Keynote Lectures Catherine de Vries and Frank Schimmelfennig

CERGU had the pleasure of co-arranging two very interesting keynote lectures in conjunction with the Swedish Network for European Studies in Political Science (SNES) spring conference in Göteborg, 19-20 April. This year's conference theme was "The European Union: Inside / Out". Two internationally recognized researchers had been invited as keynote speakers. These were Professor Catherine de Vries, University of Essex, who spoke on "Euroscepticism and the Future of European Integration", as well as Professor Frank Schimmelfennig, ETH Zurich, who spoke on "EU enlargement: still the most successful foreign policy of the EU?". Both presentations were well-attended and followed by lively discussion with the audience. While Catherine raised a warning flag for potentially growing euro-scepticism, not least in Sweden, Frank wanted to highlight a more positive picture of the EU's eastern expansion, compared with how it is often perceived.