Offices In Brussels Research Articles

Eloise Todd: mobilising civil society for pandemic prevention

Eloise Todd: mobilising civil society for pandemic prevention

Individual and collective representation: the organisational form of higher education lobbying in the European Union

ABSTRACT Recent scholarly work on higher education institutions (HEIs) within an EU context has focused on how universities and their core activities have been affected by EU education policy. The organisation of HEIs in order to shape European decision-making on higher education, mainly through their presence in Brussels, has received much less attention. This article therefore focuses on how HEIs organise their EU representation and explains their choice for a specific organisational form, distinguishing between individual (i.e. a Brussels office), collective (i.e. via an association) and mixed representation (the combination of both a Brussels office and membership of an association). After systematically mapping the organisational form of 250 HEIs, we apply a mixed methods design to test our hypotheses derived from previous research on interest representation and lobbying. Our findings illustrate that the distance from Brussels is a key factor in the decision to open a Brussels office or join an association, whereas financial resources appear imperative for combining both forms of representation. Furthermore, we identify additional underlying motives for choosing a particular mode of representation, in particular the importance of information exchange, visibility and networking.

3.I. Workshop: Getting real with future shocks: How to test health system resilience?

Resilient health systems should be able to both respond to sudden shocks and adapt to structural changes. Structural fragilities in the health systems of EU countries were present before the COVID-19 pandemic and the crisis has just exacerbated these weaknesses, along with creating acute response capacity shortages. It became clear that health systems were largely unprepared for a shock of this magnitude. In order to be better prepared and able to respond more effectively towards the next health emergency, it is important to have robust tools and methods to measure the level of resilience in health systems. The workshop will present a new concept to carry out resilience testing of health systems against potential future shocks and adverse scenarios based on the opinion of the European Commission's Expert Panel on effective ways of investing in health. This will be followed by a discussion with experts on the practical development and implementation of this methodology.Format of the workshop: Pitch on the resilience testing concept by a member of the Expert Panel on effective ways of investing in health (10 minutes)Responses by experts from three EU Member States and discussion (40 minutes)Concluding remarks by the OECD and the Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (10 minutes) Speakers/Panelists Heather L. Rogers Biocruces Bizkaia Health Research Institute, Barakaldo, Spain Lenka Poliaková Health Insurance Supervision Department, Ministry of Health, Czechia Judith de Jong NIVEL, Utrecht, Netherlands Sabrina Montante National Institute of Health of Italy, Brussels Office, Brussels, Belgium Gaetan Lafortune OECD, Paris, France

European Union membership status and decentralization: A top-down approach

ABSTRACTDespite state resilience and the waning of the ‘Europe of the Regions’, European integration persists in affecting subnational actors. Subnational actors have maintained lobbying offices in Brussels to access European Union institutions while others have continued to organize around regionalist parties in the European Parliament. This study explores whether and how EU membership has influenced decentralization. I argue that states exposed to Europeanization, candidates and members of the EU, decentralize more compared to non-EU states. Quantitative tests using recent data on regional authority and three case studies of France, Poland, and Spain provide support for this argument. This article contributes to the research on Europeanization and multilevel governance by focusing on state-level motivations for decentralization. This study’s findings allude to the need of examining how other facets of European integration affect subnational actors and investigating variations in decentralization between EU member-states.

The Early Years of the European Consumer Organisation BEUC, 1962-1985

The Bureau europeen des unions de consommateurs (BEUC) is the umbrella organisation that represents the European consumer organisations in Brussels and has done so since its foundation in 1962. It lobbies with the EU institutions to defend the interests of European consumers. In this paper I reconstruct the evolution of BEUC during the first two decades of its existence, from a small and loosely organised alliance of European consumer organisations to a well-established organisation with its own office in Brussels and a clear impact on EEC policy. Based on archival research, I recount the early history of BEUC by dividing it into five stages of development: birth and infancy (1962-68), childhood (1969-73), adolescence (1974-77), early adulthood (1978-82) and adulthood (1983-85 and beyond). For each phase I discuss the organisational developments within BEUC, the development of its activities and interactions with EEC institutions.

Regional lobbying and Structural funds: Do regional representation offices in Brussels deliver?

ABSTRACTIn recent years regional representation offices have proliferated in Brussels. Among the many aims of these offices are influencing the allocation and securing the transfer of European Structural and Cohesion funds. However, our knowledge about whether they have succeeded in this goal is limited. In this paper, we assess whether regional offices in Brussels have managed to affect the commitment and payment of Structural and Cohesion funds beyond the officially stated economic criteria of eligibility. The paper uses a custom-made survey of Brussels offices, complemented by economic, institutional, and political data. The results of the analyses for 123 regions over the period 2009–13 highlight that the capacity – proxied by the budget and staff of the office – of the regional offices to influence the commitment and payment of Structural and Cohesion funds has been negligible, when not outright negative. Regional lobbying in Brussels does not lead to more funds or to an easier disbursement of regional development funds.

