UACES Study Group S007

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EU Burden-Sharing: Responsibility, Solidarity and Levels of Integration
Organiser: Eiko Thielemann, London School of Economics and Political Science

The Study Group on EU Burden-Sharing has so far held three workshops (see below). These have led to several conference panels and a special issue of OUP’s Journal of Refugee Studies on ‘European Burden-Sharing and Forced Migration’ forthcoming. We are also planning an edited volume on ‘EU Burden-Sharing’ with a leading academic publishers for which we are still looking for additional contributors.

Past Events of the Study Group on EU Burden-Sharing:

Meeting 1: Responsibility, Solidarity and Levels of Integration (London, 15-16 June 2001)
What does burden-sharing in the EU mean? How do we explain the motivation for EU burden-sharing, its obstacles, its existing and emerging patterns? What are its normative benchmarks? How are external burden-sharing bargains (e.g. Kyoto, enlargement etc.) linked to those inside the EU? How are EU burdensharing bargains linked across issue areas? What is the relationship between legitimacy, fairness, effectiveness and efficiency in EU burden-sharing bargains? These were some of the key questions addressed during this two-day conference which was hosted by the LSE’s Department of Government and which was attended by 35 academics from ten European countries, the US and policymakers from the European Commission.

Meeting 2: European Burden-Sharing and Forced Migration (London, 12 January 2002)
The aim of this workshop was to analyse European refugee policy and to identify new ways of achieving credible burden-sharing commitments beyond the state. Recent European institutional innovations in such areas as asylum, temporary protection and the European Refugee Fund were analysed to explore both the promise and limits of new (soft) methods of co-ordination in this area.

Meeting 3: Internal and External Dimensions of EU Burden-Sharing (London, 26 - 27 April 2002)
Recent developments in the EU, not least the debates surrounding enlargement and the post-Nice constitutional process, have highlighted the distributive and redistributive impact of European policy initiatives. A number of important questions have been raised in this context, such as: What are the motivations for burden-sharing beyond the state? What are the implications of the sharing of rules, norms and resources between the Member States? In what ways are EU burden-sharing regimes shaped by distributive and re-distributive bargains at the national, regional or global level. And conversely, in what ways do such EU regimes shape patterns of burden-sharing (or burden-shifting) in the national, regional or global context?

Contact: Dr Eiko Thielemann, LSE, European Institute (e.thielemann@lse.ac.uk)