This month I travelled from Maastricht to Bruges on the day that happened to be the hottest day ever recorded in both Dutch and Belgian meteorological history. As weather experts were explaining how a wave of hot air had moved north from the Sahara across continental Europe, it became clear to most European citizens that heat waves have no borders, with heat records also broken in neighbouring France and Germany. In Maastricht and Bruges, temperatures, as if they had harmonised, were ultimately ...

For many Europeans, mobility within the European Union is such an inherent part of everyday life that the availability of precise statistics on these movements may seem like a given. However, a new data-mapping exercise conducted as part of the REMINDER project has revealed that our understanding of intra-EU migration is still far from complete: even basic stock and flow statistics on internal European movements suffer from considerable shortcomings: existing data does not reveal who is moving, ...

Prof. Pierre Mohnen will lead UNU-MERIT’s stake in WATSON – a new 1 million euro innovation project funded by the European Commission. Part of the Horizon 2020 programme, WATSON is an 18-month project involving EU research institutions and SMEs working in Fintech, financial services and economics. We caught up with Pierre to find out more. What’s our role and who are the other partners? The WATSON project focuses on R&D tax incentives to promote innovation in Small and Medium-sized Ent...

Researcher Hugo Hollanders co-hosted the launch workshop of the new ‘European Observatory for Clusters and Industrial Change’ (EOCIC) on 22 January 2018. Held in Brussels, the workshop gathered around 40 participants including 10 invited experts, 18 representatives from the European Commission, plus consortium partners. This EC-funded project aims to help Europe’s regions and countries design better and more evidence-based cluster policies and initiatives. The observatory is designed to su...

The situation in Catalonia is critical, given that its drive for independence is opposed by the Spanish authorities. The Catalan government calls for dialogue - but the Spanish government makes it conditional on compliance with the Spanish constitutional and legal system. The commission refuses to interfere in this arguably domestic dispute, claiming a lack of a formal basis, and it stresses the need to fully respect the Spanish constitutional order and the rule of law....

Prof. Luc Soete will address an informal meeting of EU ministers in Tallinn, Estonia, on 25 July 2017. Seeking to improve the coherence and openness of EU research and innovation partnerships, he joins speakers including Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, and Pascal Lamy, former Director-General of the World Trade Organization. The meeting will also consider the interim evaluation of Horizon 2020 and the future of European research and innovation funding. ...

Co-authored by researchers Hugo Hollanders  and Nordine Es-Sadki, the European Innovation Scoreboard gives a comparative analysis of innovation performance across EU member states, other European countries, and regional neighbours. According to this year’s results, EU innovation performance continues to increase, partly thanks to improvements in human resources, the innovation-friendly environment, own-resource investments, and attractive research systems. Overall, Sweden remains the EU in...

The Dutch government’s refusal to allow Turkish ministers to visit Rotterdam and address the large number of Dutch-Turkish citizens on how to vote in the Turkish constitutional referendum of April 16 was a game-changer in the Dutch elections....

EU leaders have agreed to a plan that will provide Libya’s UN-backed government €200 million for dealing with migration. This includes an increase in funding for the Libyan coastguard, with an overall aim to stop migrant boats crossing the Mediterranean to Italy....

Brexit will hurt both the Brits and the Continental Europeans, no matter how the negotiations unfold. Some of the divorce pains will be in terms of cold hard cash. But the worst damage could come from Brexit undercutting the very soul of the EU – i.e., the gradual increase in understanding each other across Europe. Call it, if you will, ‘the move towards a European identity’. Exchanges of staff and students, and joint research programmes, have all contributed to the building of a European identi...