The Role of Civil Society in EU Financial Regulation

‘The interests of European investors, consumers and SMEs,must be at the centre of the reform’. (European Commission, 4 March 2009) INTRODUCTION: A CRUCIAL AND OUTSTANDING ISSUE FOR THE EUROPEAN ECONOMY AND DEMOCRACY In March 2009, the European Commission (EC) recognized the need to put ‘the interests of European investors, consumers and SMEs at the centre of the financial markets reform’. The Commission therefore announced it will ‘ensure that the voice of European investors is much more strongly heard on all financial issues’. However, three years later, the European Economic and Social Committee still reported that ‘one of the reasons for the financial crisis was inadequate and ineffective regulation and supervision of the financial markets . One of the difficulties in financial regulation is how to ensure that differing and contradictory positions are given a balanced hearing . There is no effective counterweight to the legitimate representation of the financial sector's interests . Political debate primarily plays out between the legislator on one side and the financial sector concerned on the other’. Despite the creation and the development of BETTER FINANCE for all (formerly ‘EuroFinUse’, in short ‘Better Finance’) in 2009 and of Finance Watch in 2011 (section 2), and despite the build-up of independent competence (section 3), organised civil society still faces two major hurdles to become an ‘effective counterweight’ to the financial sector in the European political debate: – resources (section 4); and – equal access (section 5) to the public authorities. THE CURRENT REPRESENTATION OF FINANCIAL SERVICES USERS AND OF THE CIVIL SOCIETY AT LARGE THE CREATION OF BETTER FINANCE (THE EUROPEAN FEDERATION OF FINANCIAL SERVICES USERS) IN 2009 Before 2009, there was no civil society organisation dedicated to representing the ‘civil society’ interests in financial services at the European level, except for the specific case of individual shareholders who created ‘Euroshareholders’ as an Association Internationale Sans But Lucratif (non-profit international association) under Belgian law in 1992. It was very representative of European individual shareholder interests as it gathered about thirty national shareholder and other investor and saver organisations from around Europe. But – in addition to its limited scope – its resources were very small, barely allowing it to rent an office in Brussels and to organise one or two meetings per year.

‘I finally found my place’: a political ethnography of the Maximiliaan refugee camp in Brussels

In the face of an increasing influx of refugees in Europe and the inability of public authorities to respond in an adequate and timely way, an informal refugee camp was built in September 2015 in front of the Foreign Office in Brussels, Belgium. This article examines this camp, the Maximiliaan camp, as a contested space for citizenship. We analyse the acts of CollectActif, a collective consisting mostly of undocumented migrants, who set up a fixed kitchen and hence staged themselves as de facto citizens and as part and parcel of a broader citizens’ movement. Based on ethnographic research within this kitchen, we focus on several ‘polemical scenes’ in which a divisive police logic is confronted with a logic of universal equality. We conclude with a reflection on how presupposing radical equality has come to function as an important part of CollectActif’s activist citizenship.

Multilevel governance as a strategy to build capacity in cities: Evidence from Sweden

ABSTRACTMultilevel governance has opened up important new transnational spaces for cities in their pursuit of policy learning and knowledge building. Knowledge and expertise as elements of urban capacity building are becoming more important as cities are now expected to address increasingly complex issues. Drawing on a case study of the policy internationalization of the city of Gothenburg in Sweden, the article argues that joining international projects has provided the city access to networks where knowledge and expertise on complex technical issues are shared among cities through learning and replication. The article draws on analyses of documents from the European Union (EU) and the city of Gothenburg and also on a series of interviews during 2015 with staff at the City of Gothenburg Office and the city’s European Office in Brussels.

Networkers, fund hunters, intermediaries, or policy players? The activities of regions in Brussels

Regions started opening offices in Brussels in the mid-1980s. Today, well over half of Europe’s regions are present there. What do they do once they are in Brussels? Are they mainly networking, chasing funding, acting as intermediaries, monitoring legislation, or trying to influence the EU’s decision-making process? No study has analysed this question apart from the pioneering work by Marks et al. in 2002. This article breaks new ground by analysing both group-level and contextual factors in a series of multilevel models. Based on a survey of regional offices in Brussels, results indicate that contextual factors, such as levels of self-government back home, matter. However, group-level characteristics, such as an office’s longevity in Brussels, seem to affect a wider range of activities. Overall, older offices are more interested in the EU policy-making process and less interested in chasing funds or networking. Conversely, offices representing regions with weaker self-governing capacities rather conceive of their role as that of an intermediary, acting as an interface between the region and the EU institutions.

