TEPSA recruits

The application for the post of Research Assistant is closed. Shortlisted candidates will within the next weeks be informed and invited to an interview. In the meantime please refrain from calling.

Call for Papers

The EU as a Global Actor - CEE-Sciences Po – IRSEM Joint Doctoral Student Workshop and Doctoral Prize, Paris, Thursday 3 and Friday 4 June 2010

The Centre d’études européennes at Sciences Po and the IRSEM have decided to run a joint doctoral seminar. The workshop is open to all PhD students registered in a European university since at least one year. It aims at enabling young researchers to exchange ideas and discuss their research with their peers and senior academic colleagues. More information can be found here.

Recommendations to the Spanish Presidency

Crossfire in the Parliament: The Commission's hearings

The new year in Brussels begins right away with a series of events, which many people have been waiting for for a long time. Commissioner-designates have been preparing - helped by their staff - over Christmas in order to be ready for the questions of the European Parliament. While the most part of the hearings will take place during the week of 11-15 January, some (future) Commissioners will have the joy of travelling to Strasbourg in the following week.

The European Parliament has acquired a certain measure of routine by now in the holding of hearings: Already for the Commission of Jacques Santer hearings were undertaken - although when consulted on this issue the leaving Commission President Jacques Delors expressed his strong dislike. However, the Santer Commission agreed, and since then parliamentary hearings on the future Commission constitute a central part - though without treaty base - of the Commission's appointment, injecting some of the Parliament's legitimacy into the Commission. Andrew Duff, the EP's rapporteur on the hearings even stated in his press conference that this task is picturing the "European Parliament as it ought to be", with the goal to "have at the end a top-class Commission".

Hearings, which are to assess a candidate's general competence, his or her European commitment and personal independence as well as the knowledge of the prospective portfolio and the communication skills have been prepared by written questionnaires. They follow a clear structure: The Commissioner-designate opens after the technical introduction of the committee chair of the committee-in-lead the hearing with an opening statement, and then faces questions of the Parliamentarians. Hearings are restricted to three hours. After the public hearing the committees meet in camera to discuss the appearance of the Commissioner-designate; a letter with the committee's opinion is then sent to the President of the EP. Hearings are not without their pitfalls: In 2004, Italy and Latvia had to send new candidates; Hungary received a new portfolio.

TEPSA is supported by the European Union's Europe for Citizens programme, which stimulates activities in the area of Active European Citizenship

Enlarging the European Union: Effects on the new member states and on the EU

by Graham Avery, Anne Faber, Anne Schmidt (eds.) Trans European Policy Studies Association, Brussels, August 2009

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Assessing the Common Spaces between the European Union and Russia

by Krassimir Nikolov (ed.), BECSA in cooperation with TEPSA, Sofia, February 2009

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The European Neighbourhood Policy. Challenges and Prospects.

by Graham Avery and Yvonne Nasshoven (eds.), Trans European Policy Studies, Brussels, December 2008

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