#EUIA23: Europe’s Pathways to (Dis)Engagement with the World

In the last decade, home-grown and external shocks have fuelled a debate about the future of Europe’s engagement with the rest of the world. Should the European Union continue to be actively involved far beyond its borders and adopt a leading role in global and transregional affairs? Or should the EU reconsider its priorities and focus primarily on internal policies as a way to become less dependent on the rest of the world? Proposals to enhance European sovereignty involve deliberate attempts to reduce some international entanglements while reinforcing ties with selected countries, be they prospective EU members or strategic partners.

The EUIA2023 conference offers a forum to debate the diverging pathways for the EU’s engagement or disengagement with the world. To foster an interdisciplinary and international debate, we invite contributions from all policy domains and actors involved in the redefinition of Europe’s place in international affairs. Such a debate also includes how non-European actors perceive and react to the EU’s involvement or disentanglement in their region.

In addition to academic panel discussions, the conference will allow for substantive policy dialogue through keynote speeches by political leaders and roundtables with practitioners. Other programme highlights will include networking sessions, awards, and interactive events with leading journals in European Studies.

The EUIA conference calls for submissions from established academics, practitioners, early-career researchers and doctoral candidates. Scholars from non-EU countries are strongly encouraged to submit proposals. A solidarity fund will provide support to selected participants coming from non-OECD countries.

The programme is open to a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, as well as to interdisciplinary fields, in order to advance the debate on the EU’s pathway towards or away from close interdependence with other world regions, be it with the immediate neighbourhood or via interregional relations. Thematic areas for panels and papers include but are not limited to:

  • the EU’s role in diplomacy, multilateral organisations, global governance, and international trade and investment and corresponding value chains;
  • the international dimension of EU policy-making and its implementation (such as security, Green Deal, energy, climate, gender, digital governance and space);
  • tools of European formal and informal foreign engagement (such as development aid, sanctions and migration arrangements)
  • EU enlargement and relations with other regional organisations;
  • responses and perspectives on the EU of non-European actors

#EUIA23 is jointly organised by the Brussels School of Governance at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (BSoG-VUB), the United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS), the Institut d’études européennes at the Université libre de Bruxelles (IEE-ULB), Egmont – the Royal Institute for International Relations, and the Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) of the University of Warwick.

Important Dates:

Paper/panel submission opening:

15 July 2022

Paper/panel submission deadline:

31 October 2022, 23:59 CET

Notification of paper/panel acceptance:

mid-January 2023

Final registration & payment deadline for presenting participants:

end of February 2023

Final registration & payment deadline for non-presenting participants:

26 April 2023