Domestic Institutions and regional representation in the European Union: the case of Austria

ABSTRACTMulti-level governance in the European Union is a well-established model in the EU literature. An area of ongoing focus within that literature has been the regional representation offices that have proliferated in Brussels. This article addresses the research question of how domestic institutional arrangements affect the strategies of regions seeking representation at the European level. Based on the results of original interviews with directors and deputy-directors of Austrian regional representation offices in Brussels to illustrate the approach these offices take when interacting with other European institutions and with Austrian federal representatives, this study builds on the regional representation literature that has stressed the pre-eminence of state institutional structures in understanding the role of regional representation offices and argues that the importance of the offices is best examined through a focus on state level institutions and power arrangements rather than on office impact at the European level.

Biomineralix (COST Action TD0903), 2009-2014: An Overview

Biomineralization is the process by which living systems produce minerals. At theEuropean scale, this particular scientific field associates researchers of diverse horizons,ranging from zoology, mineralogy, palaeontology, and environmental sciences to materialssciences, dentistry and bone surgery. In this context, the COST Action TD0903, also referredas Biomineralix, was set up in November 2009 under the auspices of the COST Office inBrussels. This scientific network was active during four and half years, until May 2014. Itassociated 17 European countries, and a total of 29 laboratories. Its main objectives weremultiple: 1. To promote biochemical and proteomic research on the biomineralisationprocesses of diverse biological models, ranging from microorganisms to metazoans, such asmolluscs or sea urchins. 2. To characterize biominerals owing to the most advancedbiochemical and biophysical techniques. 3. To use natural biominerals as sentinels to recordenvironmental parameters and pollutions in terrestrial, riverine or marine ecosystems. 4. Totake lessons from natural systems to generate novel biomimetic or bioinspired materials,according to soft chemical processes. These research trends organized the action in fourworking groups. The present paper evaluates four and half years of functioning of thenetwork. It reviews some of the major results, in particular those acquired in the frame ofShort-Term Scientific Missions (STSMs), and lists the corresponding scientific papers.

No place like home? Explaining venue selection of regional offices in Brussels

ABSTRACTWhile subnational authorities strongly mobilize in Brussels, they do not lobby all EU-level venues to the same extent. This article explains the varying intensity with which regional offices interact with various EU-level policy-making venues when seeking to influence EU policies. Theoretically, we complement an exchange-based perspective with political-institutional and contextual factors, such as regional political autonomy and the degree of preference alignment with key policy-making venues. To test our hypotheses, we rely on evidence collected through 33 face-to-face interviews with regional representations concerning their lobbying activities in four salient policy processes. Our results highlight that while most offices regularly interact with both national and supranational venues, the central government representation in Brussels is always, irrespective of what is at stake, the most important contact point. Furthermore, we also find that policy alignments shape venue selection, indicating some evidence of strategic manoeuvring.

The regional offices in Brussels

The potential of “people and place” is assessed as a means to broaden research about regional political actors into key questions about their role in European integration, largely dormant since the European Commission's 2001 White Paper on Governance raised the potential for territorial authorities to bridge EU institutions with territorial civil society. Interviews were conducted with a subset of executives from EU liaison offices performing leading roles in the formation and maintenance of a cluster of cognate networks. A key driver involves differences in their working constraints, assessed by a dual typology of offices in conjunction with literature applied to lobbyists in outreach contexts. A tendency to “go native” over time, coupled with the opportunities for long-time post holders to control their own working agendas, may lead to activities orientated toward bringing the EU to regions, rather than just promoting their regions in EU institutions. Spanish “La gente y el lugar” son un medio para ampliar investigación sobre los actores políticos regionales en la integración europea, preguntas ausentes desde que el Libro Blanco sobre Gobernanza de la Comisión Europea (2001) elevó el potencial de las autoridades territoriales para establecer relaciones entre la sociedad civil y las instituciones de la Unión Europea (UE). Se entrevistaron ejecutivos de oficinas regionales de enlace de la UE que desempeñan actividades importantes en la formación de un conjunto de redes afines. Un factor clave involucra diferencias en sus restricciones de trabajo, evaluadas por una tipología dual de las oficinas junto con la literatura aplicada a grupos de presión en contextos de divulgación. Una tendencia a “volverse nativo”, junto con oportunidades para los antiguos funcionarios de controlar sus agendas, puede conducir a actividades que promueven la UE en las regiones, en vez de simplemente promover sus regiones en instituciones de la UE. French Cet article évalue le potentiel des «personnes et des lieux» comme un moyen d'élargir la recherche sur les acteurs politiques régionaux sur des questions clés relatives à leur rôle dans le processus d'intégration européenne, en berne depuis la publication du Livre blanc de la Commission européenne en 2011 sur la gouvernance qui a soulevé le potentiel qu'avaient les collectivités territoriales à combler le dé ficit des institutions de l'UE en collaboration avec la société civile territoriale. Les entrevues ont été menées auprès d'un sous-groupe de cadres des bureaux de liaison de l'UE chargés du premier rôle dans la formation et le maintien d'un groupe de réseaux apparentés. Un facteur clé implique des différences dans leurs contraintes de travail, évalués par une double typologie des bureaux en conjonction avec la littérature appliquée aux lobbyistes dans des contextes de sensibilisation. Une tendance à «aller indigène» au fil du temps, couplé avec les possibilités pour les titulaires de poste à long termes de contrôler leurs propres programmes de travail, peut conduire à des activités susceptibles d'orienter l'UE dans le sens des régions, plutôt que de promouvoir essentiellement la promotion des régions au sein des institutions de l'UE.

