Present scholarship insufficiently addresses the linkages between Euroscepticism and supranational solidarity. On the one hand, scholars studying Euroscepticism argue that the lack of perceived benefits of the integration process explains EU citizens' opposition to their country membership in the union. However, this stream of literature does not inquire whether supranational social policies have the potential to change individuals’ perception of gains and losses related to European integration. On the other hand, the normative approach to European citizenship arguing for a transnational conception of justice and solidarity does not fully engage with the consequences of a social solidarity pillar in the EU. The SOCIALEU project builds on these two theoretical perspectives and investigates the role of a redistributive EU social policy in fostering citizen support for the Union. In particular, the project analyses the agenda-setting on social rights at the supranational level and subsequently inquires whether the provision of social benefits by EU institutions increases support for European integration and has the potential to turn populist party voters towards mainstream political parties. In doing so, the SOCIALEU project is the first theoretical and empirical undertaking that investigates the role that supranational social policy may have in changing people’s attitudes and voting behaviour in relation to the EU. I rely on the literature on welfare states’ role in strengthening national identity and social cohesion and argue that the provision of welfare goods at the EU level can strengthen support for the EU in general and among Eurosceptic citizens in particular. I employ an original research design that combines qualitative research in Brussels and survey experiments in France and Spain.

TiGRE provides an encompassing and coherent analytical framework for the study of trust relationships in governance. It studies trust among actors of regulatory regimes, such as regulators, political, administrative and judicial bodies, the regulated industries, service providers and their interest organisations, consumers and other societal interests, as well as citizens at large. TiGRE opens thereby new research directions within the tradition of studies of trust relationships between citizens and public authorities. TiGRE’s aim is to reveal the role of trust and distrust in European regulatory governance and the ways trust can be maintained, enhanced, repaired and nurtured via administrative practices and reforms. It takes a multilevel governance approach, which includes the EU level as well as the national and regional ones. Trust – both as a pre-condition and a consequence of well-functioning regulatory regimes – is a key factor to be considered in order to capture how these regimes are able to produce effective and legitimate governance. The in-depth investigation of the complex interplay between trust configurations and regulation in different regulatory regimes (finance, food safety, communication and data protection) across levels of governance and in several countries requires the joint effort of experts with wide-ranging experience. TiGRE is run by a tightly integrated multidisciplinary consortium of top-level scholars, who bring together a very broad range of theoretical, substantial, and methodological skills. A cutting-edge mixed-method approach is applied to provide a comprehensive understanding of such multi-faceted trust-related processes. To bridge research with policy and practice, TiGRE provides criteria, indicators and early warning mechanisms for detecting decreasing trust, and scenarios on consequences thereof. They will be validated through interaction with stakeholders and compared with evidence from outside the EU.

Around the world, nationalist politicians see migrants and ethnic minorities as undeserved receivers of public goods. What underpins these exclusionary claims is the thesis that ethnic diversity impedes the prospects of economic progress and social welfare. Does this thesis withstand systematic inquiry? At a first glance, there are plenty of studies that link ethnic heterogeneity to the underprovision of public goods. An influential literature in political economy asserts a strong association between high levels of diversity and low levels of public service provision such as schooling or health care. States, Nationalism, and the Relationship between Ethnic Diversity and Public Goods Provision [ETHNICGOODS] aims to revisit and challenge this conventional wisdom, and the doggedly ahistorical perspective it implies. Instead of treating ethnic diversity as exogenous, the project explores the role of historical patterns of nation-building and state institutional development. I expect different nation-building modes—that is, whether states seek to assimilate, accommodate, or exclude minorities—to have distinct consequences for contemporary levels of diversity and collective goods provision. I further expect historical variations in the capacity of states to provide public goods to affect contemporary levels of heterogeneity and public goods provision. To develop and test this theoretical argument on a global scale, ETHNICGOODS will create two new, publicly available datasets and combine comparative-historical case studies and statistical analysis. With this ambitious focus the project aims to make a major contribution to our understanding of ethnic diversity, injecting a historical perspective into debates around the political and developmental consequences of heterogeneity. Finally, by connecting with a range of academic and non-academic audiences, ETHNICGOODS will influence public debates about ethnic diversity and its effects.

BRIDGEGAP is a multidisciplinary research project reuniting former members of the ANTICORRP consortium (Transparency International, ERCAS/SAR, CSD, University of PISA, University of Perugia) who have continued to invest in the development of data commons allowing corruption understanding and monitoring on the basis of objective data (e.g. Integrity Watch, Index for Public Integrity, T-Index, Russian Economic Footprint), with new academic partners who published novel methods to measure money-laundering (Utrecht University) anthropologists and criminologists who pioneered corruption studies in liberal democracies (IFFS), and new IT groups like the Ukrainian organisation YouControl, the first to interconnect data to enable searches of the assets of sanctioned individuals through its algorithm Follow the Money. BRIDGEGAP fills the knowledge gaps regarding both the extent to and the mechanisms by which corruption infiltrates open societies even across borders and it produces measurements of corruption across countries and time by its innovative models, as well as social network maps. It also assesses and offers solutions to the digital transparency gaps, ranging from the tools of transparency, the use and abuse of technology in corruption and anticorruption to the state of it. Finally, it assesses public accountability and anticorruption regulation across EUMS and candidate states to identify regulatory and impact gaps, thus addressing the academia–policy gap in corruption studies. The research will result in academic publications as well as in interactive analytical and research commons like comparative law repositories EU Compass, European Transparency Index, Follow the Money search engines across newly interconnected databases. All its pooled data will be displayed transparently on the website as a Data Hub and will offer end users the same investigation and analytical tools as the project researchers, inviting crowd-sourcing and offering online tutorials.

Mundus MAPP is a 2 year transnational joint master’s degree accredited under the EA. It is offered by an international consortium composed of academic and professional partners. CEU PU (Austria), the ISS (the Netherlands), the UoY (UK) and IBEI (Spain) deliver the teaching (UAB, UPF and UB are the degree awarding institutions for IBEI). They are joined by 10 professional partners with global outreach, which provide professional experience opportunities and help assess and raise awareness of the programme. MBU (Slovakia) joins as associated academic partner and participate in joint activities. Mundus MAPP aims - to bring to Europe high potential students and empower them to assess and address the world’s most pressing policy challenges; - to deliver a globally oriented top-class joint master's degree that builds on the partners’ strengths and collaborative synergies, and provides a distinctive – European - perspective on public policy; - to bring together the making of public policy and the politics of making it in an integrated yet flexible programme with a common core and 4 distinct study tracks; - to provide students with meaningful international mobility paths; - to provide students with robust foundations in core subjects, interdisciplinary skills, research training, professional experience and networking opportunities; - to set students onto impactful careers; - to foster and sustain international cooperation to design postgraduate education that meets contemporary needs. Mundus MAPP is a unique postgraduate programme in public policy in Europe and beyond, ideally tailored to the needs of internationally mobile and globally oriented policy professionals. The new edition introduces innovations which will further enhance its attractiveness. Over the grant duration (2023-29), the programme aims to attract over 2000 applicants from at least 50 countries, train at least 160 outstanding students and set them onto to successful careers.