Successful 'Europaperspektiv' Book Seminar

On February 20th CERGU organized an afternoon event for the annual Europaperspektiv 2018: EU i en världsordning under omvandling (the EU in a Changing World Order). After a welcome delivered by CERGU Director Linda Berg, an introduction was given by moderator Per Cramér, Professor of International Law and member of the CERGU Steering Group.

The first to present was Sofie Blombäck, researcher and temporary university lecturer in Political Science at Mid-Sweden University (and former member of CERGU's research network at GU). Sofie presented her chapter "Populist Parties and the Challenge to the EU's Liberal Value Base", followed by an interesting conversation with Adam Cwejman, lead writer for the newspaper Göteborg Posten, about the concept of populism.

The next chapter presented was "Climate Policy in an Economic World Order", written by Thomas Sterner, Sverker Jagers & Frida Nilsson, economists and political scientists at the University of Gothenburg. Sverker Jagers, who presented on behalf of his co-authors, is also the director of CeCar, the Centre for Collective Action Research. The commentator was Christina Olsen Lundh, Vänersborg District Court. Christina, who raised questions about how climate goals can be achieved, was previously a CERGU postdoc at the Department of Law.

During the second half of the seminar, the focus shifted to the EU's trade agreements. Karolina Zurek, a researcher in Law at Stockholm University, spoke about sustainable development in the EU's future trade agreement in the light of the EU Court's ruling on the Singapore trade agreement. The commentator for this chapter was David Langlet, Professor of Maritime Administration at the University of Gothenburg, who addressed the question of sanctions.

Trade agreements were also the focus of the fourth and final chapter, "The Threat to Global Free Trade: The EU in a World Order with Bilateral Trade Agreements", written by Claes G. Alvstam, Senior Professor of Economic Geography and chairman of the CERGU International Advisory Board and Lena Lindberg, First Ambassador to the Swedish Representation in Brussels (and former CERGU Postdoc in Economics). Claes's presentation was commented on by Guri Rosén, Political Scientist at ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, and former guest postdoc at CERGU.