Inter-regional networks in Brussels: Analyzing the information exchanges among regional offices

What triggers the information exchange among the regional offices in Brussels? To answer this question, we develop a framework based on network theory and present the first large-N quantitative study on European Union-level inter-regional networks. Our results show that information exchanges take place predominantly among regions from the same member state. Furthermore, the likelihood of regular information exchanges between two regional offices depends on the resources invested in regional representation, the joint involvement in inter-regional associations, and geographical proximity. In contrast to our expectations, our findings refute the hypotheses that more regional autonomy and more experience in Brussels increase the propensity toward cross-border inter-regional networking, a practice that might potentially contribute to the fragmentation of member state representation.

Same Game but More Players? Sub-national Lobbying in an Enlarged Union

This contribution builds on the insights provided by the literature on sub-national mobilization in the European Union (EU) to assess whether the 2004–2007 rounds of enlargement have changed anything in this respect. Empirical analysis uses two types of data sources. The first is a survey of over a 100 regional offices in Brussels, and the second consists of 29 semi-structured interviews with Commission officials led in the aftermath of the 2004–2007 enlargements. These data are used to answer the following two research questions: (1) is there a ‘new’ versus ‘old’ cleavage at the territorial level in Brussels? (2) Is there anything like an ‘enlargement effect’ on sub-national mobilization? Analysis reveals that, while there is fading evidence of a ‘new’ versus ‘old’ cleavage in Brussels, enlargement has nevertheless had an impact on sub-national mobilization at the EU level, reinforcing older but also newer trends.

The European Lung Corner

This issue of the European Respiratory Journal ( ERJ ) sees the first of a new bimonthly section of articles entitled the European Lung Corner. The European Lung Corner will introduce topics of European Union (EU) affairs relevant to respiratory medicine and science. As you may or may not be aware, the European Respiratory Society (ERS) has an office in Brussels, Belgium, situated in the heart of the European quarter, entirely dedicated to advocacy and raising awareness among the public and policy makers of the burden of respiratory diseases across Europe. In doing so, the EU Affairs Dept works to promote prevention, health research, environmental protection, tobacco control and public health. As the ERS Secretary for EU Affairs, it is my privilege to present the EU Affairs Dept: B. Ward (Head of European Affairs), M. Barry (Policy Officer), T. El Nemr (Advocacy Officer) and N. Kamel (Scientific Officer). Governed by the Advocacy Committee, ERS advocacy in Brussels covers various fields. The current five objectives are to increase EU policymakers’ understanding and awareness of respiratory diseases, identify opportunities for research, strengthen tobacco control, strengthen environmental policy, and raise the profile of the ERS by actively participating in noncommunicable disease (NCD) discussions. At an …

Territorial interest representation in the European Union: actors, objectives and strategies

When studying the ever increasing mobilization of territorial authorities in the EU context, the literature has used the term ‘subnational’ as shorthand for very different actors, with the most typical distinction made between regional and local government. In this article we propose an alternative dichotomy. We suggest that ‘stronger’ regions actually share much in common with ‘stronger’ associations of local governments, while ‘weaker’ regions exhibit a number of similarities with ‘weaker’ associations and individual local authorities. We illustrate our findings using evidence gathered from a survey of 103 regional offices in Brussels as well as interview data of 149 officials working in five different European countries. We draw on existing research in this field, as well as our own data, to take stock of key understandings around territorial interest representation and present a series of propositions concerning (1) the objectives of subnational actors, distinguishing financial from regulatory mobilization, and (2) the strategies and representation channels used by these authorities.

