Taking the euro-crisis as a starting point, this Baltic Sea Talk will reflect upon the structural reasons behind the widening political, social and economic gap between creditor and debtor nations in the EU. An explanation will be given how the institutional setup, and indeed the very terms of the social contract, in Northern and Southern Europe are premised on remarkably different assumptions. More specifically, the focus will be on the role of bureaucracies in democratic politics. Following this, some of the proposed solutions to the economic crisis, particularly labour-market reforms and their applicability in Northern and Southern Europe, will be touched upon. Finally, as a conclusion the importance of culture in the construction of the EU, and the consequences such a reexamination will produce on the future of Europe will be recasted.
Fabrizio Tassinari PhD is a Senior Researcher and Head of Unit for Foreign Policy and EU Studies at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) in Copenhagen. 2005-2008 he served as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen and as an Associate Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels. His research interests are European security, democracy and integration, with a particular reference to the politics and political economy of the wider Europe. For summer 2013 he received an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship for experienced researchers which he is spending in Berlin.
Ort und Zeit: Dorotheenstr. 24, Haus 3, Raum 3.231 „Henrik Steffens“; 11. Juni 2013, 19.00 Uhr.