DRIIE-European studies

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A central bank’s dilemmas in highly uncertain times - a Romanian view
(Institute for Economic Forecasting, 2015-03) Dăianu, Daniel
This paper looks at policy dilemmas the National Bank of Romania has faced over the years, with the analysis framed in a European and historical context. Some of these dilemmas are of an older vintage, such as how to deal with massive capital flows, how to combat high inflation when resource misallocation is a very burdensome legacy and expectations of high inflation are well entrenched. Other dilemmas are pretty new, or have got salience during the Great Recession. Romania has had to undertake a painful correction of its large macroeconomic imbalances. "Light" inflation targeting has provided leeway for mitigating the fallout from the financial crisis, although high euroization has dented its efficacy. The specter of stagnation in the Euro Area, financial deleveraging, unconventional policies which are pursued by key central banks, the ongoing reform of banking regulation and supervision, a growing shadow banking, how will the Banking Union evolve, etc, make up a very complicated European context and pose a range of big challenges for the central banks of New Member States (NMSs).
A new EU economic governance and fiscal framework : what role for the National Independent Fiscal Institutions (IFIs)?
(European Institute of Romania, 2023-06) Dăianu, Daniel
The European Commission's communication on orientations for a reform of the European Union's economic governance framework asks the European Fiscal Board (EFB) and national Independent Fiscal Institutions (IFIs) to play a more significant role in it. This vision has plenty of merit, but one needs to be careful in how to implement it. Structural reforms and public investment analysis demand an expertise hardly existing at the level of most national IFIs, and any involvement in policy design would make its assessment tricky when IFIs are part of the process: an inescapable conflict of interest would ensue. It could also be perceived as a technocratic encroachment on a democratic decision-making process. In order to play a more significant role in the EU economic governance framework, national IFIs need more resources according to the EU-wide acceptable standards of operation, and, first of all, they need to bolster their macroeconomic and debt sustainability analysis capabilities.
Applying securitisation theory to EU competition policy
(European Institute of Romania, 2021-12) Anglițoiu, George
Is the competition policy connected and relevant to security? Is a nonjuridical and non-economic theory capable to cover the dynamics of EU competition issues? The answers included in this article will focus on the unconventional dimensions of security as interconnections between social and economic layers of individual, business and public interests. The final outcome would be alternative scenarios and solutions for a better understanding of the overall human security in relationship with the deepening of EU Competition Policy.
Artificial Intelligence and Inequality in European Union
(National University of Political Studies and Public Administration - Department of International Relations and European Integration, 2020-01-12) Caradaică, Mihail
The paper aims to explore the roots of inequality in the European Union by focusing on the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enlarge the actual digital divide. Each time a new technology is broadly implemented in society, it generates economic and social gaps. There are many similar examples in history when a new invention brought poverty for significant categories of people, who faced unemployment due to new industrial machines or found themselves unable to operate or afford new devices. Therefore, the research question that I will try to answer in this paper is: "does artificial intelligence have the potential to create more inequality in the European Union?". To answer this question, I will firstly address the issue of AI's state of the art and I will research how this new technology is industrially implemented, aiming to see to what extent it represents a threat to our jobs or our way of life. Secondly, I will search for social mechanisms that generate inequality by using the concept of digital divide. This theoretical approach focuses on the possibility of people impoverishing due to the lack of basic skills and the impossibility to afford new available technologies. Thirdly, I will develop a case study, a comparative approach on EU's member states strategies in the field of AI.
Assessing a decade of Romania-Turkey strategic partnership in an era of ambivalence and 'De-Europeanisation'
(Routledge, 2022-01) Lazăr, Aurel; Butnaru Troncotă, Miruna
The redefinition of Turkey's national identity under the rule of President Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) influenced its foreign policy. For many years, Turkey maintained an ambivalent position towards the EU, and as a NATO ally and only by the end of 2020 it disclosed an openly anti-Western position. In this context, there is a rich literature studying Turkey's actions to reassert its influence in the Western Balkans, but there is less scholarly attention on Turkey's relations with Romania - its Black Sea neighbour and NATO ally. Building on recent literature on Turkey's regional strategies and tendencies of 'De-Europeanisation', we scrutinized the country's bilateral relations with Romania between 2008 and 2020. The analysis relies on mainly qualitative data and offers a chronological account of the main diplomatic interactions between the two governments, placed in the context of significant regional events. The article concludes that, compared to the Balkans, there are the same ambivalent tendencies in Turkey-Romania relations. It shows that Turkey acted as a relevant economic partner and security ally for Romania at the Black Sea, while distancing more and more from the EU and asserting a more active role as a regional player in the Middle East and in the Balkans.
