2022 Highlights

It was a pleasure to welcome participants of the Master in Management organised by the Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Gadjah Mada. They were at the Campus or their course International Risk Management & Wealth Management Program and received a presentation by Prof. Rob Bauer (SBE, Maastricht University) as part of their Brussels visit,  the programme was organised by Prof. Onno Steenbeek (Erasmus University Rotterdam).

This was the seventh event in the Fireplace Talks on the 30th Anniversary of the Maastricht Treaty, organised by UM Campus Brussels. It focused on one of the policy fields laid out by the Maastricht Treaty and in particular - Justice & Home Affairs and Police Cooperation. The discussion also focused on the European Arrest Warrant, a simplified cross-border judicial surrender procedure, which is meant to prosecute or execute a custodial sentence or detention order. 

Our guest speakers for the talk were André Klip, Professor of Criminal Law at Maastricht University and Jan Van Gaever, Advocate General at Prosecutor General’s Office, Brussels. 

Listen to the podcast episode of this talk here.

As UM's Research Hub in the EU capital, we were delighted to host the kick-off meeting of the FHML led Youth-GEMs project. Mental health disorders affect 1/4 people, with >75% of those before age 24. UM now coordinates research into genetic and environmental factors of mental health in young people in Europe. The Youth-GEMS project is funded by the EU for 9.7M euro, you can find more information on the project here.

The policy advisors internationalisation of the Dutch universities organised a meeting at the Campus. Participants attending received EU policy updates from the Czech Presidency of the European Council and Neth-ER.

ECPC organsised the Data Protection Officer (DPO) Certification course. The training covers an in depth insight of the GDPR  and all implementation obligations; a step-by-step model to put in place the necessary privacy compliant data protection and information security policies in your organisation; guidance in the most cost-effective and efficient ways to comply with the GDPR. More information on ECPC and their programmes can be found here. 

The RELAY Workshop: Giving EU democracy ‘a new push’ in times of crisis brought together academics, policy-makers and civil society.​ The broad aim of this workshop was to take stock of the state of affairs of EU democracy in times of crisis and to explore two ‘main channels’ of EU democracy: parliamentary democracy (with both national parliaments and the European Parliament being in the spotlight) to and civil society/citizen involvement. 

The EU, as the key driver of the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) Modernisation, has shown its determination to reform the ECT investment protection standards and the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, while aligning the ECT with EU climate policy enshrined in the European Green Deal. After almost three years of negotiations and 13 negotiation rounds, the fate of the ECT is to be decided. A decision on the Treaty’s amendment is expected on 24 June 2022 at the final ad hoc Energy Charter Conference. In addition, on 16 June the Court of Justice of the EU will deliver its opinion on the compatibility of the intra-EU arbitration in the modernised ECT. 
This seminar was organised in cooperation between the Australian National University Centre for European Studies (ANUCES) and the Maastricht University Institute for Transnational Legal Research (METRO), will discuss the future of the ECT.

89 Initiative & Studio Europa hosted "The Shifting Sands of Europe: COVID-19, Energy, and the Drumbeat of War" conference. More information here. The 89 Initiative is a pan-European ‘think-do’ tank working to address generational challenges that are international in nature. It adopts a future focus, harnessing the dynamism of a new generation of European thinkers and policy makers to infuse European policy debates with fresh political thinking about the generational challenges facing Europe. 

This in-person conference was organised by the European Policy Centre as part of the Coalition for Health, Ethics and Society (CHES), and Maastricht University. The conference reflected on public health and health policy in the EU over the last three decades, taking stock of the developments and changes since 1992. The event also looked at the state of health in Europe today while also discussing the future of health in the EU. The conference was opened by Elizabeth Kuiper, Associate Director at the European Policy Centre, alongside Professor Helmut Brand head of the Department of International Health at Maastricht University and Professor Mariolina Eliantonio, Director of Maastricht University Campus Brussels.

