robert schuman centre for advanced studies - European University ...

IntErnAtIonAl
And trAnSnAtIonAl
rElAtIonS oF tHE Eu
The European Union as a political and social community
is not an isolated entity but is part of, and interacts with,
its larger environment. European states are confronted
with internal and external challenges such as increasing
religious activism and pressure on the functional and legal
borders of the EU. Two research projects funded by
the European Research Council under the EU Seventh
Framework Programme, Religiowest and Borderlands,
study the impact of these challenges.
The EU is an increasingly significant international actor.
The Union’s external policies, as well as those of its individual
member states, exert a major impact on its neighbours
and beyond. In recent years, the Centre has focused on
the enlargement of the EU, the Mediterranean region, and
transatlantic relations. Our current interests further include
the rise of European foreign, security, and defense policies;
the EU as an international actor and the EU’s military and
civilian missions abroad; and the global trade regime.
26 roBErt ScHuMAn cEntrE For AdVAncEd StudIES
Key faculty
RSCAS: Stefano Bartolini, Raffaella Del Sarto, Ulrich
Krotz, Miguel Maduro, Olivier Roy
EUI Departments: Marise Cremona (LAW)
rElIGIoWESt
This ERC-funded project, directed by Olivier Roy, aims to
study how different western states in Europe and North
America are redefining their relationship to religions, under
the challenge of an increasing religious activism in the
public sphere, associated with new religious movements
and with Islam. Although each country starts from very
different and specific contexts of the relationship between
state, religion and public sphere, this move seems to lead
to a more uniform perception of what the relationship
should be. More importantly, it seems to lead to the use of
a common paradigm of what a religion is, with the consequence
of pushing religions, through a complex array of