Assessing the Involvement/ Development of Civil Society as Part of the European Integration Process of the Eastern Partnership States
(Civil Szemle Foundation, 2023-12) Costea, Ana Maria; Melenciuc Ioan, Ioana Roxana
2023 marks 14 years since the European Union (EU) launched the Eastern Partnership (EaP) Program, an instrument that was designed to respond to the vulnerabilities and threats specific to the six Eastern European countries that were not part of the EU (the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and Armenia). After several series of critics, the EaP was revised in 2017 in order to break the one size fits all policy and, thus, to be more adaptable to each specific case. Although the Program was not designed and still is not a platform for future accession, two out of six states are currently candidate countries to the EU (Moldova and Ukraine), fact that emphasizes even more the importance of the EaP as a platform used to start the integration process. On the other side, one critic that still stands is represented by the fact that it does not offer any security guaranties against external threats, fact that was seen in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and in 2022 when the war in Ukraine started. In terms of tangible evaluation of its results, the EaP indexes were launched in 2011 and the European Commission's reports regarding the 2020 deliverables represent ones of the most important tools for measuring the integration level of each country. Since the war threatens the stability and the security of the entire region, if not of the entire continent, one aspect that tends to be overlooked is represented by the importance of civil society and active citizenship. The present research aims to assess the level of development and involvement of the civil society between 2011-2022 throughout all six EaP countries. It is also emphasized the role of the civil society and its development during the periods of crisis, as well as the link between external funding and the sustainability of the activities performed by the civil society.
BOOK REVIEW: Miruna Troncotă. 2014. Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Critical Case Study of Europeanization, Bucharest, Tritonic Publishing House, 327 pages, ISBN: 978-606-8571-36-2
(National University of Political Studies and Public Administration - Department of International Relations and European Integration, 2015-09) Ungureanu, Radu-Sebastian
Civil Society as the Arena of the New European Climate Hegemony: A neo-Gramscian Approach to European Green Transition
(Civil Szemle Foundation, 2024-07-30) Caradaică, Mihail
Using a neo-Gramscian approach, this paper explores the concept of civil society as an arena where European climate hegemony is built. The EU's green transition, which involves deep social and economic transformations, needs extensive popular support to avoid social instability and the rise of populist parties. To achieve this, the European Com-mission is trying to construct a counter-hegemonic discourse that challenges the traditional modes of a fossil fuel-based economy by creating an alliance of actors around the ideology of just transition. Therefore, the study addresses the following research question: who are the change agents within European civil society that have aligned with the alliance, and how is fostering a counter-hegemonic discourse against the traditional economic model? By employing a qualitative methodological approach, the study explores the crucial function of civil society in the European green transition, exposing the most important agents and how these agents facilitate the formation of a new climate hegemony.
EU Crises as «Catalysts of Europeanization»? Insights from Eurobarometer Data in Romania on the Impact of the Refugee Crisis and Brexit
(National University of Political Studies and Public Administration - Department of International Relations and European Integration, 2018-06) Butnaru Troncotă, Miruna; Loy, Alexandra
For the last decade, the EU was confronted with an unprecedented series of subsequent and often overlapping crises - the constitutional crisis, the Euro crisis, the massive influx of migrants and refugees and last but not least, the Brexit referendum. They were all very different in structure, but they had a common element - they put to test the European Union's (EU) legitimacy. The main assumption of the study is that these recent crises in the EU directly influence the debates in the national public spheres, and affect the way in which solidarity among EU citizens and EU states is imagined and enacted in media. Thus, the study aims to explain variation in the Romanian public opinion for the period 2014 to 2017. It identifies exogenous factors that relate to the EU polity, its policies and national politics and how they shaped public debate in Romania around two main Pan-European crises - the refugee crisis and Brexit. The paper discusses the impact of the two crises on the Romanians' level of trust in EU institutions and assesses possible causes of this 'superficial Euro-enthusiasm' on the overall context of the Europeanization of public sphere in Romania. The findings are discussed in light of three main conditions of a Europeanized national public sphere: the role of Romanian media in building EU legitimacy; very high levels of polarization and contestation around the 2 topics of common concern; and a clear 'European dimension that transcends national topics.
