The “Industrial Value Chain: A Bridge towards a Carbon Neutral Europe” report was conducted by the Institute for European Studies (IES-VUB) on the behalf of the EU’s Energy Intensive Industries (EIIs) to the EU Commission’s Strategy for long-term EU greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The report identifies common opportunities and challenges faced by European EIIs in meeting ambitious climate targets, highlights the constructive and solutions-oriented role that the EIIs have been playing, determines a combination of key solutions that will help EIIs to significantly reduce their emissions, as well as addresses the necessary conditions for ensuring that Europe is at the forefront of the energy and industrial transformation. 

Authors: Tomas Wyns, Gauri Khandekar, Isobel Robson

On 27 June 2018, we published our latest report on the role of international institutions and organisations on the decarbonization of key emission sectors produced for the Horizon 2020 project “COP21: Results and Implications for Pathways and Policies for Low Emissions European Societies (COP21 RIPPLES)”. The report, authored by IES experts Prof. Sebastian Oberthür, Tomas Wyns and Gauri Khandekar, provides a basis for identifying the challenges, barriers and opportunities that international climate governance faces from a sectoral system perspective, and thereby enables a more targeted approach to addressing the international decarbonisation challenge.

The IES is proud to announce the launch of a new report by researchers Matilda Axelson (lead author), Isobel Robson, Gauri Khandekar and Tomas Wyns (Project coordinator): 'Breaking Through – Industrial Low-CO2 Technologies on the Horizon’. This report assesses the latest state of play of 70 low-CO2 process technologies currently under development in Europe for the Iron and Steel, Chemicals, Cement and Concrete, Pulp and Paper, and Ceramics industries. It provides a snapshot of the current situation by assessing current industrial process innovations based on their CO2-emission reduction potential, energy demand, costs and technological readiness. 

On 5 September 2018, KF-VUB Korea Chair Senior Researcher Tongfi Kim presented "Fundamental strategic problems in nuclear disarmament of North Korea: How Europe can help ameliorate them" at the Seventh Consultative Meeting of the EU Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Consortium. Dr. Kim discussed strategic problems of North Korea’s nuclear disarmament and why we have not seen much progress after the US-DPRK summit in June this year. 

From 27 – 31 August the Institute for European Studies was represented by doctoral researcher Maaike Verbruggen at the Second Session of the Group of Governmental Experts of the High Contracting Parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons on Lethal Autonomous Weapons System at the United Nations in Geneva.Maaike Verbruggen attended the meeting in the context of her doctoral research on Military Innovation in Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence.

On Friday 29 September the IES celebrated its 15th anniversary. Our institute started off as an initiative by our former President Prof. Dr. Em. Bart De Schutter with a handful of people involved. Today, we are an established player in the area of European studies, involved in dozens of prestigious research projects and with 121 people directly associated. 

Immigrant integration policy-making has long been considered a prerogative of the nation state. Yet, in recent years, elements of these policy areas have been shifted upwards, to the international level (EU and international organizations), downwards, to the sub-state level (regional and local authorities) and outwards (to countries of origin, transit and private actors). This dispersal of policy-making power increases the need for coordination. 

Ilke Adam and Eve Hepburn (Edinburgh University & Policy Scribe,) edited a special issue of Regional and Federal Studies inquiring into how and why governments in multi-level states coordinate on immigrant integration. Through a comparison of four case studies (Belgium, Canada, Italy and Spain) – which includes within-case comparisons over time, across regions and across sub-policy areas –  the authors aimed to identify the features of intergovernmental relations and the nature and dynamics that shape these. 

On 26 September, IES Executive Director Anthony Antoine delivered a keynote speech on "the salient role of the universities in implementing the UN 2030 Agenda and the particular importance of societal impact of multidisciplinary research in developing sustainable and global solutions" at the Helsinki Challenge Global Impact Camp in Brussels. The Global Impact Camp in Brussels was a two-day intensive co-creation session focusing on societal impact of research, funding and collaboration with international experts and EU decision-makers.