 

We had the pleasure of welcoming 40 students and alumni of the MA Globalisation and Development Studies for their 10th Anniversary. to the Campus. Our Campus team organised an international buffet for the students and alumni to match the international and global themed master programme. 

Professor John Parkinson (FASoS) and colleagues organised a two-day consortium regarding the Deliberation Laboratory (DeLab) project. The UM team, led by Prof. John Parkinson, is developing and applying cultural script theory to detect the linguistic 'scripts' of conflict, before testing different AI responses in the laboratory and in the wild. DeLab Artificial Intelligence and the Society of the Future is a four-year research project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. It seeks to develop a moderator using artificial intelligence (AI) that can recognise escalating conflict in social media and intervene to de-escalate the situation.

Students from the Center for European Studies visited UM Campus Brussels as part of their Brussels trip. The campus arranged for a high level speaker from the European Commission - Directorate General Justice and Consumers, to hold a presentation on how the Commission mainstreams the Charter of Fundamental Rights. The presentation was followed by a Q&A with the students.

The course included 10 students from the US studying for a semester abroad, plus two regular UM students from FHML/FdR. They are studying at a variety of faculties: Law, UCM, FHML, FPN, FASoS and CES taking classes within the framework of Politics, Law and International Relations among others. The students backgrounds included Philosophy, Politics and Law, Political Science, International Studies, International Relations and East Asian Studies, Political Science, Political Science and Sociology and Political Science/Psychology.

UM Campus Brussels hosted a group of Maastricht University students from the BA European Studies. The students were here for a research trip within the Maastricht Research-Based Learning excellence project. They visited European Parliament, European Council and the Permanent Representation of the Netherland to the EU.  The students presented their research within the project which focuses on developing a website on EU member states, which will explain how member states' interests are defended in the EU, including the role of national parliaments and their representations in Brussels. 

For more than a decade, the European Union has been re-examining the ways to safeguard Member State compliance  with the foundational values enshrined in Article 2 TEU, with special attention to the rule of law, judicial independence and the right to a fair trial. TRIIAL Final Conference - Challenges to judicial independence and rule of law in the European Union offered to take stock of these legal developments.

The two-day hybrid conference brought together experts and researchers from a large number of jurisdictions across the European Union who have worked to develop the collective knowledge on how standards of judicial independence, impartiality and accountability have been shaped on national and supra-national levels.

This was another virtual tour organised by the UM Campus Brussels team. Maastricht University staff and students had the opportunity to meet the team, take a virtual tour of the Campus, find out about the possibilities available for the organisation of events and find out more about the activities organised at the Campus. 

UM Campus Brussels plans to organise such events for the Maastricht University community on a yearly basis. Stay tuned for the next one!

This was a two-day workshop on the 'Shared Management of EU Funds in Comparative Perspective' organised by Globalization and Law Network, YERUN and the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University. This hybrid workshop aimed at building a community of scholars interested in the EU funds management and foster academic exchange. 

This was a 2,5-day training programme, which is a building block of the full Diploma Track on Privacy Management. The training is delivered by European Centre on Privacy and Cybersecurity based in Maastricht. 

ECPC, Maastricht University, offers a new executive master programme aimed at professionals who seek to become tomorrow’s privacy and cybersecurity leaders. The two-year part-time programme offers an ambitions curriculum that bridges the intersection between law, technology, ethics, governance and management. 

This four day event included lectures on Advanced Cybersecurity and Global Cybersecurity Strategy with a day trip to EUROPOL, the Hague. 

This is the second year UM Campus Brussels has provided support for the organisation of the online Zoom Psychology and Law Symposium. The Zoom-Psychology and Law Symposium (Z-PLS) is an online conference in the area of psychology and law. Z-PLS was launched in 2020 at the initiative of Prof. Henry Otgaar (Maastricht University; KU Leuven), Dr. Irena Boskovic (Erasmus University Rotterdam), and Dr. Ivan Mangiulli (KU Leuven) as a series of online one-day symposia following the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year's edition focused on the topic of children in legal settings. Key experts provided the latest insights into themes related to children in legal settings such as suggestibility and forensic child interviewing. 