EU's 'Eastern discontents' - when 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' politicisation collide - the case of Romania in the future of Europe debate
(Routledge, 2022-05-17) Butnaru Troncotă, Miruna; Ioniță, Dragoș
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.
EURO zone crisis and EU governance: Tackling a flawed design and inadequate policy arrangements (an essay)
(Akademiai Kiado, 2012-09) Dăianu, Daniel
This paper focuses on the roots of strain in the European Monetary Union (EMU). It argues that there is need for a thorough reform of the EU governance structure in conjunction with radical changes in the regulation and supervision of financial markets. The EMU was sub-optimal from its debut and competitiveness gaps did not diminish against the backdrop of its inadequate policy and institutional design. The euro zone crisis is not related to fiscal negligence only; over-borrowing by the private sector and poor lending by banks, as well as a one-sided monetary policy also explain this debacle. The EMU needs to complement its common monetary policy with solid fiscal/budget underpinnings. Fiscal rules and sanctions are necessary, but not sufficient. A common treasury (a federal budget) is needed in order to help the EMU absorb shocks and forestall confidence crises. A joint system of regulation and supervision of financial markets should operate. Emergency measures have to be comprehensive and acknowledge the necessity of a lender of last resort; they have to combat vicious circles. Structural reforms and EMU level policies are needed to enhance competitiveness in various countries and foster convergence.
European Green Deal and the new policy goals in transport and mobility - how gamification can influence pro-environmental behaviour for cutting carbon emissions in the EU
(National University of Political Studies and Public Administration - Department of International Relations and European Integration, 2020) Butnaru Troncotă, Miruna
Road traffic is one of the major sources of many of the worst pollutants, including carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide, carcinogenic particles and noise. The past decades have seen a dramatic rise in these harmful effects on human health, that proved to cause at the same time massive damage to the natural and built environment. In response to this aggravating situation, the new European Commission's President Ursula von der Leyen placed as the centrepiece of her political mandate 'the European Green Deal', a comprehensive climate and nature package of measures to make Europe climate neutral by 2050. To reach this very ambitious goal, there is a need for very creative and efficient policy solutions. And this is the scope of the current study. As the sustainability concerns become vital for policy planning, the paper advocates for the need of all EU's main stakeholders to realise the potential of 'green gamification' to help EU member states reach these ambitious policy goals, particularly in the field of transport and mobility - which are of crucial importance for overall CO2 reduction. Placed at the intersection of technology innovation and the need to find more efficient ways to protect the environment, 'green gamification' is an emerging concept that refers to the usage of game mechanics when it comes to engaging people, with the purpose to change their behaviour on sustainability issues. In short, it aims to motivate a sustainable behaviour within companies, institutions and citizens, with the use of interactive games, in order to fight against pollution and climate change. Applied to the field of transport and mobility, green gamification implies using strategies to cut carbon emissions especially by convincing people to reduce the use of private cars. But how can we better incentivise citizens' behaviour for cutting carbon emissions and achieve the new EU transport and mobility policy goals for 2050? To tackle this relevant question the article aims to assess the potential of 'green gamification' to help EU member states reach these ambitious policy goals.
European Union a polity in search of a mission?
