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Towards effective negotiations with and within the EU

The purpose of this seminar is to train professionals to become strategic and effective negotiators. It will enhance negotiation and communication skills that are used in interactions of different actors both between and within EU institutions, by means of interactive training sessions, workshops and simulation games.

Learn more here.