Our current notion of democracy has developed within and for the modern nation state. Robert Menasse, however, advocates Europe as a post-national utopia, requiring a fundamentally new and different understanding and practice of democracy that still needs to be developed. “The nation states”, he suggests, “must fade away if we want a system of checks and balances at European level.”
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Non-profit organizations which realise that some of their capabilities have a market value and deploy them accordingly can defend their autonomous status while reducing dependency from external donors, many of whom have an agenda of their own.
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The main issue with the European anthem lies in the fact that it takes a short tune completely out of context and – even worse – re-arranges it into a syrupy, self-contained, instrumental piece of music. The fact that renowned Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan was put in charge of cutting it to size does not do much to alleviate the injustice to the original.
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The FP7 programme and application process are so immensely complicated and difficult that it basically takes a dedicated FP7 expert to identify the appropriate call and to draft a proposal to match the strict format and eligibility criteria officially prescribed for it.
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The European Union disburses more than 7 billion euro a year for research. However, funding programmes and application procedures are also very complex and demanding. In this two-part article, I will discuss several related issues.
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German Christian democrat Günther Oettinger might not be a bad choice to fill the role of a European Commissioner. What is unsettling about Oettinger’s nomination lies not in his person, but in the way the German political sphere has handled it.
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Nicht weniger als eine innovative Grundlage für die Medienregulierung erwartete die Europäische Kommission von ihrem “Media Pluralism Monitor”. Das Ziel der Übung besteht darin, einen EU-weit einheitlichen Maßstab für das Konzept des Medienpluralismus zu entwickeln.
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Campus spirit combined with freedom of science and public exposure of the resulting knowledge, together with a communication culture that actually further develops the very notion of innovation instead of going for mere research PR – that would be a great achievement at European level.
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It seems that the ambitious project of a centralised European Institute of Technology and Innovation has been politically watered down to a major networking effort.
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The final piece of this three-part analysis of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), a special programme for countries outside but geographically or otherwise close to the European Union, looks at power issues and the challenges of practically implementing it.
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