(Ecozone Publishing House, 2012-04-22) Ungureanu, Radu-Sebastian
The unique features of the European Union generate permanent political and theoretical debates; the fact is unsurprising, since simply describing this entity is a challenge. Despite the impressive literature on the topic, there is no widely recognized understanding of EU‟s nature as a polity. The paper considers that the most appropriate term from the usual political vocabulary to designate it is that of „empire‟. EU is based on an imperial myth, comprises many former imperial powers, can be considered an empire, but does not display the behaviour and ideology expected from one. The article suggests that the answer for this dissonance can be found in considering that the defining feature of a given empire is its „mission‟ – the ideological project that legitimizes and guides it. From the theoretical position of social constructivism, the paper investigates the characteristics of EU‟s mission as an innovative polity.
European Union in the Age of Neo-Liberalism
(National University of Political Studies and Public Administration - Department of International Relations and European Integration, 2013-07) Caradaică, Mihail
This paper belongs to the area of critical studies of European Integration and tries to analyse the super-structural dimension of European Integration and to identify its role in two areas of policy outputs. The theoretical approach is neo-gramscianism, which is focused on social forces agency in the process of integration and super-structural dimension of European Single Market. Since 1980, the interests of big capital, gathered in the European Round Table, shaped a neo-liberal dimension of the European economy, adapting it to the context of globalisation. But this neo-liberal project was also able to capture social-democratic, trade union and centrist demands into a neo-liberal European order, called by Bastiaan van Apeldoorn "embedded" neo-liberalism. This European model has also his limits because it puts the interests of capital in front of social policies through the assurance of market efficiency by EU, leading to a neoliberal hegemony. My purpose here is to see if neoliberal hegemony in European Union has a real impact on policies outputs, analysing the Eastern Enlargement and Europe 2020 Strategy.
Europeanisation through education : promoting european etudies in “Eastern Partnership” countries
(UACES (University Association for Contemporary European Studies), 2022-12-15) Makarychev, Andrey; Butnaru Troncotă, Miruna
Educational practices are instrumental in the transfer of European values beyond EU borders. Our aim is to problematize Europeanisation through education in the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries by studying the promotion of EU studies in higher education pro-jects funded by the Erasmus + program. The paper discusses the educational dimension of Europeanisation in EaP countries from three interrelated perspectives -social constructivism, the Foucauldian concept of governmentality and a post-structuralist reading of centrality and marginality. We specifically focus on a series of international projects developed by the University of Tartu (Estonia) in partnership with other EU-based and non-EU universities from the EaP. We used qualitative data from reports of 4 EU-funded cooperation projects and also students' views obtained in 2 focus groups that explored how the EU is taught and discussed. In the end, the added value of the article is that it offers a critical view on teaching the EU in the Eastern neighborhood, focusing on nuanced local perspectives on the challenges of Europeanisation through education.
In-between a dream and a nightmare? Assessing the impact of 'Wartime Politicisation' on EU enlargement policy after 2022
(Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, 2024) Butnaru Troncotă, Miruna
The brutal start of Russia's invasion in Ukraine in February 2022 had numerous unexpected consequences. One of them was that it brought enlargement back at the top of EU's agenda. This was also followed by a revitalisation of EU's own internal dilemma between prioritising deepening or widening, together with the increasing contradictions between member states on how should enlargement proceed. It is thus relevant to assess whether this geopolitical shift had an overall positive or negative impact on the EU. In this context, the main aim of the article is to assess the various forms of 'wartime politicisation' between 2022 and 2024 among the main policy actors in EU's public sphere around the topic of advancing its enlargement policy. In end, the article demonstrates that 'wartime politicisation' can have both stabilizing and destabilizing effects on EU and discusses future avenues of research.
Mihail S. Gorbaciov, ,,noua gândire” și sistemul relațiilor internaționale la sfârșitul Războiului Rece = Mikhail S. Gorbachev, ”new thinking” and the system of international relations at the end of the Cold War
(Faculty of Political and Administrative Sciences of “Petre Andrei” University of Iasi, 2022-12) Buchet, Constantin
In a problematization of the external reactions of the USSR and the ”party and state apparatus” during the period of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, we believe that the actions to contituite the new strategic thinking that ordered the political movement in the international environment must be included, with analytical priority for Soviet power. After the disappearance of two leaders from the Stalinist era, as a formative political vision, Andropov and Cernenko, the time had come to change the referential strategic concept for the Soviet Union on the lineage of détente. Thus, Gorbachev approached the relations with the USA through the prism of an improved political communication on the themes of disarmament, without excluding the competition for power through the arms race, the issues generated by the problem of German reunification, the discussion of the status of the Eastern European countries traditionally integrated into the communist bloc, the approach economic and ideological assistance for the Third World.