UM Campus Brussels had the pleasure of hosting the first face-to-face meeting of the Deep Brain Stimulation Society (DBS). The goal of the DBS Society is to promote the application of DBS by creating spaces for exchange, such as webinars, or face-to-face conferences.

In March we had the pleasure of hosting a group of HR staff members from YUFE member universities in the framework of the YUFE Professional service staff track. The career development track for HR Recruitment & Selection experts is a track of half a year. The concrete objective of the career development programme is to develop a series of new tools, using the European University concept, to promote career paths at YUFE institutions and professional development exchanges.

The five day learning experience included workshops, group work, lectures and visits to European institutions. 

On March 24th Studio Europa Maastricht and Maastricht University Campus Brussels held the conference ‘The Missing Puzzle Piece: reconciling labour migration and the European social model’ as a part of the Jean Monnet REAY project. This event aimed to explore how we can utilise the values from Europe’s unique social model and strengthen the European Pillar of Social Rights to improve the inclusion of labour migrants in our societies, stop labour exploitation of migrant workers and ultimately provide better labour market outcomes and improve social cohesion for everyone.

This was a hybrid event split in three sessions, which covered topics of 'Free Movement of Labour, Precarious Employment, and Social Rights', 'Labour migration in the Dutch context' and 'High Level Dialogue on Employment, Social Affairs, and Inclusion'.

UM Campus Brussels, in partnership with the Association of Public Schools in the European Region (ASPHER), organised a Fireplace Talk event on the topic of Public Health beyond the pandemic. The discussion focused on the functions of public health, the challenges it faced in light of the pandemic, and what is the future of public health beyond the pandemic. 

We had the pleasure of virtually hosting Dr. Katarzyna Czabanowska, professor in Public Health Leadership and Workforce Development at the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences at Maastricht University, Dr. Andrzej Ryś, the director responsible for Health Systems, Medical Products and Innovation in DG SANTE, Prof. Nadav Davidovitch, head of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s School of Public Health and Dr. José María Martín Moreno, Professor of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Valencia. 

The Brussels Roundtable reflected on the key findings of the Pakistan Symposium. This was an interdisciplinary Roundtable, whihc discussed inclusion and exclusion and religious differences in educational curricula and textbooks and in educational institutions in Pakistan. The Roundtable considered the role that education and educational curricula can play in promoting informed and civil conversation about religious freedom and the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy.  

The Conflict and Education Learning Laboratory (CELL Foundation), is a non-governmental organisation that works towards an international agreement to reduce divisive stereotypes in school textbooks.

At the beginning of March, we had the pleasure of hosting our colleagues from the Young Universities for the Future of Europe (YUFE). The meeting was to discuss a new proposal for the development of the YUFE Alliance as a response to the European Commission's 2022 call for European Universities. 

YUFE is an alliance of ten dynamic, young, student-centred research-based universities and four non-academic partners from the non-governmental and private sectors for an impactful European University. Together, the partners established one of the first true European Universities.

This was a hybrid workshop organised by the the Globalization & Law Network in partnership with the London School of Economics and Political Science. It focused on how selected international adjudicative bodies balance individual rights with the general interest and conflicting rights; and on the role of scientific evidence in the decisions of the studied international adjudicators, primarily by reference to legal issues arising in conjunction with global warming and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The papers’ findings will be published in a special issue of 'The Law and Practice of International Courts and Tribunals' in 2022.

This was the last event in the Fireplace Talk series dedicated to the 30th Anniversary of the Maastricht Treaty, organised by UM Campus Brussels. The discussion focused on several aspects of European citizenship, its fundamental status, the relationship between European citizenship and the nationality of the Member States, and also European citizenship in times of serious crisis such as BREXIT and border closure during the pandemic.