Future directions for the ERS: Presidential plans

The mission of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) is to promote respiratory health and alleviate suffering from respiratory disease and it fulfils this goal by promoting science/research, education and advocacy. Among the Society's activities are a successful annual Congress (attended by approximately 20,000 delegates), research fellowships, grants and seminars and a comprehensive educational programme through the ERS School [1–5]. The educational programme encompasses postgraduate courses during the Congress, courses and seminars on various topics throughout the year across Europe, a website with a wealth of educational modules and interactive materials. Importantly, the ERS School has initiated a training programme called Harmonisation in Education in Respiratory Medicine for European Specialists (HERMES), which sets training standards across Europe, runs examination and certification processes for the European Diplomas in Respiratory Medicine and Paediatric Respiratory Medicine, and allows mobility of European specialists. Furthermore, the ERS has a strong advocacy role through its Advocacy Committee and Brussels office, and through the European Lung Foundation (ELF) – the public voice of the ERS, which links with patients and patient organisations, provides information and listens to and empowers the patients' voices. In a dynamic European and global setting, where health priorities in general (and respiratory medicine in particular) are changing rapidly, the ERS is planning to do even more in order to attract the attention of the media and policymakers and to bring more research funding into respiratory medicine. The ERS is proud to be the first major respiratory medicine society to have agreed and launched a public health Presidential plan, which is now being implemented. A series of ERS Summits has been organised since 2011, when the European Respiratory Roadmap , which set out directions for respiratory medicine and research over the next decade, was approved in Leuven (Belgium) and was then …

Independence in Europe: Secession, Sovereignty, and the European Union

III. THE EUROPEAN UNION AS A FORUM FOR SELF-DETERMINATION CLAIMS European integration was not always popular among nationalists in Europe's stateless nations. The SNP, for example, argued that integration amounted merely to the transfer of sovereignty over Scotland from one alien government in London to another in Brussels. (156) Yet by the 1980s, the SNP had become firm supporter of the European project and proponent of Independence in (157) Flemish nationalists have also embraced integration, and the N-VA describes itself as extremely pro-European party that supports both a stronger Flanders and stronger (158) The centrality of the EU to Catalan nationalist discourse is evident in the banners carried by demonstrators in Barcelona calling for Catalonia to become New European State, (159) in the Declaration of Sovereignty's assurance that [t]he founding principles of the European Union shall be defended and promoted, (160) and in Artur Mas's proposed wording for future referendum question: Do you want Catalonia to become new state within the European Union? (161) It is overly simplistic to conclude that the EU encourages or discourages separatism or that it makes secession easier or more difficult. Nonetheless, European integration affect[s] how the parties to [separatist] conflict perceive their own interests and identities. (162) Three aspects of the EU play particularly important role in shaping Flemish, Scottish, and Catalan self-determination claims and considering how such claims might be addressed: the respective roles of and regions in EU institutions, the rules governing EU membership, and the debates over the future of in the wake of the eurozone crisis. A. States and Regions Although it is often obscured by considerations of the EU's impact on sovereignty, the fact remains that the EU is in ways governed cooperation among the governments of its member states rather than by supranational structures with independent authority. (163) States remain the primary actors within the EU Membership in the EU is limited to sovereign that meet the EU's admissions criteria and that are admitted through unanimous vote by member states. (164) Once admitted to membership, participate directly in the EU's primary governing institutions: the European Council (consisting of ministers from each member state), the European Commission (consisting of one commissioner from each member state), and the European Parliament (consisting of elected representatives from the member states). (165) Thus, [statehood in the EU ... retains meaning for nationalists because it still remains the sole means by which nationalists can be recognized as sovereign equals in the European political system. (166) Attempts to establish formal channels for regional participation in EU governance have produced only limited results. During the 1980s and 1990s, it became popular to envision Europe of the in which local governments would replace as the primary building blocks of more fully integrated Europe. Many regions established information offices in Brussels in an effort to access the emerging European policymaking structures. (167) Bolstering the of the Regions idea was the Maastricht Treaty, which entered into force in 1993. (168) Maastricht enshrined the principle of subsidiarity (pursuant to which authority over any given area of competency should be vested at the lowest possible political level) in EU law, established Committee of the Regions, and allowed regional ministers to sit on member state delegations in the European Council where the member state deemed such participation appropriate. (169) Yet on balance, the robust regional role that the Maastricht Treaty appeared to promise has never fully materialized. According to Laible, many observers point not to the strength of regions in EU policymaking, but to their weakness. …