Neo-Gramscian Approach on Europeanization
(Faculty of Social and Administrative Sciences, Nicolae Titulescu University, 2014-07) Caradaică, Mihail
This paper belongs to the area of critical studies in European Integration and I will try to demonstrate that the concept of Europeanization is not able to capture the nature of social change which occurs in member states. Nowadays, this concept is largely used by scholars to describe all of the economic, political and social changes that are taking place in national domestic policy under the influence of the European Union, understood as a distinct polity. In other words, this approach of Europeanization is limited only to the European geographical space and, as a consequence, it cannot capture the wider context in which the European Union exists – globalization and the nature of world order. My aim is to analyse the concept of Europeanization through the neo-gramscian theoretical framework and to see if it can be overlapped with the process of European integration. I will do this by assuming a historical materialist view on the European integration process and international relations which will help me understand these changes through the Marxist perspective of structure and superstructure. Those concepts are mutually constructed in the neo-gramscian approach and they are represented by the agency of social forces and its superstructural dimension – the neoliberal ideology according to Baastian Van Apeldoorn, Andeas Bieler, Adam David Morton or Stephen Gill
New patterns of europeanisation: digitalizing Romania's educational system during COVID-19 crisis
(National University of Political Studies and Public Administration - Department of International Relations and European Integration, 2024-07-15) Caradaică, Mihail; Cucută, Radu Alexandru; Negrescu, Victor; Ungureanu, Radu-Sebastian
As a result of the major pressure exerted by the COVID-19 pandemic and its management on students and teachers, the EU member states and institutions face the necessity to accelerate the digitalization of education. The EU interventions in this field open the debate on whether digital education will be another subject of Europeanisation as the supranational institutions are acquiring more competences, and whether a new European policy approach was generated by the pandemic. Therefore, the paper investigates whether the COVID crisis represents a major shift in the Europeanisation of digital education in the EU. We will thus try to assess this transformation by analysing the impact of the crisis on digital education, showcasing Romania and the manner in which the national government designed its public policies against the background of the EU positions, recommendations and measures.
Perceptions of Civil Society in Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Context of the Nagorno–Karabakh Conflict
(Civil Szemle Foundation, 2023-06) Brie, Mircea; Costea, Ana Maria; Petrila, Laurențiu
This paper aims to be a contextual, conceptual and factual analysis of the complicated relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan and what are the main perceptions of civil society in these countries in the context of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is a dispute over the province’s status as a major source of tension between the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan and the leadership of the self-proclaimed republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, in the mediation of which other international actors got involved, such as OSCE, the Minsk group consisting of France, the Russian Federation and the USA. Overall, whereas Armenia tends to be on a progressive scale with some concerns over the possibility to return to a non-democratic regime, Azerbaijan is already placed on a regressive scale. Given the topic of the paper, we had a closer attention to the 2020-2021 period of time since the Nagorno Karabakh war took place in the autumn of 2020 – thus, 2011 being the first year when the European Commission launched the European Integration Index for the Eastern Partnership states and 2022 being the year with the most recent data regarding the topic. In what regards the results of our research, both civil societies have been involved in the conflict resolution, but with various degrees, taking into consideration the different national ex-ante conditions. Armenia proved to be more resilient over the years, thus, although facing mass protests ending with the Parliament building being temporally seized, with a general feeling of fear towards the possibility of regressing, the democratic level remained the same, in 2021-2022 being declared as a partly fee country, whereas in the case of Azerbaijan it fell under the regressive paradigm with: a practically non-existent independent media, very limited tools to hold the state accountable, measures that were taken against the activists that declared themselves against the war and civil society organizations that do not have access to foreign funding.

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