About CERiM

It brings together researchers from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS) and the Faculty of Law (FL) of Maastricht University and links three existing research institutes: the Maastricht Centre for European Governance (FASoS), the Maastricht Centre for European Law (FL), and the Montesquieu Institute Maastricht (FL with participation of FASoS). 

Under the umbrella of the overall theme Reshaping Europe in a Globalising World, CERiM’s research agenda focuses on four main research themes: Differentiation and Flexible Integration, Constitutionalising Europe, European Governance and Market Integration, and Europe and the World.

Find out about the research projects which give meaning to this agenda.

CERiM focuses on the interactions between Europe and global developments. This generic interest is broken down into various subfields. A first focus is on the way that the European Union is responding to changes in the world around it. The legal, political and social structures of today’s Europe are influenced by changing global conditions. The challenge is to address these pressures while preserving European values and achievements, such as the welfare state, fundamental rights, democratic institutions, and last but not least the European integration process itself. 

Second, Europe seeks to actively promote its interests abroad and to contribute to the development of global regimes in fields such as human rights, economic and financial regulation, asylum and migration, and many others. The extent to which Europe and the EU are capable of doing this within their current institutional configuration is a second research field of the Centre. 

Third, both developments described above are hardly new, but have been ongoing since the very first steps of the European integration process. A group of historians within the Centre is looking into the way in which the Europe-global link has been developing over the past decades and how ‘the global’ has shaped Europe as much as Europe has contributed to the shape of global affairs.

• Developing own research projects and lending support to individual members and participating institutes in developing (externally funded) research projects. The newly to be hired postdoc researchers and the existing funding advisors will play a key role in this.
• The Centre will facilitate the organisation of international workshops and conferences with high-profile experts in the field (academics and practitioners). It may contribute to the organisation of workshops through its own funds.
• Organising academic valorisation and outreach activities. The Centre will provide a platform through which the communication with stakeholders (press releases, press enquiries, policy briefs, etc.) will be organized in a professional manner.
•  A platform for intellectual exchange in Maastricht Univer-City: The Centre will contribute to the discussion on EU-related topics in the University and in the city and province, for instance through a lecture series and other public events.

• Relations between the EU and Member States and the distribution of powers between them.
• Differentiation and flexibility in EU integration.
• Processes of disintegration within the European Union: Euroscepticism and declining trust in European institutions.

• National constitutions and European integration.
• The process of constitutionalisation in the European Union.
• Challenges for future integration.

• The democratic legitimacy of EU.
• Regulatory challenges of key policy sectors (e.g. banking, health, environment, transport, fundamental rights, internal market, competition).
• Managing the sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone: The new institutional architecture for economic governance.

• EU Foreign Policy. 
• European Administrative Governance.
• External dimension of security policies and the EU’s international role as a security actor.
• Surveillance and privacy protection as well as EU energy policy.