Politicile Uniunii Europene

This course will introduce you to what the EU does in several fields, such as economic policy (single market, EMU), social policy (citizenship, agriculture, regions) and foreign policy (trade, development, CFSP). It will also introduce you to the economic and political analysis of EU policies, which will allow you to develop general analytical and theoretical skills that will serve you as foundations for more advanced studies or to transfer them directly to non-academic jobs. Seminar questions and discussions on important topical issues will encourage you to develop practical skills, such as the ability to research independently, offer and receive peer review and debate to elucidate an issue.

More specifically, the objectives of the discipline are threefold: 1) EMPIRICAL-DESCRIPTIVE: providing a detailed description of what the European Union does in different policy areas, from the single market to social or foreign policy. 2. THEORETICAL-ANALYTICAL: explaining this reality with the help of positive theories from the economic and political realm. Among other things, these theories will help us to understand the following problems: why does the economy of the North East region of Romania not grow as much as others? Why is so much emigration? Why does not Romania join the Eurozone? Why is food more expensive in the EU than in the US? Why is the North East region receiving so much EU funding? Why does the ESF fund postdoctoral fellowships in countries with poor basic education systems? Why has negotiating a trade agreement with Mercosur taken more than 20 years? 3. NORMATIVE / CRITICAL: developing a normative / critical approach based on a solid analysis of reality about the problems that EU citizens and leaders will face and will face in the next decade. For example: Should a Google tax be imposed by the EU? Should Romania join the Eurozone? Is the Stability and Growth Pact too strict or too flexible? Is EU competition policy too tight with European champions? Should the EU enlarge to Ukraine or Moldova? Should there be a European army? Should trade with the US or China be liberalized?

The key to unlocking this course is twofold. On the one hand, EU policies affect citizens differently depending on their social group or territory, which generates differences in their preferences for those EU policies. On the other hand, these differences are resolved within the current EU institutional system. Only after analyzing the conflicts and rules of the policy-making game will we be able to understand the resulting EU policies.