EU Conference Abstracts

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Two-day EU Conference - February 22-23, 2016

This 1.5 day-long Workshop brings together scholarly experts on Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa to discuss how EU & European development policies are established and implemented with partners around the world. Given the fact that the EU collectively is not only the largest provider of Official Development Assistance, but also that 2015 is/was the European Year of Development, we center our conference on issues of development and cooperation with nations and regions around the globe. The latter is particularly important as the UN revised the Millennium Development Goals. This conference enables us to analyze how the EU advocates and integrates development policy in its external relations and foreign policy, while also placing EU policies within the larger development framework of the UN, and comparing it to the development priorities of the U.S. Miami’s location on the margins of South America and the Caribbean ensures high visibility and audience turnout for a discussion of the EU’s role in foreign aid and relations among European, Caribbean and African nations in the post-colonial landscape. Since the topic of development is multifaceted, we plan to include scholars from various schools and departments, including History, Anthropology, Public Health, Political Science, International Relations as well as all of our relevant area studies centers. In addition we will encourage participation from Miami’s non-profit and NGO development organizations.

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Two-day EU Conference - February 16-17, 2017

While the debate surrounding the planned EU-US trade agreement TTIP is increasingly contentious in Europe, in the U.S. there exist little information or discussion outside a small policy-circle. And the new president-elect’s general resistance to international trade agreements doesn’t help the issue. Hence the general public and even the business or policy sectors are in need of a balanced analysis. International trade agreements in general have become politically contested, as has become evident with the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economy & Trade Agreement (CETA) or the US-Asia Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), for example. From mutual tariffs and standards to dispute settlement, a number of trade policy issues need to be resolved and publicly justified in treaty negotiations. In Europe, TTIP critics question its over-reaching structures, its dispute settlement mechanism that gives too much power to the private sector, the risk of lowest common denominators on hard-fought standards, or contest the secrecy of negotiations. Proponents argue that TTIP could stimulate the relatively stagnant transatlantic economies, create additional jobs and jointly strengthen Western economic power in the world. Since the negotiation of TTIP takes longer than expected and a conclusion is in doubt, a review of transatlantic economic prospects and, challenges is required. We aim to understand the ways in which different socio-political attitudes toward trade, globalization, and environmental standards come into play in these negotiations. How do Americans and European view free trade? How do political actors on both sides of the Atlantic imagine their roles in the negotiations? How does TTIP imprint on the global context?

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