Our guest speakers for the talk were Hildegard Schneider, Professor of International and European Law at Maastricht University, Martin Unfried, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Transnational and Euregional cross border cooperation and Mobility / ITEM, Gillian More, Legal Officer at the European Commission, and Sergio Carrera, Senior Research Fellow and Head of Justice and Home Affairs Unit at CEPS. 

Listen to this podcast episode here. 

This recent textbook by Ester Herlin-Karnell, Gerard Conway, and Aravind Ganesh provides an explanatory and contextual view of EU law and its impact in a simple and easily accessible yet analytical manner. It illustrates the power struggles behind a given EU law act, to allow for a full understanding of how it developed. This allows the student to understand EU law as a force in the increasingly globalized world, rather than as a technical and doctrinal subject.

We had the pleasure of welcoming the authors and their guest speakers for the launch of the book ‘European Union Law in Context' for an enriching and engaging discussion. 

This was the sixth event in the Fireplace Talk series dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the Maastricht Treaty. This event brought together Gaëtane Ricard-Nihoul and Christine Neuhold to discuss the issue of democracy in the EU from both an academic and policy perspective.  Gaëtane Ricard-Nihoul is a Member of the Common Secretariat for the Conference on the Future of Europe. Christine Neuhold, Professor of EU Democratic Governance at the Faculty of Arts of Social Sciences, University of Maastricht.

The discussion focused on what extent and how has the Maastricht Treaty expanded the ‘democratic base of EU governance’? Where did it fall short? To what extent did other EU treaties build on these developments? How were these implemented into the practical process? 

Listen to this podcast episode here.

This is the fifth event in the Fireplace Talks on the 30th Anniversary of the Maastricht Treaty, organised by UM Campus Brussels. It will focus on one of the policy fields laid out by the Maastricht Treaty and in particular - the Common Foreign and Security Policy. Our guest speakers for the discussion are Maastricht University Prof. Sophie Vanhoonacker and Steven Everts, Senior Adviser on Strategy and Communications at European External Action Service. 

Listine to the podcast episode of this talk here.

We had the pleasure of hosting a lively debate on the role of the EU's Emissions Trading System in combating the climate crisis with panelists from different sectors, including trade unions, academia, private sector and civil society organisations. The event discussed the opportunities and challenges in the reformed ETS; how will it lead Europe to climate neutrality and how can the ETS ensure a just transition for society and the climate. 

The event was organised by the World Information Service on Energy (WISE).

The YUFE strategic board and the institutional coordinators were at the Campus for a whole week. The week was all about bonding and team values including different topics such as a design thinking workshop. University executives were at the Campus to take stock and decide on the Alliance's next steps towards a truly European University.

This was the fourth event in the Fireplace Talks on the 30th Anniversary of the Maastricht Treaty, organised by UM Campus Brussels. It zoomed in on one of the policy fields laid out by the Maastricht Treaty and in particular - Economic and Monetary Union, the Euro and the European Central Bank.

Our guest speakers for the talk were:  Aneta Spendzharova, Associate Professor at Maastricht University, Rebecca Christie, non-resident Fellow at Bruegel, Gabriel Glöckler, Principal Adviser at European Central Bank, and Gianni Lo Schiavo, Senior Lawyer at the European Central Bank.

The podcast episode of this discussion is available here.

Our third event in the Fireplace Talk series, dedicated to the 30th Anniversary of the Maastricht Treaty, focused on 'Environmental Policy and Regulation'. 

We had the pleasure of virtually welcoming for the talk our guest speakers -  Dr. Pim Martens, Maastricht University Professor and Dean of the University College Venlo, and Jorgo Riss, the Executive Director of the Greenpeace European Unit. 

The discussion is available in the form of a podcast episode here