Browsing by Author "Butnaru Troncota, Miruna"

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EU’s ‘Eastern discontents’ – when ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ politicisation collide – the case of Romania in the future of Europe debate
(Taylor & Francis online, 2026) Butnaru Troncota, Miruna; Ionita, Dragos
Over the past decade, the wave of successive crises that hit the EU has tested the EU’s legitimacy and resulted in increased EU politicisation. In the period between the Brexit referendum up until the 2019 European elections, several CEE member states (such as Poland and Hungary and to a lesser extent Romania) contested the EU for breaching their national sovereignty, claiming that their countries’ values and identities are ‘threatened’ by the EU’s interference. In this article, we analyse the case of Romania’s clashes with the European Commission between 2017 and 2019 on the topic of rule of law backsliding. We analyse these discursive clashes in connection to the country’s first Presidency of the Council, as an illustration of the increased politicisation placed in the overall context of the Future of Europe debates. The empirical part is based on a chronological account of selected qualitative data about how this national-supranational ‘power struggle’ unfolded in the studied period. The findings show that in the case of Romania two forms of politicisation coincided and collided - one that was ‘bottom-up’, marked by highly polarised national politics and an East–West division and another that was ‘top-down’ - defined by the tensions inside EU’s own political dynamics between the Council and the Commission.
EUROPEANIZATION IN SEGREGATED SCHOOLS? THIRD PARTIES’ EFFORTS TO BUILD A TRANS-ETHNIC EDUCATIONAL SPACE IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
(Analele Universităţii din Oradea, Seria Relaţii Internaţionale şi Studii Europene, 2026) Horobeanu, Gorgiana-Diana; Butnaru Troncota, Miruna
Bosnia and Herzegovina’s European integration has been marked by persistent stagnation, particularly in education, where ethnic segregation endures despite decades of reforms and external support. Most analyses approach reconciliation from a top-down perspective, focusing on constitutional reform and EU conditionality, yet this overlooks the everyday realities of divided schooling. This article addresses that gap by examining reconciliation from a bottom-up perspective, by examining third-party efforts to build trans-ethnic educational spaces in post-conflict societies. The research adopts a qualitative case study design, triangulating European Commission progress reports (2018–2024), IPA funding allocations, and NGO project documentation. This approach investigates how EU support intersects with local agency and whether participatory practices foster sustainable change in a segregated educational landscape. Findings show that while national reforms remain blocked, micro-level initiatives yield tangible improvements in interethnic cooperation, with some schools integrating inclusive models into curricula. These outcomes highlight the potential of participatory education projects to complement stalled macro-level reforms and illustrate how bottomup approaches can plant the seeds of a trans-ethnic social fabric, offering both local benefits and pathways for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s EU accession.